How to Restore and Modify Your Vespa Motorscooter [Paperback]

"Vespa" is an excellent resource for solid information about the various scooters. It shows what engines came with which, what the serial numbers are, and an excellent description of the history of the models. It contains excellent sections on fixing various components of the product, logically arranged around the system (engine, electrical, body, etc).

Where the book really misses for me is a no chapter for "What scooter is right for me." I've never owned a bike before and I am puzzled about what to buy, and there's very little information about this, other than what the various performance levels and parts availabilites are.

The other glaring error concerns a paragraph on page 120 (the "body and paint" section). It states that you should never buy a scooter with a crease in this one area of the frame, going on to explain where it is (the explanation missed for me, because I didn't have an actual scooter in front of me for reference) and then they Didn't Provide A Picture For Reference! The authors continue by saying that this inspection is Very Important when you are looking to purchase your ride, yet it isn't in the buying section or anywhere up front where choosing or inspecting your scooter is located. If this is so important, why is it buried near the back of the book? What if you have one of these creases? How do you fix it? Nope, nothing there. I had orginally given the book 3 stars, but the hopeless organization and authors' inability to see their finished product through the eyes of the reader put me over the edge.

I'm curious about real world issues. "What type of rider are you?" "How big are you?" "Where do you ride?" How often do you ride?" "How are your mechanical skills?" How reliable do you need your bike to be?" etc. Should be questions that are answered in detail to choose the right bike. If you're looking for this information, look elsewhere.

Scooters have their own culture attached. I would have liked more information about the culture and what it is about. While this isn't directly related to scooter restoration, You sure don't want to show up at your first event with a perfectly restored Vespa looking like a goofball. The book kind of makes an assumption that you are already a "cognoscenti."

In the performance section it gives very little information about engine swapping or what "works" and what doesn't. This seems to be a common practice, yet there is no information about stuffing a 200 engine in a 160 frame. Also lacking is what the differences in power are. A stock 200cc Vespa has around 12-13 horsepower. If I do "blank" to the engine, what does that do to the performance in real and "seat of the pants" numbers? What about reliability? The section on modifications goes into great detail on how to "do" the mods, but not very much in "what you get for your trouble".

Finally, I was shocked at the number of spelling errata. From someone writing a column in a major newspaper, I was amazed at how many spelling errors and typos there were. It seems that this book was rushed, not very well outlined and underwent very little rewriting and no peer review. In this rush some really good information that I know that the writers had in their brains never made it to the page. I hope there are other books available to fill in the gaps.