Restoration

Restorations of Vespas and Lambretta in Vietnam vary from shop to shop. Here are pictures I took on a recent visit to two smaller shops. Both shops I visited claimed to have large shops were the restorations took place. One shop claimed that it had been in business for 10 years with hundreds of restorations under their belts when in fact the owner was 24 and the shop was out of his parent’s house. Also the shop had only been around for 6 months. The sad thing was the owner did not even ride a scooter nor own a scooter. He preferred his BMW 3 Series. Keep in mind that the average monthly income is @ $200 a month and for a 24 year old to be driving a BMW, he must be doing extremely better than most of this fellow countrymen.

When visiting these two shops, I found out that a lot of the process is farmed out to local specialty shops in their area. Here are some shots of guys over at ScootAZ looking over a Lambretta LIS. I ended up purchasing it later. My review to follow soon.

Here is one of the shops supply of Lambretta. The costs of Lambretta are normally more expensive because they are harder to come by. On average I was told that shops pay around $100 to $400 usd for a Lambretta

Once the strip the bike apart, the send the parts off to body shop for any welding and pounding out of dents and dings. I believe this shop is OSHA approved, (NOT).

Parts are then filled, primer and paint is sprayed.

The pictures illustrate a very crude form of restoration from two shops in Vietnam and do not represent how all the shops do their restores. I did find in the cases above, that when it came to the body repairs, it is not unusual for some shops to over indulge in plastic filler to fix problems. To try to bondo or weld parts instead of replacing the parts. One shop claimed to replace 90% of the parts on the scooter but when I went over the scooter I found many parts that were bodged and did not belong on the scooter, (See the review of Huy’s Scooters for an illustrations of this).

Final assembly was also interesting. I was able to go with one of the shops to the area in Saigon were it is a large Scooter / Motorcycle market. The market sold lots of Vespa and Lambretta parts from China that looked very cheap and of poor quality. The two shops I visited did not work with ScootRS or Saigon Scooters for parts. These shops claim they work directly with supplier to ScootRS or Saigon Scooters. One shop was using old tarnished stripped out screws and bolts to secure parts to the scooter.

Look Great! Wrong! - To bad the frame was welded together from two seperate scooters and the body shop painted over the rust. Thanks Huy Scooters for sending trash. 

Here are the final days of this LIS in Vietnam before being shipped to California. I spent less than the above and the quality was 10 time better but still not perfect.

I was not able to see how they rebuild the engines.

I will add to this section as I visit other shops or when I get feedback from others.