Iso Milano Scooter

Saturday, 26 August 2023

portalampada - lightbulbholder - tail light

In the parts bag I also found the rear light lampholders. And these were really a surprise to me. They were fitted on a rubber strip with ground wires connected to it. How cool is that. Unfortunately the rubber material had become fragile and brittle. In fact, one piece had both ends broken off already and the other one was slight teared:

And they are fitted on the rear panel. Who has designed this?

For photo purposes I had one attached.

I searched hard to find NOS replacements but these are simply not available anywhere. Not even used photo examples I was able to find.

The closest useable new example would be this item:

It would mean I simply would have to drill one hole and attach it. I saw other similar light solutions whereby the same lightbulb holders were directly attached to the lightplate (model: Catalux Aprilia BS 2515/6 G2):

The following lightholder is a very good example as well. Again these are mounted directly on the frame and are using also unshielded ground wires

As I'm a sucker for originality I simply had to make an attempt to repair the broken rubber. So I came up with this solution. I cut off a small stroke of this rubber scraper

And made two pieces to be fitted by simply glueing them together. Cutted using a stanley knive and sanding by using a file.

It was more easy as anticipated. Costs made for the scraper and glue was about € 5,-

I now need to source a very small round clamp so the wire can be fitted correctly to the plate (ground). But also I need to find a correct copper screw. One of them was forced by a slightly larger screw (sigh!).

Also I found out one lightbulb was indeed to large (42 mm) - wasn't aware there were different length sizes for these. Correct size would be about 38 mm. According to the manual it should be a 6V 5W (this one was 15W). And the other one should be 6V 3W.

By now I also found out - with help of the manual, the battery is only there to provide parking light. The normal lighting and claxon electricity is provided directly by the dynamo when the engine runs.

The anti climax is when I tried to fit the fixed solution. Even though the glued rubber was flexible it was still to strong, meaning not able to stretch, so the glued parts simply teared off when I tried to slide it over the iron tips :-(

Meanwhile I had bought this other tail light solution. It appears this light was used on a MV Augusta. And as can be seen there has been an original gaskets made for this model. I'm happy to use that. Althought the lense was fairly broken and glued I also could reuse the white lens as that was missing on mine. I also had to glue one part that was broken. But I rather put this together as it's a fragile item that easily can be damaged due to no protection. And by now I do have a new one on stock in any case.

Another good thing is that I can reuse the lampholders on the used spare item if I want to recreate a complete new set using a new stretchable rubber.

And here is how it looks now:

Friday, 25 August 2023

Iso Books

I had ordered this book last month but it only arrived today since they closed the shop due to holiday leave. It was already longer on my list but since I now have the Iso scooter it was a good opportunity to buy it.

Another book I have about Iso is this one. One of the best books in my car collection. And of course it does contain a little snippet about the Iso Scooters.

Saturday, 19 August 2023

Speedometer cable

Today I worked on a small job which turned into a small nightmare. I also forgot my mobile phone today so no photo's on the activities. Well, it's not exactly rocket science either but I always like some photo's for historical and reference reasons.

In any case, today I made an attempt to connect the new speedometer cable. The previous owner did not install it when he had rebuild the scooter. The cable was also severely damaged. But it would have been a minor job to get a replacement

The cable is about 1 meter in length. So I had ordered one online but it appears the inner cable comes in different sizes as I learned, sigh! The new cable had 2,5 mm while the original was 2 mm:

So I went to a vintage Vespa scooter shop nearby. I knew about that shop for a long while but never visited them. A very nice owner completely into Italian stuff, just like me. He had on cable on stock left that I needed.

I had already figured out one riddle using this online photo. The previous owner had put the brake cable into the hole of the speedometer cable. And there was no spare room for another cable. But by seeing this photo I now know how it was suppose to be fitted. Typical the supporting photo is also showing a similar damaged speedometer cable.

So putting the brake cable in the bottom hole and adding the speedometer cable into the other upper hole. But then, horror, the top connector screw dropped into the tube all the way down to the bottom. And there was no way to get it out. I suspect I might not have been the first person running into this issue. The simple trick is of course to use some scotch tape to stick it to the cable.

The only option I could come up with is to completely removing the front steering rod and then turn it upside down. Then I figured I could use a thin iron wire and push it all the way up and create a small hook at the end. This worked partially but the thin wire didn't reach the top, it got stuck and wasn't firm enough as it bend when pushing firmly. Then I had this genious idea to use the brake cable. The innercable was thin enough to slide it through the connector screw and by having a bit scotch tape put around the cable it didn't glide over it. Yes, it was fidly job but it worked :-)

So everything got connected up in the end. I did not use a clamp to secure the bottom-end screw as at some point I need to dismantle the whole scooter to get it repainted. As said earlier, I first would like to have everything complete and working. So this is one item completed.