The holy bible and the garage from hell

Scootering continues its short series of scooter boy tales. If you’re inspired to reminisce on days of old, send us your 1000 word story to share with the readers…

In the early ‘heydays’ of scooter ownership a workshop manual was a must, but in the wrong (or perhaps overly enthusiastic) hands, it could be deadly… Owning either a Lambretta or a Vespa scooter in the 1980s meant that you had plenty of options of where to go on your travels – a new-found sense of freedom! It went without saying though, that you had to attend national rallies, and it was written, nay, etched in law that you must be present at club night. No question. If you turned up at a rally in the back of a van, or to the pub on the back of another scooter, then you were treated like some sort of social outcast. At all times it was imperative to keep your scooter on the road, by whatever means necessary.

Thankfully, over the years, Lambretta had produced several editions of the home workshop manual. It was only a few quid to buy the latest reprint, or chances are that there would be one handed down from generation to generation in the family, perhaps last used in the 1960s when Uncle Bill used it to maintain his old Li 150. It might be a bit grubby by now, from oily thumb marks or perhaps have instructions (like the correct spark plug gap) written all over it in pen, but it would certainly suffice for the job. Every now and then when something was not working on the Lambretta, well every week to be honest, out would come the trusty workshop manual (bible) to help find a solution to the problem.

To us, the Lambretta workshop manual was like the holy bible. A quick read through several pages and, well, ta-dah it could help fix the situation in an instant. Don’t get me wrong, the book didn’t have special healing powers as such, but when you knew sweet FA about fixing a Lambretta… it gave you the answer. Of course there was always the minor problem of actually implementing what theses hallowed chronicles told you to do, in terms of having the right tools, or even understanding the details, but one way or another you could scrape through and patch the machine up! Over time it helped you to learn new techniques, and started to turn you into a bit of an amateur mechanic. This could be dodgy territory though, especially when someone else’s Lambretta broke down. Claiming to know what was wrong and offering to fix it could lead you into opening the proverbial can of worms. It really was just best to stick with your own machine, after all we were still only apprentices when it came to the job of being Lambretta mechanics.

Unfortunately though, one lad in our club had also acquired his own copy of the Lambretta manual/bible, and in an instant

It was a small semidetached house in a short narrow cul-de-sac with a brick wall at the end. There was one way in and one way out, but for some scooters… it would have no exit.

he was transfixed. It was as if the book had special powers and had taken a hold over him or perhaps cast a spell. Now, even if there wasn’t actually a mechanical problem, he would take his engine apart for the sake of it. For instance, if the points gap needed altering, rather than take the fan cowl off to inspect it… the whole engine would be ripped out from the chassis; occupying the workbench like it was waiting to have some sort of major surgery carried out on it. The place for all this to happen would of course be his dad’s garage. It was located up the driveway of a small semi-detached house, in a short/narrow cul-de-sac with a brick wall at the end. There was one way in and one way out, but for some scooters, well, there would never be a way out.

As already mentioned, the book was a godsend to fixing your Lambretta, but in the wrong hands it was dangerous. This was being proved at an alarming rate in what was now dubbed ‘the garage of hell’. Healthy, running, Lambrettas were going in there but coming out like lame donkeys, sometimes being unable to move more than a few yards in extreme cases. It was okay to have the manual, but if you couldn’t execute what it told you, then you were in trouble. It got worse… some Lambrettas were going in there and disappearing altogether. It was like some sort of Bermuda triangle effect, all happening in this small cul-de-sac with the garage being the epicentre of the disappearing machines. Scooters vanishing off the face of the earth once they entered there, literally never to be seen again. Don't get me wrong, it wasn’t anything sinister as such, they weren’t going anywhere else, but there were piles and piles of parts just mounting up. The problem was, there was no longer anything which resembled a full machine. They were ‘diagnosed’. Stripped, and put in the ‘holding area’.

With no signs of the situation getting better, even more bad news was just around the corner, Haynes had just produced a new manual for the PX range and one had been spotted in the garage of hell. This meant that even the Vespa wasn’t immune anymore, and soon enough they also started to disappear. It was several months before the situation improved maybe even a year or so, due to a switch to tampering with cars instead.

Thankfully it was now all over and no more Lambrettas and Vespas were to become sacrificial lambs in the quest of ‘fixing them’. It’s not known exactly how many scooters actually entered there or how many made it out alive and running, but one thing was for sure… it taught me a lesson to do my own mechanics from that moment on!