Smoking two-strokes
No one ever wanted to see excessive smoke from their exhaust as this spelled trouble. It all depended on where it was coming from, though
The steady stream of smoke emanating from his exhaust now began to resemble a Saturn-V rocket launch.
Filling up your scooter at the petrol station always required one important task. One that if you didn't adhere to signalled trouble for the engine, filling up with oil. For those that owned a Vespa, certainly one of the new fandangled ones, this didn't matter so much. They had a fancy auto lube system that mixed the oil for you from a separate tank. For hardcore Lambretta riders it was different though, requiring you to do it yourself. The problem came with getting the measurement exactly right.
The Lambretta petrol tank didn't hold that much, being just shy of two gallons, and there were two types of methods when it came to mixing the oil. One was simply to pour some directly from the bottle. For those a bit more sophisticated, it required measuring it exactly with what was often referred to as ‘the dunce jug’. Simply tipping it in quite often meant the scooter would billow smoke as it went down the road for the first few miles in an attempt to burn off the excess oil. It wasn’t doing any harm as such, but would often foul the spark plug and cause the exhaust to coke up unnecessarily.
If you did measure the oil correctly and smoke continued to be present, then quite often it spelled the dreaded news that the drive side oil seal had failed. Yes, the engine would run, but it meant at some point a full strip-down was required to replace it. It was part of Lambretta ownership, but when it happened that feeling of deflation when knowing what it was always took over. When travelling in a group to a rally it was a common sight to see a cloud of two-stroke fumes following the gaggle of riders like some poisonous cloud. No one ever seemed bothered, as long as there was nothing untoward.
That was until the time of the first trip by Lambrettas en masse to the Euro Lambretta. There were lots of small groups making their way into mainland Europe all to the same destination, Strasbourg. The majority would be camping and this meant not only having to carry enough clothes for the week, but also camping equipment. By the time everything was shoved on to the scooter there wasn't much room left to sit on it. Some though had found digs near to the rally, meaning they didn't need to carry so much luggage.
One of those was Colin, a regular rally attender and always on a tidily turned out Lambretta. Colin’s whole appearance was one of looking smart, dressed in the best designer clothes. Even after a long journey by scooter, it looked as though he had just ridden round the corner. His Lambretta was a real head-turner, painted by Maca at DTC and featured in all the magazines of the time. He always wanted it to look spotless, so if pulling up for fuel, the flies or dirt off the road that had adhered themselves to the paintwork would be subjected to a cloth to remove them. There was nothing wrong with the approach of tidiness and organisation, and that was reflected in the appearance of his scooter at all times.
As the small groups of riders all congregated into one big convoy just outside the city, it was a sight to behold for any enthusiast of the Lambretta. The same couldn't be said of the weather, raining on and off, making it even more tricky for the 200 or so riders. In all the confusion the cloud of two-stroke smoke seemed to be getting even thicker as everyone constantly blipped their throttles through the mayhem of the traffic. In the middle was Colin, his tuned Lambretta coping quite well with the conditions.
Traveling behind him, it became more and more noticeable that his Lambretta seemed to be smoking far more than everyone else’s. In the damp conditions and continuing two-stroke could fall-out, it was not always clear to see. However, it soon become apparent that there was something drastically wrong with his scooter, the steady stream of smoke emanating from his exhaust now beginning to resemble a Saturn-V rocket launch. More to the point was that the smoke had changed into something more alarming... flames. Fellow ridders began to wave their arms furiously, telling Colin to pull over. To start with he took no notice, seemingly oblivious to the potential disaster unfolding behind him. Once he did look round, it took about a second for him to stop and jump off his Lambretta like a rat out of a trap.
We all pulled over to help and, more importantly, put the fire out. In the ensuing chaos, Colin had forgotten to turn the ignition off, so the machine was still running. To everyone's surprise, both the engine and scooter seemed fine. What wasn't fine was his luggage bag, which was by now in desperate trouble. Colin feverishly unstrapped the bag from the tiny sprint rack on the back of the frame and threw it on the floor, where it continued to billow out smoke. Carefully unzipping it, out came designer tops, jeans and even trainers, all with huge holes burnt through them. The culprit was a failed bungee cord that had popped off, which had allowed the bag to hang over the exhaust. The hot gases coming from it now sat directly underneath the bag, which was slowly burning its way through like a hot blowtorch. Colin really did have a smoking two-stroke, but not the way he had intended.