A bit of a nail

Losing or damaging an essential part of the engine during a scooter rebuild is frustrating, and the temptation to create a home-made replacement part is often difficult to resist….

By the early 1980s a Lambretta tuning bonanza was in full swing and with it a new language had evolved. To those performing the tuning the ‘Stage’ designations were an essential part of the tuning process and indicated how much power the engine could create. For owners it was a different matter: Stage Four, Five, Six or whatever you wanted to call it were magic numbers that meant your machine would go faster. Each stage was more impressive than the other; if you had Stage Five or Six, there was little doubt that you were the top dog in any club.

In our club, Steve wanted to be the top dog. This was fine, he was the oldest, and his Serveta 200 had just finished its Mod phase and was now entering Scooter Boy territory. All the chrome work had been banished to a corner of the garage and the dual seat was replaced with a Snetterton. All it required for a full transformation was a tuned engine, but rather than go down the route of using one of the up-andcoming tuners to do it, Steve decided he would have a go. The problem was that Steve found it hard to open a can of corned beef, let alone skilfully shape the ports of a Lambretta barrel.

Anyway, we wondered, where would the information come from to carry out such detailed work?

The answer came at the Morecambe rally of 1984 courtesy of a pissed-up tuner sitting in the corner of a pub explaining each part of the process in detail. No one was paying any attention except Steve, who was carefully taking mental notes and plotting how he’d become the next big name on the tuning scene. Once home from the rally, he announced his plans for a 90mph Lambretta and suddenly his tuning centre (aka dad’s garage) would become our home on weekends as we visited in anticipation of watching the maestro at work. The improvement in performance required three things to happen, or so he told us. These were taking the barrel off and porting it, then buying a Fresco exhaust, and finally acquiring the biggest possible Dell’Orto carburettor.

The delicate porting work was executed by getting sandpaper and trying to smooth the ports, the entire process being conducted on the dividing wall between his and next door’s driveway. It was amateur hour at its finest, but we all wanted to see the outcome. After half an hour, he was tiring, having had enough of this sanding lark; some bits of the ports had been smoothed off while others were untouched. Did it matter? Probably, but Steve was confident that his efforts would result in an improvement. With the barrel refitted, phase two could start, namely fitting the Fresco. Then, as now, aftermarket parts didn’t always fit first time and the out-of-line brackets were hammered with various implements until some semblance of a fit was obtained. There were a few dents in the bright red paint of its main section, but concluding this phase of his master plan meant that the final piece could be put in place; namely the carburettor.

This had been acquired from someone else, via a mate who knew a bloke, in other words ‘sold as seen’. Jetting could have been an issue, or it would have been had he known what that meant; so the idea was to leave it as was and hope for the best. When Steve bolted the carb body to the manifold and attempted to attach the throttle cable, he noticed that the needle was missing. Regardless of the lack of jetting knowledge, Steve knew this had to be fitted, but couldn’t remember where he had put it. Everyone joined in looking for the slender, thin piece of metal that was key to getting the super new engine fired up. We scoured the garage floor and driveway, but it was fruitless. It seemed as if the needle had vanished into thin air; that is until his dad reversed out of the driveway.

The carb had been dismantled the day before and, unknowingly, Steve had dropped the needle on the driveway. Now, two tons of Rover P5 were crushing it into the tarmac and despite shouting for his dad to stop, once we retrieved it from the tyre tread it had been pulverised. There was no choice but to get another one, so a trip in his dad’s Rover beckoned. We travelled from shop to shop, seemingly searching for the impossible. The problem was that the local motorcycle dealers sold Japanese bikes, and didn’t care much about Italian carburettor manufacturers. We even tried a lawnmower shop, as some did stock Dell’Orto spares, but unfortunately, machines like the Suffolk Punch didn’t run on a whopping great 30mm carburettor.

Returning home, Steve was in a dilemma. He was so close to making the engine run and wasn’t going to be frustrated by something so small. We could see him thinking, then, suddenly, he ran over to the drawers fixed on the side of the garage wall and pulled out what he described as a needle. It was, in fact, a two-inch nail that was indeed the same silver colour as the needle but there the resemblance ended. His theory was that it could be crafted into the same shape with little more than a file.

We all watched in disbelief as, bit by bit, he tried to match the exact measurements of the needle’s taper. It was about as accurate as his sanding of the ports, but somehow, he got it to fit.

Had he pulled it out of the bag? Was the sandpaper special going to run? We all waited in anticipation. Kick number 30 proved that it might not, so the standard 1980s procedure of bump-starting it began in earnest. We pushed it down the road, and finally, it burst into life but it was coughing and spluttering like mad; kangarooing down the road as Steve desperately tried to hold on.

This wasn’t the upgrade in performance Steve had hoped for. In fact the thing was running like a bit of a nail; this was hardly surprising though, as a bit of a nail was running it.

Jetting could have been an issue, or it would have been had he known what that meant; so the idea was to leave it as was and hope for the best.