Always break down when you’re on your own...

Riding to rallys with pals is always fun, unless you are the only one keeping them on the road!

The problem with owning a Lambretta was no matter how competent a mechanic you were, anything could go wrong and at any given time. Even if everything seemed okay once out on the open road, if a part wanted to fail it would. Usually it was going to do so without any prior notice. One benefit, though, was that you could often do a roadside repair or bodge to keep the thing going. Just enough perhaps to limp home. There were times though, when it would be terminal and that's when the real issues started.

For years the major breakdown organisations looked upon the Lambretta as a loss-making exercise. If they provided recovery to someone owning a scooter, who was a member, then more than likely it would cost them a lot of money in the long run… given the number of times it would probably need picking up and recovering home. It didn't help when, in the 1980s, many scooter riders had, shall we say, ‘self-inflicted’ a breakdown. This to get a free ride home in a pick-up truck rather than ride the scooter hundreds of miles after a heavy weekend at a rally. The big two, the RAC and the AA, had picked up on the fact and were no longer offering free recovery, and certainly not to someone owning a vintage Lambretta. In that case, what was the point in joining? It seemed stupid to pay an annual membership that was, in reality, worthless. If you could fix it yourself, you would. If you couldn't, you could have a mechanic come out and agree with you but still leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere. Pointless.

So, for several years I had got by with not being a member of a motoring organisation, even though sometimes it had been touch and go whether I’d get my ‘faithful’ Lambretta back home. It seemed by the early 1990s though, the AA had begun to change their attitude

towards scooters. Perhaps they were struggling for members. Who knows, but now there was an incentive to join. They were offering a year's membership with up to four free recoveries within that period. More importantly, this now included anyone with a vintage vehicle, even a Lambretta!

Brilliant, now I could thrash my Lambretta around the country, safe in the knowledge that if it blew up, I would still get recovery back home. Brilliant! If it was something simple like a snapped throttle cable then fair enough, I would fix it. But from now on, any repair that needed major roadside surgery, even if it could be sorted, was going to be done back home. There was a strict clause,

Brilliant, now I could thrash my Lambretta around the country, safe in the knowledge that if it blew up I would still get recovery back home. Brilliant!

meaning once you had been given four recoveries within the 12-month subscription period you would have to pay from then on. Let's face it though, even with bad luck, at best it was only a couple of times each rally season that their services would be needed.

After years working on Lambrettas I had made them fairly reliable, even the tuned ones. Without hesitation, I signed up and handed over 75 quid to give me peace of mind when it came to going on rallies.

As it transpired, my membership arrived two days before the big rally of the year down in Devon. Five of us were travelling together on three Lambrettas, and though it was 200-odd miles away, it seemed a fairly routine journey. It was exactly that, and with all of us just taking it easy we gradually clocked the miles up. Then in an instant, it all began to unravel. The first sign that things were going wrong began to show when the lead Lambretta seemed much lower in height, and then swerved violently. Not surprising really, as at the same time it spewed out the contents of its shock absorber down the road. The fact that all of us were looking slightly worried became even more apparent as it transpired that only I was a member of the AA or any other breakdown company. So, for now, that had become my Lambretta as I rang for assistance. The mechanic, also realising it was terminal, offered recovery home. We wanted to get to the rally though, so he agreed to take it to a scooter shop a few miles away. With a shock absorber bought and fitted, we were once again back on the road.

For about 20 minutes all seemed good until the next breakdown, a blown head gasket. Again it was a repeat of the same process, with me ringing up for assistance and recovery back to the same shop. Within an hour I had become the owner of a second Lambretta as far as the AA was concerned. This repair took much longer, but by late in the afternoon we finally made it to the rally. Great, apart from the fact that two days into my membership I had used half of my free recoveries for the year. On the way home it got worse, as this time both of the other Lambrettas suffered terminal failures. Though it involved a lot of name swapping to convince the AA that it was me who kept breaking down on two different vehicles, we somehow managed to blag it. By the time I got myself home (incidentally, on a tuned Lambretta that ran perfectly the whole journey) I had used all of my free recoveries for the year, in less than a week!

Trying to work out how the hell that had happened, there was only one conclusion. From now on, go to a rally without anyone else and break down on your own. It's far easier that way!