Feature Scooter: Muscle Vespa
We all have the dream of the ultimate barn find, but Stuart Murray may have done that twice; his latest ‘find’ packs looks, style, performance and a serious punch…
We all have the dream of the ultimate barn find, but Stuart Murray may have done that twice; his latest find packs looks, style, performance and a serious punch…
Since he was a kid, Stuart Murray has been brought up around scooters. “My dad was a member of the Darlington Scooter Club. I got my first scooter when I was 12, which happened when my dad had been to a friend’s funeral and the wife of the guy who’d passed away offered his scooter to him. She explained that the scooter was somewhere in the back of their shed. I remember the day clearly – we turned up at the lady’s house and after an hour or two of sorting out the contents of the shed we found the scooter under a mattress right at the back. An original silver Vespa GS 150! Realising the value of the scooter, although the lady said we could have it for free, my dad paid £135 for it. After we’d found it my dad said that I could have it if I could get it home! As you can imagine, I was going to get it home no matter what happened!”
Vespas
Stuart’s interest in Vespas developed over the years. “I’ve always liked the early large-framed Vespas; obviously the GS is the true classic, but I also really like the 152L2. I bought the 152L2 I got before this one as a plain scooter, but I developed it with a rub-through paint effect and completed the engine with a BGM177 kit, full-cut crank, reed-valve, 30mm carb and a SIP performance exhaust.” One weekend in May 2018, and with one serious barn find already under his belt, Stuart decided to go to a local custom car and bike show. “My partner Sally and my daughter Katy had gone away for the weekend so I decided to have a ride over to the show on my 152L2. When I got there, unknowingly I rode into the exhibitors’ entrance and parked up. While I was getting off my scooter I saw a fella taking great interest in it. After I’d got it parked up, I walked over to the guy and we started chatting. He said: “I’ve got one of these in my allotment shed, it’s blocking my potting shelf; you can have it if you can shift it.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!” Without wasting any time Stuart got the guy’s number, rode home, collected his van and drove round to the allotment. “When I got there the guy pointed out the scooter and there it was; an original silver 152L2 with no wheels, engine or seat but with its original frame and body panels. We struck a deal and I bought it for £120.”
Having got the scooter home, Stuart wanted to get it into his garage and out of the way as quickly as possible. “While my partner Sally accepts my interest in scooters there is sometimes an element of disagreement about the time I spend working on my scooters. So my plan was to get the scooter out of the van and into the garage, and then after Sally had been home for a little while, I’d gently break the news to her at a more suitable time that I’d got another scooter,” Stuart said. “But that didn’t go to plan! Just as I was getting the scooter out of the van, Sally and Katy arrived back home. I’d been caught red-handed!” Stuart’s plan for the scooter was to make it a significant progression from his previous 152L2.
“I’d put a bit of money into the rub-through scooter, it’s got a good paint job, tuning and technical spec but I wanted this one to go to the next level. My objective was to keep it as standard-looking as possible, but for it to pack a serious punch!”
Punching
The build started in late summer 2018 and what a job Stuart has done. The engine casings are Piaggio 200 and have been machined to accommodate the Lingwelle 62mm crank, which takes the 244 Quattrini kit to 252cc. The gearbox is a Lusso 125 item with a 24/64 set-up
with DRT Spitfire gears and a 125 fourth gear. A BGM super-strong clutch with CR plates takes care of power delivery and a Mikuni TMX35 35mm carb delivers fuel. The exhaust is a Pipe Design M260HS Bullet exhaust from Germany, which has been custom made to suit the wide rear tyre and Stuart has personally up-swept the end-can to match the lines of the scooter.
Turning to the bodywork, he said: “The first thing I had to do was to weld in a new floor where the old one had rusted. Then to give the scooter a unique street-racer look, I removed 100mm from the rear of the frame with my angle-grinder, which I tapered forward towards the scalloped part of the frame. Then to accommodate the removal of this section of the frame, and to maintain the lines of the scooter, the side panels had to be pivoted slightly. Finally, to disguise the bodywork change I then re-created the rear frame end pressings using a pair of specially fabricated mole grips.”
Modifications
The forks are Vespa Corsa forks, which had to be modified along with the headset tube to allow for the Sprint
headset. The neat handlebar front brake hydraulic fitting/mechanism was fabricated by Stuart and the GS front mudguard was altered to accommodate the forks and the front dampers. The front disc is a full-floating item with an AF Racing 15mm lowered radial mount brake housing, which has a radial four-pot caliper; and the front PLC Corse hub is easy on the eye. With the extra power running at somewhere between 37-42bhp, the in-house fabricated mid-frame strengthener combats any frame flex which could develop from the original 1960 frame that was originally designed for 4.5bhp and eight-inch wheels! Underneath the scooter, the MRP stand floor strengthener relieves any risk of the stand making any contact with the exhaust and again adds strength to the frame.
Effects
Stuart completed the paintwork himself in his friend Jasper’s paint booth. “Everything was initially painted in grey etching-primer, then I painted it silver followed by clear lacquer. To develop the distressed effect, I used an airbrush with black paint sanded back to highlight certain areas of the bodywork; such as the braised areas on the legshields where the holes for a front carrier had been. In other places I added a thin layer of bronze paint, which subtly brings out the effect further and matches the heat weld marks on the exhaust pipe.”
Stuart’s original objective was to produce a scooter which would have a few upgrades from his red rub-through 152L2, but when you examine this scooter closely you’ll see that Stuart is a man with an eye for detail and perfection, and he’s probably done a little bit more than he originally set out to do.