A troublesome failure

The owner of the building where I work lets me park in a corner of the underground garage. It's a really nice aspect of owning a Vespa. It's so nice and compact that you can tuck into the smallest spots that don't bother anyone. It's the benefit of reducing your footprint, finding value where most people aren't even looking. Check out my sweet spot.

At the end of my commute on day two, I needed to honk my horn to get the attention of the parking attendant for him to roll up the door. Unfortunately the magnificent Stebel Nautilus air horn I had installed last week only emitted what seemed to me like a faint whirring sound.

In the past things would have been dramatically different. While I might have owned a Vespa scooter, it is very unlikely it would have had an aftermartket air horn. The reason the bike has an air horn is that the internet allows a lonely scooter owner to benefit from the experience and advice of thousands of scooterists literally worldwide.

As soon as I got into the office I posted the Stebel Nautilus horn failure on the Modern Vespa forum. Within minutes expert advice poured in from all over. At lunch time I went for a ride and the horn worked well and continued to work today. Thanks to my Modern Vespa support group, I'll revisit the wiring and replace the ground line from the battery with a heavier gauge wire and tighten all the spade connectors on the relay and horn terminals.

The pictures from yesterday's trip into the city were taken just east of the Pointe Claire village. I took two because the early morning sun made the exposure difficult. I used an old Olympus camera because I don't want to take my new Olympus SLR along until the weather and my confidence with the sooot commute improve.

For lunch, I rode to the eastern lookout on the Mountain and took this picture looking towards the east. The Olympic Stadium figures prominently with the St-Lawrence river in the background.

Mount Royal is a kind of two-hump mountain with what can only be described as a wide mountain pass running northwest. Chemin de la Cote des Neiges (literally "Snow Hill Road"), one of Montreal's major north-south thoroughfares runs along the pass, linking north and south over the mountain. I crossed from the eastern summit to the soutwestern summit.

The city of Westmount (appropriately named) straddles the western portion of the mountain. Most of the city's priciest real estate nestles there. I rode to the Westmount lookout and took this shot of downtown and the view to the south.I had sought out the mountainous route to find steep pitches on which to test the Stebel horn. The manufacturer warns sternly that the horn must be mounted within 5 degrees of vertical and I thought there was a chance that the horn failure could be chalked up to the steep-ish pitch of the garage entrance.

That now appears to be an unlikely cause of the failure and the culprit is almost certainly the wiring. If so it will be good news because the Stebel Nautilus air horn should be mandatory standard equipment on all motorcycles and all but the puniest scooters.

For Canadians reading this, the Stebel air horn can be found at Canadian Tire, not under the manufacturer's name but under the scary name "Ultimate Blast Horn", product #20-2076.

Scooter modifications

I still haven't gotten my keys back from their cloning adventure in Maine, so I can't actually ride my Vespa in spite of spectacular weather this Easter weekend.

Instead of riding, I managed to free up some time to start working on the safety and convenience modifications I had planned.

Without an ignition key, there's not much I can do to test the new electrical circuits, but, what the heck, life well-lived is an adventure.

In doing these modifications I am following the paths laid out by talented scooter owners and mechanical wizards before me. The project includes a Stebel Nautilus air horn to replace the stock Vespa horn; a 12 volt power outlet in the glove compartment; and a turn signal buzzer to remind me that the blinking rider has left the blinking blinkers on, long after the turn is a distant memory.

I don't need to go into any great detail on these projects since there are extraordinarily helpful instructions and photos on the Modern Vespa forum (www.modernvespa.com), and I'd just be dully repeating what other more talented scooterists have already documented way better than I possibly could.

I’ll just add bits and pieces of my experience that contribute real value for the next person who takes on these improvements.

I won’t keep you in suspense, I’ll cut right to the chase, kind of.

First off, let me quote the unknown wise person who observed that experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.

It turns out that:

• when you are working on your Vespa in a warm, neon lit garage bay; and
• and when you are congratulating yourself that you removed the horn cover and the interior leg shield cowl and glove box without breaking anything;
• and when you are fiddling to convince yourself that your Radio Shack 12 volt power outlet will really fit behind the glove box, which is basically a useless activity since the pictures on Modern Vespa already offer conclusive evidence that the fit is just fine;

well, then and only then will the power outlet slip out of your clumsy fingers.

Now here’s the insight that I wasn’t able to get from Modern Vespa: the Vespa is fiendishly, cleverly designed so that anything you drop inside the leg shield is immediately and efficiently directed along the nice curvy shield and straight under the floor board. The opening to the leg shield is perfectly designed to capture anything you drop, and, unless you are a titan and are able to hold the scooter upside down over your head and shake it just so, the only way to retrieve whatever it is you drop is to remove the floorboard.

Since I was going to have to do that anyway in order to install new wiring from the battery, it was no big deal.

So I removed the floorboard; retrieved the power outlet; installed the new positive and negative leads from the battery as well as the new fuse holder; routed the new wires to the leg shield area; re-installed the floorboard; and congratulated myself again: nothing broken, nothing wobbly, no leftover parts!!

So, fresh from this victory, I grabbed the Stebel Nautilus air horn and started clumsily convincing myself that it would fit in the leg shield, roughly behind the horn cover, basically where it ought logically to go. Again, a totally useless activity, see above.

That’s when the little screw and bolt that Stebel thoughtfully provides with the horn worked itself loose as I fiddled, fell off, and, you guessed it, rattled off down inside the floorboard.

Tonight the plan is to once more remove the floor board; retrieve the bolt; re-install the floor board; stuff rags in the openings to save me from more experience with the floorboard; and complete the wiring.

I won’t take the chance of closing up the leg shield until I get my keys back from www.allmotorcyclekeys.com so that I can test the modifications. I know what some of you are thinking... DON'T TEST THE STEBEL HORN IN THE GARAGE WITH THE DOOR CLOSED!

Finally, just so you don’t think I’m completely inept, once I finished Dremelling the 1” hole I cut in the glove box, the power outlet snapped securely in, and looks for all the world like it was put there at the factory by the Piaggio folks in Pontadera, Italy.