Honda Aero 80

In 1983 Honda introduced the Aero 80 to the US market. It was a nice mid-sized scooter with a powerful two-stroke 80cc engine and room for a passenger. This Ruby Red 84 was the first scooter I refurbished for sale. I had a few cosmetic issues and had been crashed heavily, bending the forks and subframe. I sourced a replacement front-end for it and trued up the frame and it was ready to go!

I found this 83 model in good running condition, it was very clean and complete. A rare find as these are usually sun-faded and missing bits.

These machines are great fun to ride, nice power with speeds up to 45mph+. They also have very stable handling and strong brakes.

Here is another 84 model, similar to the above unit but missing some graphics. You pay extra for duct tape on the seat!I did a complete motor rebuild on this one due to a damaged cylinder.

In 1985 a new Aero 80 hit the market. It got a complete facelift and I think its the best looking one. This blue scooter looked pretty nice when I picked it up , but it had sat for years under a leaky tarp which allowed water into the engine. The bottom end was really rusty and it took a long time to get everything cleaned up. I rebuilt the engine, replacing the crank bearings and seals and over boring the cylinder to fit a new piston and rings. And of course I painted the wheels black and spooned new tires on there. I was really impressed with the results on this one, it rode like a new scooter. I added an aftermarket reed set and upjetted the carb which really made it sing!

Its always 1986 at Hyde Park Scooters!!

1964 Vespa VBB

Here is a perfect example of timeless style.

It was a real pleasure doing some work on this old girl. I replaced all the control cables as well as installing new brake shoes at both ends.

Later on she came back with a blown crank seal. I pulled the motor and replaced the crank bearings and seals. Also did a quick hone and ring job to restore full compression.

Talk about aging gracefully!

1987 Honda Elite 50

In 1987 Honda USA released the first edition of the Elite 50 , it was more aggressive than the Aero 50 and the Spree, the top of the 50cc two-stroke range!  It came in two models , the S model was derestricted and capable of 45mph in stock form , not bad for 49.5cc.

Imagine if your car achieved 1 mph per cc! A 2 liter Nissan would hit 2000MPH!!! Yeah, I know, cars are 4-wheeled, heavy , whatever... This purple and black machine began life as a restricted model, classified as a moped and barely able to reach 35MPH.

Fortunately it arrived at Hyde Park Scooters! I had all the parts I needed to upgrade this bike to full speed status. This involved replacing the exhaust and variator, as well as rejetting and tuning the carburetor.

By the time I finished painting and tuning this scoot I kind of fell in love with it! It was very quick and handled the corners with ease, overall a high-performance machine worthy of the 'Elite' moniker.

At least I got to enjoy it for a while before the right person came along to buy it...

1985 Honda Aero 50

In 1985 Honda released a newly designed Aero 50 , improving upon the 83-84 model with an aerodynamic shape, built in storage and a stronger crankshaft. This model would carry through the end of the line in 1987, a short run for such a great machine.

For some reason the 85's have been really popular at Hyde Park Scooters, I have refurbished 4 of them in the classic red and black livery.

These models have a 2-bolt reed valve setup, slightly smaller than the 4-bolt unit of 86-87. However the smaller bore equates to higher velocity at lower RPM's , in other words strong acceleration from a standstill which will always bring a smile to your face!

I like to paint the wheels and suspension black on these models because the contrast looks so good compared to the silver OEM paint.

This particular scoot had only traveled 1259 miles since new in '85!

Check out the shine on that paint...

I kind of wish I had held on to this one, truly a time capsule machine...

1974 Sprint Veloce resto

This nice 1974 Vespa Sprint arrived at Hyde Park Scooters in a pretty sad state. She was missing some important bits like wheels, lights, cylinder, electrics, etc. It had been left out in the rain with the top-end off, water had pooled around the crankshaft and the bearings were rusted solid!

Pretty decent body though , minimal rust and mostly straight sheet metal.

I see some potential here, love the mermaid 'North Shore' sticker, too...

Here we have the crankcase split, note the rust in the housing on the left side. The right has already been cleaned.

Luckily the water didn't get into the gear box, all the parts in here cleaned up nicely

Both sides clean now, new bearings pressed in. Looking good! Lets top it off with a 166cc big bore to take advantage of the 3-port case.

A Bajaj electronic ignition was added, replacing the high maintenance points system. All the cables were replaced and a new set of wheels was fitted with fresh Michelins!

Starting to look like a scooter again. Now its ready for some heat cycles and a test ride to get everything dialed in...

Aprilia SR50

Aprilia's SR50 defined the 'sports scooter' category when it was first released in Europe in 1992.  It was the first scooter with 13" wheels and front + rear disc brake. Add liquid-cooling and you have yourself a high tech, very capable machine. Of course the 2-stroke  carbureted Minarelli horizontal motor is arguably one of the best designs in the scooter world. It came to the USA in 1999, and was also available with a Morini motor which had direct fuel injection, known as Ditech.

I picked up this sweet 02 Ditech model, the bodywork was nearly flawless, but it would not run due to fuel injection issues. Unfortunately the early models (99-03) were prone to alot of finicky problems. I had never worked on a fuel injected scooter so it seemed like a good opportunity to learn a few things...

I also found this carbed Minarelli model, this one was a runner  with a Polini 70cc on it, and an Arrow expansion chamber pipe on it . Super Sweet!

However the body was a bit rough on this one, it had been crashed pretty hard and there were lots of cracks, scratches, and broken mounting points on the panels. 

Pretty cool color though, kind of a yellow-green pearl. Looks good in the pictures, eh?

Well I spent a good bit of time researching the Ditech system and diagnosing faults via the ECU, this beast was flashing like 17 out of 20 possible error codes!! So I concluded that it was a money pit because all of the components in the system are $$$ ... I am a carburetor guy anyway, I like the old school approach to internal combustion. If it has a computer, I am really not interested. I decided to just swap the 02 body work to the running scooter, I really like the Black and red combo and the race replica graphics. 

The stock manifold had a restriction to match the original 12mm carb. I found a nice big bore one and man she woke up! Top speed went from 50 to 65+! I added a Malossi variator and clutch, made a custom rear hugger from an Elite 80 fender and got a new Arrow pipe to replace the tired old one. I split the cases and replaced the crank bearings and seals, topping it off with a fresh hone on the cylinder and all new gaskets to fix a leak at the crankcase. This scooter is such a blast to ride, it accelerates hard enough to lift the front tire and just pulls like a freight train up to 60 mph. In a full tuck downhill I hit 68! The handling is akin to a sportbike and the brakes are phenomenal; it sounds so good I find myself blipping the throttle all the time just to hear it! My new favorite scooter :)

Spree Time

This Spree arrived at Hyde Park Scooters last summer, I never was particularly interested in these because they are just so small and slow in stock form. This one caught my eye because it is a cool color combo and it was going cheap!

I got it running right away after removing 10 year old gas and sludge from the tank and carb.  It wasn't awesome though, the piston and cylinder were pretty rough. It always amazes me how these classic Honda's will run even in a very rough condition, its like they refuse to die easy!! I had a 44mm piston and cylinder bored to match which I transplanted on the engine block, this gave the Spree a much-needed boost. After the engine work I tackled the cosmetics, she was pretty clean but had some surface rust on the chrome. I coated the front basket and rear rack with spray-on bedliner and polished the plastics. The muffler got a nice coat of black engine enamel. I had a good set of tires from another scoot so I spooned these on the freshly painted wheels. This was really a budget build for me,  nothing fancy. I sold it quite cheap, probably too cheap because it was sold 15 minutes after I posted it!!!

This is how it appeared the day I brought it home.