Vespa PX Steering column, stripping and painting

Today I stripped as much paint off the steering column as I could and started painting it.

Started off with the grinding the gates smooth

After a ton of grinding with a nylon disk and wire wheel, this is the end result

Unfortunately, there are some spots I just can't get to. I think my best strategy here would be to get some rust treatment chemicals and brush them into spots like this, and then just paint over it.

Here we can see how this part was molded over the steering column metal pipe. Cleaned up pretty nicely.

My end goal is the clean off the rust, and keep the rust from reappearing. I figure I'm going to have to paint the top and bottom of the steering column separately no matter what, so now that I've got the paint stripped, I'll go right into painting the top half of the column. I'm going to wait on the bottom half, because I would like to remove the steering arm bearings, and that is going to take some work yet.

First things first, degreaser to clean the part of the steering column I want to paint.

The mask off the top and the bottom where the factory had not painted the shaft.

As I was looking at these pictures with my girlfriend, I realize why my back hurts after working all day. I need to buy or make a taller workbench because no matter what I do I'm bending over. It's not like I'm tall or anything.

Primed

and painted. This is just plain "wheel silver" out of a spray can.

Vespa PX Steering column

I'm still working on painting the wheels, but that is winding since I started painting the top coat of silver today. I thought next I'd take a look at the steering column.

I would say this looks in pretty good shape.

I don't know how they are made, but it looks like the metal is poured? Leaving mold lines and a metal gate?

So I know this may be unnecessary, but I'm going to clean it up for a couple of reasons. One, I'll need to smooth everything out in order to get the old paint off. Two, bit of a perfectionist thing, but I'd like everything to be as clean and smooth as possible.

Here we can see a bit of rust on the lower part of the column by the wheel. It'll be nice to get rid of this rust and repaint everything. That means I'll have a bit of an adventure getting the suspension arm bearing and bolt out (half visible on the left side). I think I'll have to get a gas burner to heat the thing up before pounding out the old bearing.

As can be seen here, SIP sells the complete suspension arm bearing kit, and it doesn't cost too much, so I'm not going to be concerned about damaging the bearings in removal. Considering my philosophy, I'll try to recover one of the bearings and see if I can get a pair of SKFs.

Priming wheels

So my Vespa didn't have a spare tire. I picked up a used wheel, which I think is from a 95 PK. Something interesting, there is much less rust on the 1995 wheel than my 2007 wheels. Plus, it was really difficult to grind off the primer, so I'm going to say if you've got 20 year old+ wheels, you may be in good shape.

2007 wheel, wow, that's a lot of pitting

Now that all the rust is cleaned up, time to paint

And there you go, 3 wheels primed with Dinitrol 443 95% Zinc primer. That should take care of my rust protection. I'm going on vacation to Barcelona for a week, so that should let the primer cure. When I get back I'll look at whether I'm going to seal them with acrylic primer before topcoat or not.

Vespa Wheels

There are lots of reasons to love a Vespa...but the wheels aren't one of them.

My PX 125 is only 7 years old, and this is what the wheels look like

To make matters worse, the studs are welded in. This is basically a safety feature so that if a nut falls off, there is no loose bolt to come out. Problem is, these welded studs are soft like Silly Putty after a few years. So what to do? Well you can cut the stud off with an angle grinder and drill out the hole. Then what? It is difficult to source the weld studs, as they are no longer available from Piaggio. You could weld in a bolt. You could just use a loose bolt. Either solution isn't particularly aesthetically pleasing if you are replacing one broken stud.

* for those who don't get my Silly Putty reference

The reality is, from a time and money perspective, you are better off just buying a replacement wheel if a stud breaks, or living with the rust/do a spot repair when you inevitably find the wheels are super rusty. Original Factory Piaggio Wheels are only €29.00. Or you could spend some more and get 2.5" x 10" wheels and use wider tires. Or you could spend some more still and get one piece wheels which take tubeless tires.

Here's my issue with buying replacement factory wheels: the paint. I've seen enough wheels at the Vespa Cafe to know that in a few years they will be junk again. My solution? Grind off the factory paint and rust. Then I'll spray them with zinc primer and wheel paint.

Here you can see the drilled out weld stud. I'm not going to worry about tossing a bolt in there, as this will become the spare. Notice the deep pitting from rust.

Cleaning up rust

Firstly, got all the paint and rust off the exhaust

And started working on the wheels. Wow there is a lot of rust and pitting.

This is all simply being done with an angle grinder with various wire brush attachments. The plan is to paint the exhaust with temperature resistant paint. The wheels will get a home galvanizing with Dinitrol 443 95% Zinc Primer. Zinc spray is nasty stuff, so I'll make sure to wear the appropriate respiratory protection. Then they'll get a normal acrylic primer and wheel aluminum spray paint. The key is really cleaning all the rust out of the pitted metal.