Classic Vespa falls foul of EU emissions rules
The classic Vespa scooter which came to symbolise Mod rebellion in Britain has been scrapped after falling foul of European Union emissions rules.
The last Vespa PX, with its distinctive waspish engine, came off the production line this weekend.
Italian company Piaggio said that tightening emission legislation sounded the death-knell on the 30-year-old, manually-geared bike - and that all models would now be automatic.
More here: tinyurl.com/5w637p (links to The Telegraph)
And after having a few of them pass me in Southsea on Sunday, I can quite understand why - noisy, stinky, horrible things.
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Always preferred Lambrettas myself. Never fancied the asymmetric front suspension of the Vespa. I owned for a short time a Zundapp Bella, 200 or 250cc, electric starter, four speeds and quite a turn of speed. Very dodgy gearchange mechanism (pedal) in mine though, made embarrassing noises sometimes, not good. Got rid.
As for people not liking a bit of 2-stroke smoke in the traffic mix, all I can say is Tchah! Or rather, Atishoo!
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Thats right, two strokes were referred to as 'stink wheels' for obvious reasons. I ride an MZ250 two stroke and love it, the cacophony of noise and two stroke fumes when started makes me smile every time. From another age? - yes, outmoded? - yes, still good fun? - oh yes!
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for a short time a Zundapp Bella 200 or 250cc electric starter four speeds and quite a turn of speed. Very dodgy gearchange mechanism (pedal) in mine though
Blimey Lud I had one of these very smooth I seem to remember, It was quite old when I Had it too
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>>Never fancied the asymmetric front suspension of the Vespa.
Why not?
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Nothing wrong with a two-stroke, even better if it's burning 'R', and if the engine's just been 'Gunked'.
Ah, fond memories!
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Didn't trust it not to twist in some way under extreme stress. I liked its FU quality, but I take extreme-limit handling seriously and it seemed wrong to me. Of course aall scooters are lethal by definition to people without helmets in tattered jeans or garish velvet suits.... It's a wonder any of us are still here I tell you Neddy...
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Didn't trust it not to twist in some way under extreme stress.
But stub axles on cars don't worry you in the same way?
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Stop it NC.
A car has two stub axles distorting in opposite directions.
I don't doubt actually that the Vespa arrangement was destruction tested by all sorts of mad Italians. I just took against it intuitively. Even I have a simple peasant or mechanic (in the Shakespearean sense) side.
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>>A car has two stub axles distorting in opposite directions.
Yes, but each stub axle has to carry an offset load, just like the stub axle on the Vespa. That the pair on a car are balanced does not help, or reduce the twisting on the stub axle at all.
Incidentally, I took against the idea on a motorbike when I first saw it. It was only much later, when I gave it some serious thought that I realsied how wrong I had been.
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Yes but each stub axle has to carry an offset load just like the stub axle on the Vespa.
The intuitive assumption is that the stub axle or the suspension assembly above it would twist or flex under heavy braking. If it did so on a Vespa, the vehicle's direction would be compromised and perhaps a steering correction would have to be made, as with a car one of whose front brakes doesn't work.
With a car, the two front stub axles will twist in opposite directions under heavy braking, cancelling each other out and not compromising the car's directional stability.
Honestly NC, I know you know all this. I suspect you of suspecting me (and others) of not knowing it.
And I am still intuitively suspicious of Vespa front suspension. In all such matters, or nearly all (the Panhard rod being one exception), symmetry of function under extreme stress is the essential requirement.
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It's all in the geometry Lud.
A brake force is applied at ground level, the only requirement is that the steering axis intersection with the ground is somewhere near the tyre's contact patch - preferably a little way ahead. Once this requirement is met, it doesn't really matter where the metalwork is.
By the time you have enough deformation in the stub axle and support to need a steering correction, the niceties of making a steering correction are the last of your worries!
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I see you can now buy a scooter with an 850cc engine;must go quite well.A little bigger than the 50cc. 2-stroke of the Vespa.
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By the time you have enough deformation to need a steering correction the niceties of making a steering correction are the last of your worries!
That's a roundabout engineer's cop-out way of saying what I was suggesting: if the thing corkscrews under heavy braking you are up that creek without that paddle before you can do anything about it. Clearly we agree really NC.
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>>engineer's cop-out way
Come on Lud!, say what you really think!
The point I was making was one step further along.
If you need to design something for repeated loadings, like a suspension part which also reacts braking force, you need to design against fatigue and probably also corrosion. To design against fatigue, effectively you reduce the allowable stress. Say, if a part fails at 300 MPa under a one off application of load, you might, after testing and analysis, work to a fatigue stress of, say, 30 MPa.
So, if under braking the part bends, the engineering calcs and development tests were at least a factor of 10 out!! Serious product liability territory!
So, the only way such a part should ever fail catastrophically is if something else externally was crushing it! Large truck, concrete wall, ...
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Can I throw my handbag into this?
Would there be any weight advantage in a single blade, bearing in mind the larger design required to produce a stable unit may weigh more than a two blade design?
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>>Would there be any weight advantage in a single blade
There can be. It's a question of using the material more efficiently. The use of hollow sections can give very good stiffness to weight ratios, and as long as the area of maximum stress caused by the extra twisting loads of a single arm don't coincide with other maximum stress areas in the part, you can take the benefit.
In a twin arm design, quite a lot of the material is not highly stressed at all.
Lud is overplaying the amount of deflection you get in these parts.
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I am not thinking catastrophic failure. I am thinking asymmetric behaviour under heavy braking, perhaps exacerbated by wear or fatigue in parts, sufficient to make the difference between crashing and not crashing or crashing into the yielding object rather than the spiky one or the hedge rather than the pedestrian.
Steady state has absolutely nothing to do with it.
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Lud, if it bends far enough to need you to correct it, you've had it!
For metal parts in a one off loading, you might allow 0.2% strain. Make reductions for fatigue and corrosion, and you are in the 0.02% area.
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noisy, stinky, horrible things.
Didn't seem that way in 1967 riding down the A127 in my Parka , my Vespa beautifully adorned with multiple lights (non working) and tiger tails
Edited by CGNorwich on 27/08/2008 at 16:34
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I cannot understand all this technical talk about the front suspension! I had in 1967 a Vespa 125cc, built in 1958, and it was transport for me for nearly 2 years. It cost £27 and running costs were next to nothing. The front suspension set up meant that you could have the front wheel off in seconds. It was far easier to work on than a Lambretta, although not so fast in a straight line. Handling and the stresses thereof were not of much concern when you were lucky to get 60MPH out of it downhill! All my scooter friends survived unlike some who moved onto big motorbikes with better handling and much higher speeds.
Being on a relatively low speed, cheap to run, two wheeled machine taught us all a great deal about survival on the roads, perhaps this is something missing today, when everyone wants to jump straight into a car at 17.
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Straight from the horse's mouth then. I never even rode a Vespa. All my suspicions of it were purely theoretical. And of course the easy removal of the front wheel hadn't even occurred to me.
Thanks paulvm for a bit of commonsense!
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No-one's even mentioned the engine being quite a long way from the centre line!
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Individual front car wheels don't self-caster - try driving a car with the track rod disconnected and the wheels splay all over the place. I assume there is a designed reason for this, and as Lud says the effects will cancel out.
But a single caster has to roll straight for obvious reasons, and as NC points out, that can be achieved simple in the metalwork.
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No-one's even mentioned the engine being quite a long way from the centre line!
Or the weight of all those spotlights at the front, and the long dangly bits of fur on the end of the handlebars!
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I remember that as everyone added more and more spotlights that I decided in 1968 to go for the minimilist approach. Just 2 spotlights (from scrapyard), and a back carrier for the spare wheel with my umbrella in a vertical position - very suave. There were no ignition keys or even steering locks on early models (says a great deal about how times have changed), you just switched on the fuel tap, and kick started. Handling was very good as the engine was low down, and despite being on one side was not a problem for balance. Remember mine was only 125cc, about the size of a largish lawn mower engine! The majority of the weight was the rider, so that became the major factor for performance. Simple machines for us simple folk back in simple days!
PS You can purchase all types of retro scooters from the Far East, but they are a bit pricier than my old Vespa for £27!
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At last emission legeslation has been introduced to reduce the number of two smokes being registered on our roads. Considering how long ago legeslation was brought in for cars I don't know why this has taken so long. I see from the article that there unfortunately could still be some 50cc bike still getting through so its not saved us from choking to death quite yet and there will still be plenty still around for years to come untill they all expire. Small reliable 4 strokes have been around for years so there has been no excuse.
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I think 2 cycle engines are gradually being completely phased out by the industry as a whole. Outboard motors used to be universally two cycle (even big 3.0 V6 jobs) for lightness but now nearly all four stroke. It is a shame as two strokes ofer light weight and better acceleration: How much more does a 125 CC 4 stoke weigh over a 2? I find this beaurocrat business deeply unsettling. How muc longer is it before any engine bigger than 2 litre is banned coz of "the environment man". When they ban the V8 life will not be worth living but I digress.
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I had a 1986 PX 125 in the late 80's, and loved it. Yes, it was slow and cumbersome and a bit smelly, but that was all part of the charm. I reckoned I was a bit of a latterday mod, but wasn't at all really. I traded it for a car when I went to Uni in 1989 (Exeter is a long way from Bromley & the Vespa doesn't have a great deal of luggage space).
I actually now commute on a modern Vespa ET4 125, and find that I am quicker than the few PXs I come across, even though a 4 stroke. One part of this may be because the CVT autobox (or whatever it is under there) goes straight to peak power and stays there as you accelerate, where the PX being a manual has to go through the rev range in all gears.
All in all, I will be sad to see the PX go, but scooters have moved on- cleaner, more practical and quicker. Sadly, also now much of the time ridden by chavs in hoodies with stupidly loud exhausts.
Cheers,
Alex.
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