In 2012, I bought a 1959 Vespa to restore as a tribute to my dad who had recently passed away. There were lots of fits and starts but I'm happy to say that it's finally done!
Here's what it looked like when I first got her...
and here's what she looks like now.
What a junk show 2020 has turned out to be.E@RTC was canceled for the season, everyone is in lockdown and even though I've been working from home, I've been working long hours on a giant project. Months have passed but I did get a chance for a short drive before the rainy season officially arrives. I normally don't park the car without a full tank of fuel so I headed into the valley to one of the only ethanol-free stations around. Traffic is still light, but not nearly like it was in the summer when hardly anyone was on the road.
The 2020 driving season was a bust. Hopefully 2021 will be much better.
As I suspected, Mark was able to get things sorted. The first thing was that he found debris in the carb bowls. I'm not sure what's happening here since the fuel filter has been replaced three times. Maybe the tanks need to be cleaned out. I pulled then in 2009 and David pulled them again in 2016. Both times they looked clean but somehow junk is getting to the carbs. I'll have to keep on eye on this. I know that it's not good for these cars to sit and unfortunately.the car has been sitting more than driving. The other thing was that apparently one of my Pertronix coils was defective. That's strike three for Pertronix. I will never use or recommend their products again. At this point, I am really considering switching to Bosch coils and points.
I dropped off the 308 today at Mark's shop. His setup is actually similar to David's -- he's a won man show working out of a garage at his house. The main difference is that Mark works on all kinds of vehicles. There was a semi-tractor there when I dropped off. Mark had a great reputation at the dealership and I'm confident he'll get everything sorted.
I replaced the Pertronix and the 308 is running again. However, it's still running like crap. When I got the car back after the rebuild, the engine ran well off idle but at idle, it was popping quite a bit from the exhaust. I went through the exhaust system looking for leaks and didn't find anything. I fiddled with the carbs and it seemed to help, but the popping was still there. Overall, the car runs ok, shifts great, but is still not tuned correctly.
Years ago, at a tech session, I met Mark Glenwood, the lead mechanic at the local Dealership. Mark as years of Ferrari experience and I recently learned that after a few years on the Ferrari Challenge circuit, he's started his own shop not too car from my house. I'm going to have him go through my 308 to get get things sorted once and for all.
I don't even remember the last time I went for a drive. I don't remember when it was, but I can't forget what happened. It was a nice day so I decided to drive the 308 to work. On my way home, as I was only a few miles from my garage, hear a "pop" and lose power followed by a "slow down" light coming on. I've been through this too many times and I know exactly what happened -- I lost a cylinder bank...again.
After it happened, I was so upset and frustrated that I just left the car for a while. I finally decided to do some troubleshooting and the problem ended up being a failed pickup on the Pertronix ignition system. Oddly, the new pickups were red and he previous ones were black. Not sure what that means.
I can't say that I would recommend Pertronix at this point. The first unit was DOA and the replacement fails after less than 500 miles. If this fails again, I'm going back to points.
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