Underblog Rides Again

Anticipation

New old wheels are on their way to their new old homes all over the country. I think it has been a year now since my set began their voyage. Maybe more. In the scheme of things, it is not such a long wait.

I had wanted a Maicoletta since I first read the British road tests reproduced in "Jet Set" and "Scooter and Scooterist" in the 1980's. Then I laid on a pair acquired by Wyatt, who owned Quantity Postcards on Grant Ave. Wyatt is an aesthete: he knew what made vintage scooters attractive, but he had no idea what made them good or not. He got the pair (a red 275, and a silver 250) in a major haul from Pennsylvania, I think. Other scooters in the deal included a pair of Heinkels, a Silver Pigeon, a Fuji Rabbit, and a Salsbury.

The Salsbury and the red Maicoletta were placed on display in the postcard shop. At the time, I had the only running Heinkel Tourist in San Francisco, and so Wyatt and I sat down one evening and talked about what it woud take to get and keep a Heinkel running for him. He took me to the garage downstairs and showed me the Heinkels he had for sale; I had recently purchased Schleicher Motors stash of NOS Heinkel parts, and could complete the two non-running Heinkels that Wyatt had. It was then that I offered to buy either of the Maicolettas from Wyatt. He had no interest in selling, but he did promise me that he would offer it to me first if he ever decided to sell one of them.

My life was upheaved in many ways between 1989 and 1993. I had managed to relocate myself from San Francisco to Italy back to San Francisco to Healdsburg and Sebastopol, and finally up to Dunsmuir. While sitting in the empty cafe/bar one afternoon, I got the call from Wyatt. Someone had offered him $1000 for the silver Letta, but he had remembered his promise and tracked me down. I told him I would come down with the trailer and collect the Letta.

Many months later, I examined what I had purchased: I put a battery in, and attached a piece of fuel line directly from the tank to the carb, since it was missing its fuel tap. To my astonishment, the scooter started right up. The tires only held air for a day or two, but that was long enough to take it for a spin. The scooter upshifted just fine, but it downshifted only with difficulty, despite apparently well-adjusted cables. The short ride from Sacramento Avenue to Soda Creek and back was the only time I ever took the scooter out. I fussed and fussed and adjusted and adjusted to no avail. I dropped the engine out of the frame and realized that I would need special tools to get the clutch off and look at the shifting mechanism itself.

I finally got around to getting the cover off when we were installed at our house in Takoma Park. It was then that I managed to destroy the clutch basket in an effort to pull it off the crankshaft. Oops.

I eventually sourced a clutch basket from the editor of the "Maico Letter" in Scotland, but that only took the problem back to the gearbox. Plus, remnants of the old basket were not budging off the crankshaft. A month or so later, Steve listed his 1962 275 for sale with a spare 250 motor. If I purchased it, I could both repair the silver one and sell it and have the extra 25cc and a very handsomely restored scooter to boot.

Getting the money wired over seemed at the time to be a big deal, but it was not nearly as big a deal as getting the scooter picked up from Scotland. First, I made the mistake of getting a crate made rather than having the shipper make one. The custom job was enormous, and the shipper refused to use it, since shipping costs are based on volume, not weight. The crate did come in handy for the Scottish winter, when the scooter sat crated in the driveway.

Once at the shipper, the scooter found its way onto a ship rather quickly. In a few days time it will be in Halifax, and then I expect it will take a week or two to get here from there. There is still work to do this summer, plopping the spare engine into the silver Letta's frame and perhaps the bodywork will take a trip to a local body shop for a coat of paint. (The scooter has been moved a few more times than it would have liked, starting with Wyatt and ending here.) And then it is off to eBay! Know any takers?