I recently saw a pic of a early 60s Vespa being raced against 250cc machines on the old MT Druitt circuit in Australia. The sides of the leg shields appeared to be cut away......
Were they Competitive? The caption on the pic was that a 180cc Vespa won the Junior class.....
Their engines were disc valve were they not? Possibly they could have been tuned to go hard. Couldn't they?
Racing Vespas
Started by
Quixotic
, Feb 16 2014 03:07
2 replies to this topic
Advertisement
#2
HaydenFan
-
- 2,319 posts
- Joined: February 09
Member
Posted 16 February 2014 - 04:10
More than just Vespa's, but looks like at least in the UK, scooter racing had some support.
#3
Levin68
-
- 58 posts
- Joined: January 05
Member
Posted 22 February 2014 - 10:43
I don't know about racing Vespas, but a couple of factory Lambrettas got here about 1950 and wrought havoc in the 125 class once the Hinton brothers had converted them to alcohol fuel and a ferocious 24:1 compression; the Two Wheels story is reprinted in this forum thread: http://www.forums.il....php?f=4&t=1042
Vespa engines are conventional piston-port two strokes. They can take a fair bit of tuning but the handling is still pretty evil! The Lambretta would have appealled because the engine is centred in a tube steel frame, making it much more predictable in corners.
