Sloppy gearchange lets me down, time and time again

OK so the gear change on my Lambretta GP has had a harder time than most for the last 5-6 years for several reasons:

1. It has a hoofing great Grimeca master cylinder for the hydraulic clutch.
2. When in 4th gear and I give it the beans, it often jumps out of gear when the power band kicks in - very useful (I'm pretty sure this is related to the spring in the gear selector sliding dog, sure it was a Taffspeed one?)

The main issue with the gear change has been the pin that holds the gear wheel onto the clutch rod likes to drop out, leaving you unable to select any other gear than the one your currently in.

Very annoying, but a straight forward fix that I have performed on many occasions, most recently on a ride down to Goodwood for one of their breakfast clubs. I like the A286 but not when this problem leaves me wasting time to whip off the headset, try and locate the ping or bolt or bodge something together to get going, there and back!

I am inherently lazy but enough was enough so I sourced a new cast aluminium GP gear wheel which came with a throttle wheel (toss that in a box somewhere and get the excellent SLJ brass throttle). I also paid a visit to the magnificent emporium that is Margnor in Burpham, near Guildford. They have an enormous range of fantastic nuts and bolts so I spent much less than an fiver on several high-tensile M6 x 30 bolts (too long) with nylocs to secure the gear wheel to a new rod (4mm, not 5mm). TIP: Scooter Restorations have NOS innocenti shaft end bushes in black nylon, recommended. Picture shows the original plastic gearwheel, new aluminium version and associated nuts n'bolts.


As usual with anything Lambretta, fitting and setting everything up took a lot longer than anticipated. For starters although everything fitted when out of the scooter, in-situ absolutely nothing lined up and I couldn't get the bolt through, despite how many times I hit it! The problem seemed to be the various bushes involved which weren't providing enough space. I'll add that although I had a custom gear change handlebar mount for the clutch master cylinder, this only made the whole task slightly more painful.

Next step involved cutting 2mm off the handle bar end bushes with a small hacksaw, FFS! This made everything line up and I also fitted a couple of shims so the gear wheel wasn't rubbing against headset casing.

Then had the simple job of removing the clutch master cylinder, as I'd had to take off the hydraulic hose to get the gear change out to goof about with. Then found one of the master cylinder screws was stuck so used an impact driver to free this and replace. Then bleed the hydraulic clutch and adjust gear cables back and forth for 30 minutes so the stupid, fucking clutch master cylinder didn't hit the top of the leg shield and stop me turning left when in 4th fucking gear!

Anyway it's a nice cheap conversion that provides a solid gear change experience and a bit of piece of mind that there's one less thing that could possibly go wrong.

Bit of a faff - 4/10 Lloydy rating. Took 3 fucking hours FFS!

Unfortunately she stills jumps out of 4th when you really need the power, fucking thing!

MOT to sort this week, should be a doddle - she's running sweet.