So the Lambretta ticked all of the boxes as far as looks and patina. Of course I didn’t need to test ride it before parting with my hard earned cash. It would ride beautifully….right?

The scooter was dropped off at my house late one Saturday morning August 2025. Shortly afterwards I started to familiarise myself with the mechanics. I know that it had had very little use on the road as the previous owner had just done a couple of local classic vehicle events on it, and the friend he brought it from had it as a prop in his barbers shop. This didn’t inspire me with confidence that it would be fit for anything other than a trip round the block, and the preliminary overview of the cables and controls pretty much proved the point.

Anyways, I plucked up the courage to have a spin out on it, and I must confess, it was a death trap. The gear, clutch, brakes, suspension and steering were an absolute nightmare. On the other hand the engine pulled like a train, so there was one positive!

I had always maintained my motorbikes and scooters myself and this wasn’t the first time I had been in this situation before. I knew this was going to take a little TLC to get on top of, and I was hoping that replacing a few cables, and a little general maintenance, was going to be enough to delay having to sink a wad load of cash into this project early doors. However, the more I investigated, the more I realised that this was unrealistic.

Not knowing a great deal about Lambretta’s, I started to embark on a steep learning curve, peeling away parts to remove the cables, in anticipation of running in a new set as a first port of call. I should have realised at that point, that over a period of the next six months, the scooter was going to gradually stripped of components, as the full realisation of just how little maintenance the scooter has had in its lifetime became apparent.

I loved the look of the scooter and the amount of history that was showing in its paintwork. this particular one was made in 1966 so there was a lot going on, and can only assume that the paintwork was original.

My intention was to preserve as much of this as possible, with upgrades to the mechanics and the installation of a stainless performance exhaust that was a part of the purchase, along with a front disk brake in time for safety reasons.

The leg shield below was an example example of how i tried to sympathetically renovate the paintwork. After removing the footboard runners, there were areas of exposed metal and corrosion. I decided to mask around the the runners and paint with Rustolium, which is similar to Hammerite and eats into any existing rust, and does not need a primer on bare metal. I had this particular pigment of paint made up for my campervan, and it was a very close match for some of the touch ups I had to do on this project. Not exact, but good enough.

I made a point of only masking out where the runners would hide the metalwork, leaving areas outside of that to retain the rust and patina.

During the strip down I noticed the word MADSPEED stamped onto the engine casing. I did a little research and found that this was a tuning company that had been tuning Lambretta’s for years. I contacted the tuner and he confirmed he had tuned the engine with a unique stamp or ‘113’ at the top of the engine mount. Makes sense. This turned out to be a welcome surprise, and obviously the reason the scooter seemed to pull so strongly during the test ride.

Photos in the gallery below were taken over a period of time from September 2025 to August 2026 and included the following:

• New inner and outer cables throughout
• New hydraulic disk brake
• New fork springs, links and bushes
• Frame outrigger repairs due to crack on weld
• New seat cover
• New headset bearings
• Refurbishment of original split rimms
• New Mitchelin S1 tyres
• Spare wheel holder
• New rear shock
• Stainless gear linkage kit

Photos below show the Lambretta in a state of completion I am happy with. I purchased a custom bracket to mount a GPS speedometer which is secured to the right handlebars.

With all of this done, I still struggled to get first gear. I was under the illusion it was cable adjustments, as this was all it could be after I replaced so many of the parts responsible for smooth gear selection. For a month or so I lived with this and got a few miles under my belt. I started to get a bit of a social life, getting out with the local scooterists (Merlin Scooter Club).

However, the first gear issue was to rear its head in the not too distant future…..