He is broken... (Scott)

Just as I left a client in Chiswick i heard a bump, and then heard something scrape along the road when I leant left. I thought I hadn't put the stand up properly, or the spring had gone. Popped it on the stand again, all looked fine. Oh well, try again, leant to turn left and the heard it again, and a less than bouncy back end. Uh - oh. So find a parking space, took the cowls off, and had a poke around. The rear spring and shock assembly had come astray from the mount, the bolt through the body had sheared off. Bother. I'm about a kilometre away from the nearest scooter garage. Double bother. As you can see in the photo, the front wheel is meant to be on the ground when it's on the stand, not 6 inches in the air!

One thing for it. Push a 110kg scooter the 1 km. Eventually when I got to Harry Nash Scooters, they didn't have the bolt in stock, as they aren't PX specialists. Triple bother. Luckily there's another scooter shop just down the road. they seem to have lots of shiny new twist and go models in the window, and was expecting the worst, which is getting the RAC to move it to BMG in Sheen. With trepidation I walked into Scooter World (www.scooterworld.co.uk) on Chiswick High Road, and met the very amiable Graham (Lambretta rider). I asked whether they did PXs. His reply; 'At the moment we'll fix anything' which is just what I wanted to hear! They had the right bolt in, so I asked for a service at the same time. I walked away wondering how much it would all come to. This was at 1pm and at 5pm I got a call back all done. No price yet. So a worrying weekend, and on Monday I was there at 9am to collect...

..... and a clean bill of health, and £150 all in for the suspension mount bolt, a service, new clutch cable, front brake handle rebuild and a carb clean. I was mighty relieved! I mentioned the impending journey, and asked if there was anything else I should be watching for. Graham's reply 'we love finding things wrong with scooters, and unfortunately there wasn't anything'.

[Deep sigh of relief]

The little PX now runs much better than before and I am super pleased with my purchase. Yay!

P.S. A few days later, I noticed that they had snuck a little ScooterWorld sticker on the front above the Piaggio logo. I was quite impressed with their cheekiness!