We’re now a little over three months since I revived my 2005 Genuine Stella. This scooter, which is a license-built clone of a Vespa PX, sat for five years, then I bought it in 2019 before letting it sit for another six years. Riding my little scooter has been a blast, except for the hilarious ways it has broken down on me. Yesterday, the turn signals stopped working, and you’ll never guess the reason why.
Little Marmalade’s odometer recently clicked over 1,000 miles since the scooter’s revival. I’ve been using the orange bugger as my primary form of transportation and I tell you what, it’s a total riot. Yes, its realistic top speed is just 60 mph or so, or less in a stiff breeze. Yes, you have to ride it fully wide open at all times to get anywhere with gusto. Yes, its minuscule tires and little suspension travel make the scooter a hard ride. Yet, there are few vehicles as capable of generating so many smiles per horsepower as my scooter.
It seems like everyone loves Marmalade. Kids love its bright color and friendly look. Older adults love seeing a vintage design. Other motorcyclists cheer you on as you ride fully tucked, trying to exceed 60 mph. General gearheads melt at the sound of its smoky two-stroke engine. If anything, the Stella is sort of the anti-Harley-Davidson. Where a Harley gives off the image of a big, bad, and loud biker, the Stella is easy-going and fun.
Thus, I keep gravitating to my scoot. I have much faster motorcycles in my fleet. My 2005 Buell Lightning XB9SX City X runs circles around the Stella. Heck, my 2024 CFMoto Papio SS makes more power with a smaller engine. My 1976 Suzuki RE-5 is so loud it makes a Harley seem quiet. None of my other bikes has anywhere near the same character.
I’ve also not owned a motorcycle that has found such entertaining ways to fall apart on me. My Stella is a pile of crap, and that’s actually a good thing, I think?
A Scooting Star
In case you missed my previous entries on this cute ride, I’ll bring you up to speed.
Marmalade is a 2005 Genuine Stella. The scooter is a Vespa PX built under license in India by Lohia Machinery Limited (LML). Out there, this Vespa is called the LML Star, and it’s sort of characterized by how much it’s similar to a Vespa, but not quite the same. LML built the Star to different standards than Piaggio built the Vespa PX, which means that there are really stupid problems that are unique to the distinctive cheapness of an LML Star.
Chicago-based Genuine Scooter Company got into the business of making scooters by taking the LML Star, slapping its own branding on it, and renaming it Stella, which translates from Italian into English as Star. Since the Stella is just a renamed Star, it has the same silly problems as a Star, including a wiring loom that’s too short, rubber that converts into dust, and crank bearings not long for this world.
I bought my Stella in 2019 from a nice lady who lived near the now-former Mitsubishi plant that serves as the home of Rivian today. She told me that the scooter hadn’t run in five years and had an undiagnosed oil leak. But there was a time when she loved the scooter so much that she named it Marmalade. I loved that name, so I kept it. I gave her a whole five Benjamins for the scooter, brought it home, and then just never got around to fixing it.
I changed that in March, and all it took was bypassing bad main fuse wiring, draining out the old fuel, installing a new carburetor, and installing a new battery. That’s it. I got it running in only two hours!
I have done some research since getting the scooter started, and through it, I learned more about its history. The first owner bought the scooter new in 2005 from Genuine Scooters in Chicago. They then rode the scooter 3,500 miles. The lady I bought the scooter from purchased the scooter in 2013, then rode it only 200 miles before parking it. Based on her timeline, the last time she rode it had to have been in 2014, which tracks.
So, I’ve ridden this scooter longer and harder than anyone has in over a decade. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised by the amusing ways it has broken.
It Broke In Funny Ways
The first failures I’ve noted were a non-functional electric starter, a blown parking light, and a dead horn. All of these led me to believe that the scooter wasn’t working due to an electrical issue, which is part of the reason why I let the scoot sit for six years. As it turns out, the starter works, but its relay is shot. The horn sounds, but its button is broken, and the parking light just needs a new bulb. I almost never use my horn, and the mechanical kick starter is so fun to use, so I just never repaired those issues.
The biggest issue since getting it back on the road was the scooter puking out the contents of its two-stroke oil container. I feared that the container had cracked, which is a known issue with these scooters. Thankfully, I was wrong! What happened was that the oil tank’s sight glass cracked and then loosened itself. I was able to replace the sight glass (which is made out of a type of plastic) without even removing the tank. I also replaced the gasket around the sight glass while I was futzing around in there.
As for the undiagnosed oil leak that the scooter had when I picked it up in 2019? I figured that out to be a deteriorated gasket between the carburetor tub and the scooter’s autolube system. That was a super easy fix. I put maybe $100 total in reviving the scooter, plus another $140 on tires that I need to install. That’s just $740! I also added some Grip Puppies to the bars to filter out some of the vibrations that reach my hands.
A few more things have broken since our last update, and one of them is simply hilarious.
Parts May Fall Off
The next thing to break on the scooter was the fuel gauge. It was sort of inconsistent in the time after the revival, so I’m not at all surprised that it didn’t last all that long. Besides, I know that 100 miles is a pretty safe range on a tank. I’m currently getting about 77 mpg with the scoot, and that’s with riding wide open throttle everywhere. Fixing the fuel gauge should be pretty easy, so I’ll get around to that, maybe.
Then the high-beam switch started being intermittent. The wiring that goes into the twist grip shifter on a Stella is a known failure point, so I’m not surprised about that, either.
What I didn’t expect was what happened to my turn signals. I rode the Stella out to my parents’ house yesterday, and when I left, I did a pre-trip inspection as I always do. This time, I couldn’t get the turn signals to work. I thought the Stella’s shoddy wiring had struck again, and just hopped on and rode away, using hand signals for turn indication.
Making it home was important because I was racing a heavy thunderstorm. But I couldn’t, I had to figure out why the turn signals were broken. I pulled into a parking lot and started tearing down the scooter, starting with the rat’s nest of wiring under the left side cover. Everything looked normal until I noticed there was a single connector that didn’t go into anything.
I checked my wiring diagram and almost started laughing so hard that I cried. The connector went to the turn signal relay. That relay left the chat. Now, I highly doubt there are Stella turn signal thieves out there, so the only logical explanation is that the scooter’s paint-shaker-like vibrations somehow convinced the relay to delete itself.
You can see the relay in one of the previous photos I took:
Come to think of it, I do recall hearing a thump resounding from within the scooter during the ride out to my parents’ place. I figured a rock got kicked into the body. That was probably the sound of the turn signal relay punching the clock one last time.
In fairness to the scooter, I stuffed the relay into the spaghetti mess of wiring, hoping that was going to be enough to secure it. Still, had you told me a story like this, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.
Still Fun!
I’m going to convert the lighting to LED, anyway, so this just helps me expedite the process. I’ll get some nice LEDs, a new relay, and keep scooting. Only this time, I might zip tie the relay into place.
This might be officially the most nonsensical failure I’ve ever experienced in a vehicle that isn’t a Volkswagen, and it’s totally sending me. It’s just too darn funny. But I suppose that also only adds to Marmalade’s character. This scooter can’t even break without doing so in a silly way.
It also means that, for the past month, I’m zero for two on losing small parts on the side of a road. Let’s hope I don’t keep the record going.
It’s not a Vespa – it’s an Indian manufactured copy of a Vespa PX. It’s like a Vespa, only worse in every conceivable way.
“I can get 77 miles to the gallon on this hog!”
TLDR: relays can mess up even a dead simple motorcycle.
I wanted a Stella around 2006. When I was finally in the market, they had switched to the new 4 stroke engine and the build quality stories had started hitting the internet. I ended up buying a $500 dr200 for their stone cold reliability from a college professor that was pioneering the neighborhood I was living in. It was a former riding school bike that was then a theft recovery and then the bike laid on top of the college professor in the Mexican jungle for two days and when he got it home and through recovery for two broken legs and a punctured lung he decided his riding days were over.
Easy fix to get it running just a little wiring, bypass the key, figure out how to get in to the dented tank. A little more wiring and it was ready to ride. And then get a new head because the intake valve had a burnt seat. Of course the used head I bought had a racing cam in it so it wouldn’t reliably idle below 2000-2500 rpm on the stock cv carb. So I either set the idle at 2k or set it at 1475 and punched the starter when it shut off at lights. Which was often.
I decided to ride from Virginia to lollapaloosa in Chicago in 2012. I was a day and a half into that ride. Groggy from stealth camping too close to an active West Virginia rail trestle. Somewhere in Ohio farm country. Avoiding any road with a speed limit over 45 and come to one of those random crossroads stop signs that litter middle americas backroads. Nothing but grain for 14 miles in every direction.
The starter relay has packed in. No start on the button.
US dr200s unlike row dr200s have a silly little plug over the kickstart hole and lack the drive gear even if you could insert a kickstarter. The case still has the word kickstarter mockingly cast into the side. Because of the cam, and my general lack of physical fitness, I can’t get enough speed to push or jumpstart the bike over 2k rpm. So I’m fiddling with the idle and testing the best way to short the starter terminal with a screwdriver when I hear a pack of Harley’s ride up. It’s a fully patched mc. They kind of surround me and a guy asks if he can help. I’m like “no I’m fine”. Guys like “club rules we can’t leave a broken down bike on the road. “Back and forth and I decide to just short the starter and get back to riding. Guys like “we ll escort you “ the pack surround s my bike and as soon as I see a mechanics I break out of the pack and ride in. The MC were cool they were “like remember the rule brother” and road off.
The mechanics didn’t have a starter relay that would work on the bike but did have a floorboard starter button from an old ford truck. They sold me 3’ of 10 gauge wire and a heavy duty glove. I wired the button directly to the starter stuffed it into the finger of the glove and ziptied the wrist to waterproof the assembly then ziptied it to my handlebars.
Made it to Chicago the next morning in time to catch the end of my friends sisters boyfriends record store/ urban farm pre lollapaloosa party.
I still have that starter button and a length of wire in my motorcycle trip bag. Lifesaver. Used it on my Concours once when the aftermarket headlight relay packed in one night. Still have the dr200 although I modded it with a full tour fairing and fuel injection after I got back.
My stepfather(former anyway) moved our family across town in my 8th grade year. We went from a semi-rural home with 2-3 acres of lightly wooded land and access to a lot of dirt roads to a suburban neighborhood. As part of the move he traded our Honda ATC70 to his brother-in-law for an orange Vespa scooter. I was upset at first but that little 2-stroke was a great way to get around the inter-connected subdivisions of our new home, and one of the few decisions he made with which I agreed.
It’s hilarious that a scooter which is a blatant copy of a vintage model is named “Genuine Stella.” Just the thing to motor over to the grocery and pick up some Jumbo Shrimp!
“built under license” isn’t exactly a “blatant copy” now, is it?