Replacing that ugly Thor's Hammer horncast
What went wrong? Looking at the Vespa Select II and it looks the job yet Bajaj's own "Thor's Hammer" renditions are ugly, cumbersome and well in my opinion... pants.
Of course there are those out there of you who will be shouting sacrilege, that its the best thing going, well it would seem this page is not for you.
Luckily for those of us that like the smooth looks of the "proper" Vespa, this is the simplest job in one aspect but a pain in the backside in another.
Vivo Scooters of Edinburgh and Retrovesp both make very good aftermarket "old school" horncasts primarily designed for the PX scooters, as it happens, the legshields on your Chetak are the same as those on a PX, LML, Rally, Sprint and it is a matter of simply decided whether you want one of the above companies "kits" and I will say both are excellent or you wish like I did to slap on a EFL horncast which took about 20 minutes to do and about 15 seconds afterwards to realise my big, big problem.
(Also Anglia Fibreglass do a very unusual moulding of an EFL/Disc horncast with a fitted Lambretta GP mudguard as a all in one unit for about 70 pounds. They trade on eBay under the username Angliafibreglass and always have a large selection of fibreglass mudguards and fenders for scooters.)
Can you guess what it is yet?
Those orange blobs on the wings of the horncast of course, the indicators no less that I realised I would need and were now cut off from the main horncast.
Fitting the EFL or P range horncast was simply removing the old stock horncast and then making sure it was all central, nice and in line with the body contour, marking the holes for the screw holes at the bottom and the self tapper behind the hexagon badge. Once you have it all where you want it to be and you have made sure the holes are exactly in the right place it is simply a case of drilling a pilot hole for the self tapper and the right diameter holes for the lower screws that screw into the horncast blinds, once done, a little dab of rust protecter and a touch of paint to keep it neat and then just screw the bottom ones in a bit, get then the top self tapper, tighten the bottom ones up alternating with the tapper and it should all fit nice and flush.
You will find the wiring needs to be tucked away a bit behind the horncast but the Bajaj is like the later PX's and has a few cutouts for tucking the birds nest out of harms way, once done, wire up your horn, fit the grille if you have one and fit the top badge whether the strip type from earlier models or the hook and click hexagon on the later ones.
Now your Bajaj doesn't look like a Bajaj as much...
Now onto the indicators...
This of course is the area where you can decide what you want and you have several options available which will all look good.
PX Indicators
Yes a cheap set of PX indicators will fit lovely, right after you have measure up and made a template to dremil or cut out an aperture for each light AND you will need to lose the Bajaj toolbox or fit a PX one as the Bajaj toolbox is in the way of the indicator unit, wiring is simple, you can simply graft the new lights wiring into the old connectors which are bullet type but you will need to take the wiring into the toolbox area through the back of the steering column shroud as they are done on the PX's and drill a hole on each side (carefully not drilling into other wires, cables or fork stem), fit a grommet to stop chafing and pass the wiring through into the rear of the legshield area and wired into the indicators.
For tidiness sake and also the less chance of ripping wires out when grabbing that bottle of 2 stroke, if you put your PX toolbox on and mark near the top edge where you want the wires to come out making it easy to tape or hot glue your wires into the rubber seal of the toolbox and you can lead the wires round the inside top edge down to the indicator unit keeping it looking tidy and professional!
Motorcycle stem indicators
This was what I did until I recently bought some pod lights and I got a set of Motax minilites and bolted them into the mirror stem holes on top of the headset, it wasn't pretty but it did the job extremely well.
Aftermarket pods, markers etc.
This is your call really, out there are thousands of different types of car side repeaters, truck markers, aftermarket LED units that can be fitted where you wish, I know of one person who carefully drilled out several holes in the headset and fitted amber LED's into the holes he made and sealed them in with silicon rubber, you wouldn't know they were there until you saw them light up, you could do the same on the legshields or you could buy a oval smoked car side repeater marking out the required mounting hole and using a foam rubber insulator to account for the curve fit say a Ford oval side repeater on each side.
The other holes...
You will still have six holes left over sadly which are down the side of the horncasting, you can buy hole blanking plugs or get them brazed up or use something like QuikSteel or JDWeld to fill them and make them disappear, another idea is to get chrome coach bolts and fit just a bolt and nut in each hole which would look like the chrome bolts on the Neco Abruzzi.
The bottom line here is you will have to get a little creative to make it look good or you can just leave that assembly in place and not worry about filling holes and sourcing new indicators, I am glad I did mine with the EFL as I am about to fit an EFL headset and forks with a TSR racing mudguard, it looks different and it looks eye catching and one thing I have noticed is there are a million bog standard P ranges out there but your Bajaj will grab people's interest.
Or...
If like me you don't like that odd mudguard either, you can quite easily fit a Lambretta GP mudguard and trim the bottom of the Vespa horncast to fit, think about the possibilities, a Lambretta mudguard is luckily profiled right to fit a Vespa legshields, you will need to be a bit canny with the tape measure and work out where to trim the bottom of the PX horncast to sit flat on the mudguard.
Be creative!
Of course there are those out there of you who will be shouting sacrilege, that its the best thing going, well it would seem this page is not for you.
Luckily for those of us that like the smooth looks of the "proper" Vespa, this is the simplest job in one aspect but a pain in the backside in another.
Vivo Scooters of Edinburgh and Retrovesp both make very good aftermarket "old school" horncasts primarily designed for the PX scooters, as it happens, the legshields on your Chetak are the same as those on a PX, LML, Rally, Sprint and it is a matter of simply decided whether you want one of the above companies "kits" and I will say both are excellent or you wish like I did to slap on a EFL horncast which took about 20 minutes to do and about 15 seconds afterwards to realise my big, big problem.
(Also Anglia Fibreglass do a very unusual moulding of an EFL/Disc horncast with a fitted Lambretta GP mudguard as a all in one unit for about 70 pounds. They trade on eBay under the username Angliafibreglass and always have a large selection of fibreglass mudguards and fenders for scooters.)
Can you guess what it is yet?
Those orange blobs on the wings of the horncast of course, the indicators no less that I realised I would need and were now cut off from the main horncast.
Fitting the EFL or P range horncast was simply removing the old stock horncast and then making sure it was all central, nice and in line with the body contour, marking the holes for the screw holes at the bottom and the self tapper behind the hexagon badge. Once you have it all where you want it to be and you have made sure the holes are exactly in the right place it is simply a case of drilling a pilot hole for the self tapper and the right diameter holes for the lower screws that screw into the horncast blinds, once done, a little dab of rust protecter and a touch of paint to keep it neat and then just screw the bottom ones in a bit, get then the top self tapper, tighten the bottom ones up alternating with the tapper and it should all fit nice and flush.
You will find the wiring needs to be tucked away a bit behind the horncast but the Bajaj is like the later PX's and has a few cutouts for tucking the birds nest out of harms way, once done, wire up your horn, fit the grille if you have one and fit the top badge whether the strip type from earlier models or the hook and click hexagon on the later ones.
Now your Bajaj doesn't look like a Bajaj as much...
Now onto the indicators...
This of course is the area where you can decide what you want and you have several options available which will all look good.
PX Indicators
Yes a cheap set of PX indicators will fit lovely, right after you have measure up and made a template to dremil or cut out an aperture for each light AND you will need to lose the Bajaj toolbox or fit a PX one as the Bajaj toolbox is in the way of the indicator unit, wiring is simple, you can simply graft the new lights wiring into the old connectors which are bullet type but you will need to take the wiring into the toolbox area through the back of the steering column shroud as they are done on the PX's and drill a hole on each side (carefully not drilling into other wires, cables or fork stem), fit a grommet to stop chafing and pass the wiring through into the rear of the legshield area and wired into the indicators.
For tidiness sake and also the less chance of ripping wires out when grabbing that bottle of 2 stroke, if you put your PX toolbox on and mark near the top edge where you want the wires to come out making it easy to tape or hot glue your wires into the rubber seal of the toolbox and you can lead the wires round the inside top edge down to the indicator unit keeping it looking tidy and professional!
Motorcycle stem indicators
This was what I did until I recently bought some pod lights and I got a set of Motax minilites and bolted them into the mirror stem holes on top of the headset, it wasn't pretty but it did the job extremely well.
Aftermarket pods, markers etc.
This is your call really, out there are thousands of different types of car side repeaters, truck markers, aftermarket LED units that can be fitted where you wish, I know of one person who carefully drilled out several holes in the headset and fitted amber LED's into the holes he made and sealed them in with silicon rubber, you wouldn't know they were there until you saw them light up, you could do the same on the legshields or you could buy a oval smoked car side repeater marking out the required mounting hole and using a foam rubber insulator to account for the curve fit say a Ford oval side repeater on each side.
The other holes...
You will still have six holes left over sadly which are down the side of the horncasting, you can buy hole blanking plugs or get them brazed up or use something like QuikSteel or JDWeld to fill them and make them disappear, another idea is to get chrome coach bolts and fit just a bolt and nut in each hole which would look like the chrome bolts on the Neco Abruzzi.
The bottom line here is you will have to get a little creative to make it look good or you can just leave that assembly in place and not worry about filling holes and sourcing new indicators, I am glad I did mine with the EFL as I am about to fit an EFL headset and forks with a TSR racing mudguard, it looks different and it looks eye catching and one thing I have noticed is there are a million bog standard P ranges out there but your Bajaj will grab people's interest.
Or...
If like me you don't like that odd mudguard either, you can quite easily fit a Lambretta GP mudguard and trim the bottom of the Vespa horncast to fit, think about the possibilities, a Lambretta mudguard is luckily profiled right to fit a Vespa legshields, you will need to be a bit canny with the tape measure and work out where to trim the bottom of the PX horncast to sit flat on the mudguard.
Be creative!