every once in a while someone hits my site looking for manuals for their Stella by Genuine Scooter Company. i feel for you owners manual seekers, since my first owners manual was destroyed by a fatal combination of leaky gloveboxes and torrential downpours.

so here ya go: a pdf copy of the Genuine Stella Owners Manual, and a (really big) pdf of the Genuine Stella Service Station Manual...

do me a favor and save the service station manual on your computer instead of downloading it from my server every time you need it, kthx? happy scootering!

i'm pretty excited. she's been at the scooter lounge for a while, so it's good to have her back :)

did you hear? stella's back. the scooter lounge has a handful.

the new light blue is especially gorgeous.

i really like the lines of the vespa/stella/bajaj scooters. they're clean and uninterrupted by cables. unfortunately these cables have to go somewhere to get from the handlebars to the engine where they'll actually do some good. that means they've gotta go through the frame. this can make replacing the cables a bit of a pain...

when i was in seattle last summer i had to do an emergency cable housing repair. luckily, my amazing scooter mechanic Dave had some great advice on how to pull the new housing through the frame. it's actually quite slick:

instructions after the jump.

if you hadn't heard, my scooter's a bit broken. the exhaust has a crack in it, and it doesn't work very well like that.

so in honor of blog action day 2007 (theme: the environment), i would be more than happy to reuse someone's unneeded Sito+ instead of buying a new one. if you've got one laying around, let me know. it's good for the environment. and for my almost empty bank account.

apparently barber brothers, our local mitsubishi dealer cum "vespa boutique" is giving away free 50cc vespas with the purchase of a new mitsubishi...

just what we need. a bunch of idiots riding around who didn't really want a scooter but took one anyway because "hey, free vespa!"

at least it means the scooter lounge will get more business changing oil for a lot of clueless vespa owners.

:(

a while back i mentioned my buddy's amazing new tank scooter, and the worthless warranty it comes with...

check out what i noticed today :)

we'll start with a few guiding principles

i went to the Scooter Lounge the other day and chatted with Dave about preparing for a short trip i was planning. in a nutshell, here are my thoughts on preparation for a scooter road trip:

how to plan for your cross-country scooter trip after the jump.

i'm working on a writeup on how to prepare for a scooter road trip. until then, here are a couple of thoughts from my trip to logan and back last weekend:

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the hydration packs don't really mean it when they say not to put soda in them. it worked just fine for me. :-)

my fuel reserve works again! you have to idea how cool this is. i've run out of gas far too many times... i don't really like pushing my scooter to a gas station. it looks like i have about 25 miles of gas left after switching over to reserve.

sardine canyon wasn't quite as cold as last time. no complaints here. in fact there were times when it was downright warm for three in the morning. of course this was offset by the looming rainclouds and the occasional threatening sprinkles.

my stella scooter goes downhill just as fast at 1/3 throttle as wide open. i realized riding down sardine canyon that my scooter would go about the same speed downhill whether i had the throttle pegged, or i just gave it enough to maintain speed.

cache valley smells like poo. it's the truth.

having a properly tuned scooter makes a big difference. i know i've been running rich, but i just bought a set of boyesen power reeds for my stella, and i didn't want to adjust the jetting twice. so i rode to logan rich, and it made a huge difference. my top end suffered, i'm sure my gas mileage suffered. my spark plug was a bit ugly when i got there...

there are a lot of people who want to buy my scooter. for about 500 bucks. no thanks. i ran into another one at the logan walmart while i was investing in the mountain dew lifeline featured above...