HI I'VE GOT A 82 JAWA I ON THE OTHER HAND SPECIALIZE IN PUCHS NOW THIS THING HAS NO ELECTRICITY, NO SPARK , NO LIGHT, NO NOTHING ITS ALL ASS BACKWARDS TO ME NOW IF I THOUGHT BACKWARDS I COULD PROBABLLY FIGURE IT OUT BUT I JUST DONT KNOW CAN ANYBODY HELP?
LESTER
GRAND RAPIDS, MI
Sell it and cut your losses.
On all Vespa mopeds if the brake light is burnt out, or the wires around the brake light are improperly grounded, then you wont get a spark or lights. I dont know if that is the case here, but it is a place to start, and bulbs are only like $1.39.
Good Luck!
vespalad
Vespalad,
Hey, I have something unusual happening on my vespa grande. The rear bulb is a two filament bulb and it has two contacts on the lightsocket and bulb, but only one filament functions. when the taillight is on, the top filament glows a little bit and when you hit the brakes, the top filament gets brigher and the bottom one does nothing, also the bike quits if it's idling. and then when that filament burns out, the engine kills when you hit the brakes at any speed. I'm gonna look at it tomorrow, but if you know what it might be, it'll save me some time and I would appreciate it.
My friend was having this same problem on his Vespa p200e (scooter). I can't remember exactly what he did to solve it, (he is asleep right now but I will talk to him today and post what he did this afternoon). I would start with a brand new bulb, and then trace every single wire on the ped to see if you have a unwanted ground somewhere. Check your thumb switches, if there is too much bare wire exposed before it goes into the posts it could easily ground there(on my ciao if you bump the thumb switch or move it back and forth it will sometimes ground out). Hope this helps, I'll have another post for you in a couple hours.
Vespalad
Brandon,
This sounds like a classic case of no ground on the lamp leaving both filaments in series. The fat one just provides a circuit to the thin one without glowing because the thin one limits the current.
Ron
I think Ron has it nailed here. I finally got a hold of my friend and he said his problem on his p200e was a wire in his headset not connected to anything. Did you trace down all your wires? (shouldn't have taken more than 5 minutes) Start at the brake light housing, and work your way towards the coil. And let us know when you get it figured out!!!
Vespalad
I switched some wires around on the taillight, and it works better. It still only uses one filament, but it's not so incredibly bright that it burns out the bulb and kills the engine at idle. My brother was riding it around yesterday, and he noticed something else strange. when you position the headlight switch between on and off positions, it gets amazingly bright and the engine kills when you hit the brakes (just like the brakelight did before I switched the wires on it.) the bike is working pretty good right now, aside from a dim headlight. What do you mean by a wire in his "headset" not being connected to anything? What did he end up connecting it to?
Thanks for all the help,
Brandon
Brandon,
It sounds like you need to figure out where the wires are really supposed to go instead of just swapping them around. The bright headlamp is most likely caused by the tail lamp turning off first, before the headlamp.
Make sure the tail lamp bulb is really grounded. Then find the wire which is common to the headlamp power and connect that to the tail lamp filament (the thin one), The wire left over should be the brake light wire.
Ron
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