Sometimes, the best thing you can do is find a project that requires both your hands and your mind to work together. The more involved, the better. A project bike is ideal, provided that you don’t need it as a daily rider. That way, you can take as much time as you need, and just concentrate on getting everything back to the level you want. If parts take a while to source, or problems take a while to sort, it’s not a big deal.
You see, there are two types of projects. One is the kind you undertake out of necessity, usually because something blew up or fell off. That's the stressful kind that you need fixed ASAP, so you can get back on the road and go about your daily life. The other one is the fun kind, that you do because you like figuring out and hopefully solving problems. In the process, you may also hope to learn a little more along the way about something. Like, say, 1970s Vespa two-strokes with sidecars, which brings us to today’s extremely rusty restoration video series.
Now Get To Work:
That’s another beautiful part about extremely involved projects: If you’re the person in charge, you get to make calls about whether something is too far gone, or is worth trying to repair. A lot of people might see a rusted-out 1978 Vespa with an equally rusty sidecar like this, and think it’s completely beyond hope. Not the people behind the YouTube channel Living with Creativity, though, because they’re doing an entire series devoted to taking apart and restoring this bike.
In this first video, you get a good overview of the bike they’re working with, and they start taking it apart. It’s clear that it’s a massive bucket of rust, but you don’t really see the full extent of the metal cancer until they start taking bits apart. One pannier, for example, is easily more rust than viable metal. Will they end up sourcing a new part or trying to patch it? We don’t know yet, because this video is just about tearing the thing down to see what’s there.
One thing’s for sure: If you have a project that’s this involved, it’s going to take up an awful lot of time, energy, brainpower, and spare cash. It’s not the kind of project that’s for everyone, for any number of reasons. However, if you’re looking for something to occupy your every waking thought right now because you’re super stressed out, something extremely heavy-duty like this makes all the sense in the world.
Source: YouTube