Watch This Abandoned Scooter Go From Trash To Treasure

One of my favorite motorcycle YouTubers is the young Russian dude over at Rescue Story. Working out of what looks like a rented garage space in an industrial development, he restores the absolute rattiest, rustiest, filthiest abandoned bikes on God's green Earth. They seem to be everywhere in his part of Russia, rotting away in bushes, ravines, ditches, and under collapsed buildings scattered across the countryside. With just some hand tools and a boatload of talent, he returns these poor, forgotten machines back to their former glory.

In this video, he discovers a 60s-era scooter in a junk pile and drags it home. Now, in the video's title he calls it a "Piaggo Vespa", but it looks to me more like an old Soviet knock-off or licensed copy of a Lambretta. At 5:32 in the video you can see Cyrillic cast into the body of the scooter's weird carb, further cementing my suspicion that we have a real Lada 1500 situation going on here.

Rescued, Restored:

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Whatever its provenance, it's clear that this scooter has seen better days. In fact, it's one of the more rotten bikes I've seen him drag back to his shop. Not to be deterred by a little dirt and grime, however, our man sets to immediately after unloading it from his trailer.

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After methodically disassembling the scooter he gives everything a good cleaning with a pressure washer. He then strips the paint off all the sheet metal and does some light body work to clean up the worst of the blemishes. The engine is next—he tears the entire thing apart, down to the smallest fastener, and cleans everything with a powerful degreaser.

So, what happens next? Does he get it back together? Does the mystery brush scooter live to scoot again? You're gonna have to watch the video to find that out. Trust me, you definitely want to see how this one turns out.

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