Aprilia scarabeo 125 valve timing

So after striping down my scarab to put on a new camchain couldnt find any timing marks, so. Having two of em i stripped the other one down to try work it out, so for any body else with the same problem heres how to set the valve timing, 1, setting the camshaft, the tip of the cam lobes should be roughly horizontal and the square cutout in the camshaft pointing staight down,
2,using. A suitable feeler pushed in the spark plug hole feel the piston coming up to the top of its stroke, i found that its very hard to get this exact, so to get it spot on, at the rotor there are the letters 11 TZ and on my other scooter 11TY, the second 1 lines up with the rotor cover bolt hole exactly, hitting it dead in the middle, i then used a hacksaw blade to cut a mark on the vairiater wheel and case so in future i wont have to pull it down so far

 

Good job, how long did that take you. Are you a mechanic?

 

No but i always like to buy fixer uppers,some times i get luckey sometimes not

 

The variator outer can go on literally 100 different ways.
Once you understand the workings of a 4 stroke setting TDC does not become so difficult.
It's a sort of "done one, done them all" situation
But great advice here.
You should put it into the "scooter guides" section.

 

Just a quick update on the valve timing, the reason ive been having problems with the valves touching the pistons is that the piston is not at tdc when the rotor is set at the position ive shown in the above post, its about 5 mm short, thats why the valves touched, but after weeks of buggering about i stopped setting the crank to tdc and used the 11 tz, 11ty marks and it starts. And runs great so thats the way to go, will post a better pic of the rotor cover bolthole that i used as a mark

 

Guessing you were setting it to the firing mark instead of the top mark. Easy to do

 

There arent any marks, ive had to make my own, luckly i had two scoots the same