Bought a 2002 aprilia scarabeo 125 and am trying to fit new camchain, dont know where the marks are for the valve timing, i have piagio haynes manual, thought the engine might have been used by piag but no, got an aprilia manual that turned out to be a service manual so thats no good, looked at the workshop manual and that doesnt show my engine, the pictures show The 250 ive scoured the net and im pissed off with google translate, ive had the rotor of and there are no marks, so heres my twopence worth on modern scoots, four valves, not needed, two do just as well, disk brakes, rubbish, seize up when the pads get low, leci start, cant start it when the batterys flat, pumper carb, dangerous, throws so much petrol in that the motor floods leaving me stalled in the path of a truck, tubeles tyres, cant repair punctures, alloy wheels corrode so tyre wont seal, rev counter, what for its an auto? The engine is buried under loads of bodywork that has to be stripped of, and its watercooled and if the head gasket fails it gets so hot the oil filler plug melts and gets spat out, the only scooter that non of this aplies to is the honda cub c 50,70,90 series, i bet the 90 would piss on this aprilia for speed too, im definitly going to get one but they holds their money,
A lot of those problems are due to lack of maintenance. But yeah, Italian bikes are so bad, they are made so cheap and then cost so much to buy. I'm well happy with my China cubs. My Honda has rusted to shit from the salt, but the China ones are going strong. See also: custom cub....
Go to Carlsalter.com then find aprilia manuals, use the Leonardo one, the early leonardo has the same engine, then they swapped to the leader engine after a whole. You should be able to set the valve timing pretty accurate with just looking at where the cams are. Sometimes timing lines just don't make sense, you should see the front cams on my V4 Honda... Or the exhaust cam on the kawa 6 cylinder I've been working on, a full 90 degrees out yet still had compression..
But normally the crank keyway will match something, either the ignition pickup, or crankcase halves where the split it. I good indication is the ignition pickup. Find that and you've found close enough to TDC
Mate,you are SO RIGHT with that post.!!. Was aiming to go back to basics an get 90's 12v kick start only 90,got a 17 plate NSC110 instead - ped's been golden so far but nightmares popping up eventually/reckon..
Well as a last resort i picked up my other scarabeo from where i had it stored, i bought it as a non runner, found that the back of the ignition switch was missing (at some point it must have been stolen) so just twisted the wire together and pushed start button and after 15 seconds it started, it runs ok but with a lot of camchain noise, its got 55 k klms on the clock, so ill strip it down and use it as a referance for the cam chain timing, the good thing about these old scooters is they are cheap, i paid £180 for two so i fault them in that respect, will put some pics up when the projects finished