Lambretta Restoration

In 1958, my father-in-law bought a brand-new Lambretta LD150. He and my mother-in-law went all over Europe on it and racked up 36,000 miles before the scooter was put in the garage ahead of the imminent arrival of their first baby (who turned 60 in 2025).

The scooter stayed in garages and sheds until my father-in-law’s passed away in 2017. My mother-in-law downsized to a smaller flat and the scooter had to be taken out of the back section of the garage. Getting the scooter out was a challenge but it was rolling and was remarkably complete. It sat in my garage for a time and then, like so many projects, lockdown provided the opportunity to restore it. I thought hard about how to approach the restoration - the scooter was complete and original with no obvious mechanical issues and no rust on the body panels other than some surface rust on one of the rear panels where the scooter had fallen against the garage wall some years before. In the end, I decided to do a ground-up restoration. I chose this for two reasons: firstly, although the scooter was in very good original state, the paint was looking really poor in some places and the engine had a lot of grimy old oil on it that suggested a leak of some kind. So, began the big build.

The Restoration

Before I describe the restoration process, let’s get one thing out of the way: this project has taken waaaaaay longer than I thought it would and remains very much a work in progress. Some of this is specific to the details of the project - I messed about racing and repairing cars when I was a teenager so I’m comfortable with mechanical stuff, but there is still a lot to learn and tools and techniques I’ve had to acquire. However, a big chunk of the reason is that I’ve been so determined to do this project properly to honour both the machine itself and the importance of it to my wife’s family, that I have on several occasions procrastinated about how to deal with a particular thing. As such, this project is unlikely to be finished any time soon.

I have a ton of photos of the strip down of the scooter that I will someday turn into a retrospective set of blog posts. Suffice to say, there has been a lot of work to get to this stage. I am now however, at the point where everything is disassembled and I’m beginning to (slowly) put things back together again.

As proof, here is a before and after picture of the carb which I decided should be the first thing I finished completely - stripped, cleaned, new seals etc and put back together ready to be fitted back on to the engine.

Current Status (Jan 2026)

In lieu of a proper build diary, here’s where I’m at. The frame and bodywork is all stripped. I’ve removed the old, rubbish paint from a lot of the bodywork. This has been a slow and fiddly process absent a blaster (and I’m not comfortable sending it out to be done as some of the metal work is quite thin material). I need to finish off these bits and get some primer on them. This is definitely an area of procrastination though as my first attempt at priming was, shall we say, not great.

The engine and transmission are all torn down. I have bought new bearings for the transmission as the old ones look a little worn. The carb is rebuilt. The rest is yet to be progressed. I don’t see any significant wear on the engine or transmission so I’m not envisaging having to replace anything major.