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- GILERA FUOCO, Berlin 03/04/07
Own an MP3 or Fuoco and want to avoid expensive bills to replace your notchy steering bearings? This greasing tip might just help…
As the Piaggio MP3 is actually the second-best selling Piaggio vehicle after the Vespa GTS, it’s probably worthwhile to having another look at the peculiarities of these three-wheelers. Which is why we’ll be featuring a loose series of articles on maintenance, technical tips and small but practical modifications that might hopefully help you to keep your three-wheeler on the road.
We showed you recently how to test the steering bearing on a Piaggio MP3 (see video above). This article deals with the steering in a bit more detail, to be precise we will be looking at greasing the steering bearings. Plus we build a special maintenance tool to do the job.
Safety first
When the Piaggio MP3 and its siblings hit the market, their twin front wheels were a unique feature of these scooters, unseen before on a mass produced vehicle. It has almost been forgotten nowadays that the main reason for Piaggio to offer this front wheel layout was to improve safety rather than enable car-drivers to switch over to two (or rather three) wheels.
1950s design
Whilst an anti-lock braking-system on an ordinary two-wheeler can prevent crashes due to overbraking, it does nothing to stop you slipping sideways on cobbles, tram-tracks, oil-spills in a roundabaout, gravel strewn corners or whatever the daily mayhem on our roads might throw at you. Only more contact area to the road will help in these cases, which is why German engineer Wolfgang Trautwein invented the design of the parallel front wheels in the 1950s.
Over the years he built several prototypes, one even based on a P-Range Vespa (which nowadays sits in a German museum). It is exactly this design that Piaggio is using today in their three-wheelers, from the various MP3 models to the Gilera Fuoco.
Troublesome bearings
The only problem with it is the abundancy of moving parts. An MP3 has six steering bearings instead of two, plus an additional six pivoting points for the parallelogram arms. Nice. Of these joints, the four outer steering bearings are known to cause trouble by getting notchy and being extremely expensive to replace (the inner steering bearings under the handlebars don’t actually take any load from the suspension and failure is rather uncommon here).
Now while it is unclear what causes the outer bearings to either fail early or last forever, it is common sense that keeping them lubricated will certainly help. The good news is that it’s rather easy to do this yourself and even making the necessary tool to do it is fairly easy and only costs a few pence.
For reasons I cannot fully explain I have always liked the Gilera Fuoco, so much so I finally bought one. Seems I generally have a weak spot for the ugly duckling – I also have a Serveta Lince and previously owned several Vespa ETSs and Cosas. Hm….
Let’s grease ’em up…
The basic process is to dismantle the four bolts holding the parallelogram arms to the steering columns one after the other, pack the space behind them with grease until it reaches the bearings and fit the bolts again. In order to do this, we need to make ourselves a specifically prepared bolt that we can use as a tool to grease the joints.
M10 bolt and a grease nipple
All you need to get started is a standard M10 x 30mm bolt and a M6 grease nipple. You can pick up both at any hardware store for literally a few pennies. Alternatively you could buy one already made from eBay for a couple of quid.
Drill it
The main part of the job is to drill the M10 bolt straight through its whole length with a 5.5mm drill. Quite obviously doing this with a handheld drill won’t work. If you don’t have a bench drill yourselves, ask a local workshop to do it for you.
Tap it
The next step is to tap the hole in the head of the bolt with a 6mm thread and fit the grease nipple to it
Clean it
Voilá – the finished grease bolt read to go. Attention: make sure the bolt is absolutely clean internally before using it for the first time. If you leave any shavings from drilling or tapping inside, they will later end up in your bearings.
Chock it
You can either jack the scooter up (as in the video) or place one front wheel on a brick, wooden block or any similar item. This will cause the steering column on the other side to move further down for ease of access. Swap it over later to do the other side.
Finger tight
Dismantle the first pivot bolt and replace it with your grease bolt. Just tighten it gently – it only has to sit there for a few minutes and due to being drilled internally can’t handle much torque.
Grease it
Put the nozzle of your grease gun on the grease nipple and start pumping. When you do this for the first time expect roughly 15 to 20 pumps to be necessary until the grease has reached the bearing.
Refit the bolt
Replace the grease bolt with the original one and torque it down to 45-50NMs with a torque wrench. Check that the thread is not full of grease as this might change the relation between torque and the actual force applied.
And repeat…
Repeat this procedure with the other three bolts. Attention: Only do one bolt at a time as described – do not take out all four of them.
And that’s it – easy, innit? And strangely enough, you can even feel the difference. My Fuoco was much happier to go round corners once I was finished. Mission accomplished…
Words and photos: Boris
Have you got any tech tips to pass on? Get in touch…
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- GILERA FUOCO, Berlin 03/04/07
Had this done years ago, if you also use marine grease this helps as it’s the water that washes the grease away, but not the marine grease.
Mine have always had a grease nipple fitter by the dealer from new as they know this to be a problem, that said, my 12plate 300LT, no problems………..my new 500ABS Sport…….where do you start!!!……..its in the dealers at the moment for new steering head bearings at 6k miles, this is apparently the norm according to the mechanic off the record!
At current prices the expense of this happening annually added to the price of a major service each year is making me think twice about having one, it seems that while Piaggio think its ok to introduce the new price hikes they know they will make i higher profit by cutting costs on materials…….mine is also in for a new ignition barrel, again quite common and the red key has to be changed and it all re-programmed, on top of this all 4 shock absorbers are being replaced due to heavy corrosion of the springs.
But thats not whats my main concern………..4 times ive asked them to photograph the rusty frame and submit it to Piaggio, they seem reluctant so far. All the weld areas at the rear under the bodywork are rusty, at 16 months old..Today i told them if nothing is done i will throw it at Black Horse finance and tell them its theirs and stop the payments………..a nice chap in the dealers said, ‘might be a good idea’ !, the only other thing i was told was a re-frame, but it wouldnt have original numbers upon its return, yhus making it a nightmare to sell on.
Well there we have it, once the warranty is up in 5 months it will be decision time, at the moment it stands at sell it, buy an older model and never part with money to Piaggio again!
Well lucky for me I did not buy the new mp3 500 I have still got my 13 plate 500 with 18000 miles on the clock and touch wood its been trouble free . I haven’t even had the dreaded steering notch on this one . Mr Dattoo sorted the notch on the 400lt by turning the bearings it gave it another 7000 miles. After seeing all the posts recently I will not be having another piaggio mp3 which is a shame because this one is my 5th one .
Where is me post lol
Have you found it?