Table of Contents

About

The "UK Moden Tech" vespa scooter is, in fact, designed to be able to carry two people and up to $360kg$ with plenty of space around the seat to make that possible. One thought that immediately follows is to add saddlebags to allow for a larger carrying capacity to the scooter. This page summarizes some notes taken while creating a saddlebag modification for the moped.

Requirements

Here is a possible shopping list.

The Bags

Perhaps the most important property is the size because stores typically carry a lot of Chinese merchandise that is sometimes designed to be deceptively small to European/American eyes. However, this is not a problem and it just means that when shopping the actual measurements should be followed rather than trying to estimate the size by looking at pictures without any reference.

The purchased bags for this project, have measurements and are rated with a carrying capacity of $25kg$ each, which is plentiful without taking over the entire scooter or scraping the floors during drives.

As for the rest of the saddlebag design, this page documents using a needle and thread to redesign the saddlebags, by even disconnecting them from each other, such that it is not really necessary that the saddlebags line up perfectly with the seat (which, more than likely is not possible because the seat on a moped is much larger and thicker than the connecting canvas of the saddlebag).

Hooks and Rings

One simple yet sturdy way of connecting the saddlebags to the scooter is to use rivets that can be screwed both into the bag canvas as well as into the scooter frame.

Then, connecting the saddle bags to the ringed rivets, is to use a set of simple rings.

Alternatively, a carabiner lock can also be used, but in the final design it seemed unnecessary due to the ringed rivets and the rings worked perfectly.

Modifying the Bags

The first step involves cutting through the canvas to separate the bags from each other. The cut is made as close as possible to the stitching in order to leave as little excess canvas as possible.

After cutting, a needle and thread is used to reinforce the cut edge by stitching over the edge. This ensures that the small stitching that already connected the bag does not give in too easily and that the additional stitching will keep the bag together.

Additionally, the image shows one of the rivets that has been fixed on the very edge of the saddlebag. Doing that involved punching a hole through the canvas and then using the provided rivet screw to fix the ringed rivet onto the bag. Two rivets are fixed per bag, as illustrated but it is possible to add additional rivets on the bottom of the bag in order to have an additional fixing point on the bottom.

The final step is to remove the white obnoxious logo because there are better solutions to allow stickers to be placed on bags. One of the solutions that comes to mind is patches and velcro, such that if stickers and logos are needed, some velcro patch can be stitched on and then any velcro-based patch can be purchased and used with the bags.

In any case, having the logo stitched directly onto the bag, seems annoying and it is thusly removed.

With the ring rivets fixed onto the bags, the last part is to add ringed rivets to the scooter itself. Interestingly, this seems to be an easy task, and even cleaner when using a Dremel drill, with a narrow drill bit that fits the screw of the ringed rivet. Four ringed rivets are fixed onto the scooter in total with two on each side of the scooter that will hold the two saddle bags. The material that the scooter is made of seems to be some sort of glass fiber such that drilling into the seat is so easy that some care must be taken in order to do a clean job.

As established, the bags are fixed on either side of the scooter, using the ringed rivets and are ready to carry luggage.

One idea that comes to mind is that the bags are difficult to remove due to keychain rings being used to connect the ringed rivets together and sometimes a quick removal of the bags would be desirable. To that end, a carabiner lock could be used to quickly attach and detach the bags instead of rings.