It's Electrifying!

 

If you said, "You're the One that I Want, from the musical Grease, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John, 1978," turn in your man card.  What?  Yes, I still have a man card.  ;-)  OK, 10 bonus points.

I may have mentioned that I really, really like my Vespa.  This new one has a USB port in the glove box.  If you need to plug anything into that USB port, it would have to stay in the glove box.  Why?  A USB cable... don't want to shut the glove box door on a cable, and I sure don't want to cut a notch in the door.

"Why do you need to plug something in," you ask?  Thanks for asking.  I use my phone a lot while riding.  No, I'm not talking or texting.  I use Waze as my GPS/mapping.  I use the camera apps to control my various cameras to get video while we're riding.  No, it isn't distracted riding: turn it on and let the camera do its thing.  Those things are a significant drain on the phone battery.  And, yes, I have used my phone for music through my helmet communicator speakers while riding.  And, I have answered my phone hands-free with that same set up.

I had a USB connection built into the left knee-pad cover on the previous Vespa.  I kept that, but the wiring harness on it isn't compatible with the new Vespa.  Fortunately, ScooterWest in San Diego makes an adapter so you don't have to cut/splice wiring.  It was in our mailbox this morning.

I went to work on it...

The cover is that black part, just left of center.  When you take the cover off, you see this...

You have to cut the bottom part of that to get access to the wiring...

I couldn't quite reach the connection I needed from there, so I opened the glove box and moved the fuse box to get at things...

Much better; here is the connection that you bridge into...

Route the wiring up to the cover plate, connect it all up, test that it is working, then put things back together.  Getting the screws that hold the fuse box back in took the most time... not much room for fat fingers in that tight space.

End result...

 It works!  I am happy; my phone is happy; the Vespa is happy.  :-)