My hand is healing every so slowly but I am gaining strength and grip strength. I can twist the throttle but I cannot use the right brake. One of the major reasons I believe is my lack of grip length. Because my thumb is so stiff, I can hardly reach the brake lever and when squeezing it, it is too far open in a spot where I have no grip power. But as Willie B from the Modern Vespa Forum pointed out, one can change that and this I did not know until now.

The Austrians make a brake lever called Remus. Remus also famous for their exhausts. The only online store that I could find that sold them was www.sip-scooter.com. These levers have over 20 different positions to accommodate all fingers sizes and riding preferences. Willie B has his adjusted so that he rides with a couple of fingers on the brake lever at all times.

You can see how an adjustable lever would help as you compare my left hand to my right. My left has no problem extending open to grab and pull the lever while my right does not have the opening distance. If you look at the bottom right picture of my hand, this is the area where I have a strong grip. I have gone from a 1.5 Lbs. squeeze to a 5 Lbs. squeeze using this hand exerciser in the last month. My wife can hardly squeeze the 5 Lbs. and she stops the Vespa. So I am hopeful that with the lever installed and adjusted to this “SWEAT SPOT” for my grip that I will in fact be riding this weekend, even if it is around a few local blocks.

Willie B from the Modern Vespa form also pointed out that if I combine these levers with premium 4-piston calipers that I could possibly stop my bike with a couple of fingers. The problem is the calipers are backordered. However, I ordered the Remus Lever in plane silver because the sporty colors would not look nice on my espresso GTV and I have placed my name on a list for the calipers. Below are the details. Willie B has being riding for over 30-years including racing bikes. He owns a Vespa 250 as well as other bikes such as BMWs. He often rides his Vespa and would not even consider riding without these brake upgrades. He also mentioned that he uses sintered pads which provide extreme braking that will immediately start biting into the rotor with the slightest squeeze of the brake lever. There are two draw backs with sintered pads. One is that it will reduce you rotor life to 30,000 miles and two is that they will lock up the wheels when squeezed so you must be careful on curves, wet or hazardous roads. I will try the calipers without the sintered pads first.

The long term forecast looks good as you can see from the two pictures below: