Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This Bella R203 frame and engine isn’t pretty but it’s all there. It’s not clear what state the engine is in. There was a lot of dirt and grease covering it. The photo was taken shortly after being power washed. It cleaned up pretty well.  

If it seems odd, that’s because fork is in in the frame upside down. That made it easier to clean. I’ll remove the engine in the next week or two. My plan is to use this frame with the R203 sheet metal that recently came back from the paint shop. The green color turned out to be a good choice. It looks great. The frame, fork, mudguard, center stand, and chain guard will be media blasted and powder coated in a semi-gloss black by my local shop. 

The engine for this project was finished almost a year ago.  I’m undecided what to do with this one. I may keep it as a spare - or sell it. Parts for Zundapp scooters are scarce in the US. For that reason, it is very important to bag and tag everything when you take one of these old scooters apart. Some of the hardware and small parts are impossible to replace, so you have to be careful not to lose or toss out items that can’t be replaced. There have been occasions when I had to fabricate lost or missing parts for a restoration project. It’s fun and challenging, but very time consuming. Lately, my time is not in surplus. 

Gott in Himmel! It has taken forever to get these two German scooter projects to this point. As shown in the photos, I went with a yellow/gold color on the Heinkel Tourist and a deep, forest green color on the Zundapp Bella.  The original color for the Tourist was a bit more subdued harvest gold, but I wanted something a bit more lively. The leg shield will be black like the original.

The green is a close match to an original Zundapp color. The original color on this scooter was a metallic blue. I have a thing about metallic paint. Just don’t care for it and really can’t explain why. 

In both cases, my choice was a high quality DuPont single stage paint that costs around a hundred dollars per pint. The single stage coatings look more original. Two stage is definitely more durable and that’s normally what I would choose for a scooter that’s going to get a lot of riding. The majority of my restored scooters are Sunday riders. There are only a couple of bikes I ride all the time. 

The Heinkel frame and inner mudguards are powder coated the original grey. The Bella frame is at the powder coat ing shop now. It will be black like the original. The solid aluminum Bella rims will soda blasted and new Heidenau tires will be mounted on them. Those were very hard to source. My only other choice was Coker repros, which are terribly expensive, or a Chinese knock off of a Pirelli tread pattern. The next big step is to rebuild the forks for both bikes.

I’ve finished rebuilding the Heinkel engine, and admit to being a bit nervous about firing it up for the first time.