Zundapp Bella R201 1959

Zundapp Bella R204

I’d already had the Green R200 Bella and wanted a run around, run around he says! I say it all the time and never seem to get one as I move onto other things too quick.

I was in the pub one night as I do from time to time and was looking through some sales sites and this Bella popped up. I recognised the sellers name as I’d tuned a Lambretta for him years ago. We made the deal and had it collected and delivered and at the time I didn’t get chance to start it let alone ride it. When Bella Brian came over for a visit we went to put it on the dyno only to discover the carb leaked which was a common fault on the old carbs. The battery was dead and as the panel door was down I saw every wire was white!

Only one thing for it, make a new loom – and so it started, one job after another!

It was stripped for a sympathetic restoration, the front mudguard had cracks in the paint and the only way to remove the mudguard was to take the forks out.

Well whilst I was at it. All the bodywork went off to a spraying friend who turned it around in a week using our corporate colours! Bella Brian had pointed me to parts of the bike that needed modernising, so I set about modifying and manufacturing parts for the Bellas.

The Bella uses 2 rear springs and 1 damper and it’s a bit spungy and everyone complains about the ride, so I designed a 2 shocker set up which transforms the back end and others in the Zundapp club have followed suit.

I’ve even converted the front hub to a hydraulic disc and made it more practical with useable racks and digital speedos and GPS.

And I started to tune them, this type, the later slanting cylinder and the older vertical cylinders. Convinced I would find a lot more power from these old engines I tried all sorts. In the end the heavy dynamo and balance wheel was the killer.

Gear changing gets sloppy – it’s a main complaint, so I made new linkages and fitted stronger springs and improved the clutch. As with developing Lambrettas over a 40 year period I had to develop the Bella the same but over 3 months. What ever you improved – found a weak link somewhere else.

Parts were dynoed back to back and slowly I found power – nothing staggering but enough for customers to rave over how fast they had got.

I went further with Bella Bee by converting the cylinder to a Yamaha Alloy Trails 250 cylinder with Reed valve and developed the standard looking exhaust. Again by doing this I hit more brick walls. The piston size was a bit big and the compression was too high for the electric starter. And it went on, I’d found power by machining the great big balance wheel down, but that also didn’t help the starter so had to go back to standard and loose power! The compression had to be dropped and lost power! And this went on and on – but did see 20bhp at one point. Now it’s tamed down to around 14bhp – still not bad as it’s now more rideable for the big lump that it is.

It was a great big learning curve, the only thing I didn’t do was paint the frame as it was perfect. And from what I’ve learnt and made it’s a talking point on our Zundapp Bella weekend AGM.

I’ve now lost count how many Bellas I have all projects!