Malaguti Spidermax GT500: impressions

Welcome

From a small island west of the Sahara I bid you a warm welcome to my global neighborhood. Relax, have a drink and let me tell you about the Malaguti Spidermax and her 500 cc Piaggio MASTER engine.

The same power plant and transmission as in the:
Aprilia Atlantic 500
Aprilia Scarabeo 500
Gilera Nexus 500
Gilera Fuoco 500
Piaggio Beverly 500
Piaggio MP3 500
Piaggio X9 500
Piaggio X10 500
Peugeot Satelis 500
Malaguti Spidermax
and more...

When a post is updated it will move to the top and the GMT time stamp is updated.

More Spidermax info and help: sloper´s spidermax forum

Service manuals, you can find them in German and Italiano for all Malaguti models in the Dealers area here.

The quest for my perfect bike

to explore with 2 persons Gran Canaria - a little island between the Sahara and the Caribbean

It all started when my friend David gave me his 50cc Kymco Dink for a few weeks and we had lots of fun with the little scooter until we reached this hill where even zig-zaging did not help to climb it. That was the point when it was clear: we need a bit more than 50cc to see the island. So I looked around in cyberspace, read in a lot of forums and reviews. I found the scooter I wanted.

A Suzuki Burgman 400 K2 2002 with 22.000 km for 2800€. She was nice and we had great times together, but with 2 persons riding she often scraped on the ground in certain curves or over some speed bumps. Also she was not very stable at crawl speed or at max speed and after 6 month she got stolen.

Then I replaced her with an Aprilia Pegaso 650 IE 2001 25.000km for 2500€ and I thought I could conquer the dirt roads too. Sadly, she was just not too much fun to drive into the mountains with 2 persons and with 6.5 l/100km she was a bit too thirsty for my taste. The intimate seating position and my creative wife made up for some of her shortcomings during our rides ;)

After the experience with the 3 bikes, I decided that I wanted all the good parts of the Burgman: huge storage, comfortable ride, low consumption and the things I liked with the Pegaso such as ample ground clearance and the excellent handling in slow riding conditions.

Did such a bike even exist? Reading through lots of reviews and tests I stumbled over a bike I never heard of or ever had seen.
The Malaguti Spidermax GT500 was fascinating from the design and the specs. I read through lots and more of available info on the web (mostly in Italian and translated via google).

There is no Malaguti dealer on the Canary Islands anymore and she was the only Spidermax for sale since 3 months on a neighbor island. With just 4.000 km and 18 month young the price 2950€ was more than a bargain. Since she has the same engine and transmission as all other 500cc Italian scooters I figured service should not be a problem for these parts.
So will this story have a happy ending?

Lets find out.

Info, Links etc

Spider is the Italian expression for a topless vehicle (cabrio, cabriolet, convertible, roadster.)
see: Alfa Romeo Spider

Useful links:

Spidermax fotos auf Flickr
Slopers GARAGE good Italien know how site
Spidermax Fans Italian with many photos
Malagutimania Forum Italian
Malaguti Homepage

Malaguti on Wikipedia

is not related to:

or

Does whatever a Spider-Pig does. / Can he swing / from a web? / No he *can't*, / He's a pig. / Look out! / He is the Spider-Pig!
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