Oh wait, that's the wrong photo. Here's mine:
She needs a little work. I bought her from Jaye Strait at Britech New England. He's just up the road (about 40 miles), from me in Manchester CT. As you can see from his Facebook page, he builds absolutely beautiful classic bikes, is passionate about classic bikes and has already given me some excellent advice on what I'm facing with this project. My brother-in-law Mike who has 2 bikes, (a 1970 Bonnie and a 500 twin) is also proving very knowledgeable, so it looks like I'm not going to be short of help.
Here are Mike's bikes:
Between the two of them, the bar's been set pretty high!
Anyway, back to my bike ... The frame is already pretty much stripped down. The first part of the plan is to strip it down completely, and send it and most other black parts off to be powder coated. Then the forks, swinging arms and shocks with be refurbished and assembled to form a very good basis on which to build everything else.
I'm hoping to rebuild the engine to Jaye's specs and with his help. Typically his engines vibrate less, leak oil less and perform better than the original factory engines, thanks largely to modern technology, and his and others experience over the past 40 years. See some of the videos at the bottom of his Britech page for more details if you're interested.
For phase 1, I'll try to re-use whatever I can from the rest of the parts. This may not result in a show quality bike, but it should produce a very solid, reliable and high performing bike for the least $$$. And this strategy should allow the bike to be restored to factory (show) condition in the future if $$$ and time permit.
Well, that's the plan. Stay tuned for progress reports.
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