Day One

With the Bike safely home is is time to start the strip down and inventory. Armed with a Parts Book and a set of Whitworth spanners the bike is carefully stripped, bagged and boxed.

The bike is cosmetically quite poor but everything, as far as I can tell, is original. The tinware has had a couple of professionally implemented repairs and, whilst the paintwork is poor, the general condition is very good.

The bike was imported to the UK from the USA. One interesting thing is that in the bottom of a cardboard box containing the remnants of the gearbox, was a receipt from 1985 for some suspension bushes. The receipt may be nothing to do with the bike but the address of the person ordering the bushes was Siloam Springs in Arkansas. An added task to my list is to trawl Facebook and start asking around, some history of the bike would be wonderful.

The swinging arm has a some rear foot peg brackets welded to it, further supported by Jubilee clips. It's a poor job, and won't take much to remove them once I remember who I lent my angle grinder to.

Draining the front suspension of oil turned out to be fruitless as the forks were full of water, although, to be honest, I thought Arkansas was a dry place. Clearly new bushes and seals needed throughout.

Although the engine has not yet been stripped, it looks to be in pretty good condition. For now I have simply mounted it in the engine stand ready for attention later on in the restoration.

In terms of the frame and cycle parts, these will be painted using a cellulose paint system. I did consider a high quality powder coating but feel that a decent professional paint finish would be more appropriate for the bike.

As for the petrol tank, this will need some serious professional work. For now I will give it a decent polish and see what can be done later in the restoration.

The Starting Point

This is what it would have looked like in 1966, although discussion is still underway as to whether my bike should have a polished tank i.e. no yellow paint. Rupert Ratio and the brochures of the time don't quite agree.

The pictures below were taken from moments after completing the purchase. This represents the starting point.