Frank's last words

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

When does a bike become a project?

THERE COMES A POINT IN A BIKE'S LIFE ON THE road, or indeed off the road and parked in a shed, when stark choices face its presumably proud owner. This point - in my life at least - is never planned for. It simply arrives. It's like hearing with weary resignation the familiar misfiring exhaust beat of your least favourite biker bore chugging up outside your house, leaving you with no room to run away

... or even to hide convincingly. Self-isolation is not a new thing around these parts.

You must be familiar with this pivotal point. There you are, surveying the rusty, leaky relic of what was once a gleaming lean machine, envy of both of your friends and a scourge of the highway. 'Time for a ride', you whisper to yourself, sotto Of course it won't start. And if it does fire up a bit you remind yourself that it's a good job it's a twin, because at least one of the cylinders is still working. Some of the time.

And speaking of time, this is plainly time for a bit of a rebuild. Why this usually happens at the start of summer I have no idea. But it does. The roads are clear, the skies begin to shine, the bike falls apart. It was ever thus. The point to start twirling the spanners and reinforcing the optimism arrives at the same point as the time to start riding the priceless classic relic rather than the dull 100bhp modern rubbish.

But before bounding into action like a week-old gazelle, you need a plan. Without a plan there will be chaos, which is okay, and expense, which is not, at least domestically. Sometimes. Ahem.

I decided that there was no point in even pretending that I was going to restore the cosmetics. To do that would cost more than the bike's ever been worth and to be quite honest I like the tired looks of the old ruin. To you or to anyone else it may look like an embarrassing reminder of how even the greatest of sporting machines can suffer from uncaring neglect at the hands of a philistine, but to me it's just hard-earned patina. Rust may be rust, but this my rust. I don't care what you think.

And the power train works very well. It should; I've never opened it up. All I do is change the oil and filters and plugs. That would be the misnamed spark plugs, because they do not spark. Even changing them fails to produce a spark. I know when I'm beat.

The Lucas K2Fmagneto returns

Frank Westworth is the is across the country (without the bike attached, which may be a first for this machine) and the spark plugs now spark. Encouraging. I'll just tidy up the ... hang on, what about The Plan? Make it run, ride it. That was it. No mention there of whipping out the swinging arm to replace the bushes and pin - although I did want to fit another rear mudguard for no sensible reason, and if the wheel's out anyway, it's not a terrible job to do the bearings. Stop! I shout at myself . Shut up! I reply, because replacing the bushes is hardly a cosmetic job, now is it?

I talk to myself a lot while flinging spanners in the shed I like to call The Shed. It's just as well that there's rarely anyone else there, and the cats are immune to the foulest of language. But no. The swinging arm can wait until I refinish the frame. Because what I do not need is mission creep. Replacing the incorrect mudguard with another incorrect mudguard is part of A Project, which is longer than A Plan. It may be dynamically meaningless, but Iwant to do it. Replacing the frame's finish can wait until the fork gaiters split. Again. Because replacing those (again) involves dropping out the forks and at that point it might be worthwhile stripping out all the hideously corroded engine plates and fasteners, and while I'm at it, the seat is the wrong one and the front brake still doesn't really work despite being a sturdy 21s effort intended for a Commando - a machine of even more performance than my Matchless, hard though it may be to imagine such a thing.

And I know - suspect - why the brake doesn't work but I am not taking the front wheel out again ... At this point I was actually shouting at myself, which some consider to be a sign of sanity.

It runs. Actually it runs well. The engine may smoke like a destroyer trying to dodge the Stukas, and it may clatter like an army of navvies hammering their way through a big slab of granite, but it runs. Okay, so it still pours out its oil, but ...

The time has come to ride it. I like the way it looks, sounds and goes. This is the point at which to call a halt to the fiddling, and head out to the freshly unlocked-down coastal roads. To pause, take a photo, and wonder whether the M still answer calls in these unusual days. Not that I'd need them, no. Of course not, what would be the point of that? Ci!iifl editor of Rea/Classic magazine, the latest in a long series of publications

1982 when he was bullied into producing The Jampot, the previously excellent of Classic Bike Guideand has returned

OC.He was also founding editor

He has a mysterious from a trip

obsession with magazine of the AJS as a columnist

riding obscure and elderly motorcycles, that began in

Matchless as a penance. Or something. which he does very slowly ...