FROM THE FRONT

Every year I make the same pledge: No More Projects! I swear (violently and volubly, but only while alone – cats are sensitive to such things) that I will acquire no more motorcycles which do not actually work. That as I toddle across the endless golden uplands I shall devote more time to riding, less to spannering. Stout stuff! But there’s a snag. And that snag is that I actually enjoy making a bike work.

Well, I enjoy it when it does work – if you’ve been following my adventures with the world’s least satisfying AJS 350 you will understand that I do expect a bike upon which I’ve lavished funds (mine) and expertise (sometimes mine!) to run. Joking aside, the AJS has been a real lesson. It has great potential! Presumably locked away in some secret investment account known only to inanimate machinery.

I’ve been doing very well with avoiding projects, too. And this is not through lack of opportunity, either, because I’ve seen several machines by which I was sore tempted. Only one of them was a bright yellow Norton Commando 750 S with a huge front brake and an Alton electric starter conversion, all fitted and working. That, I told myself, was not a project. That, I told myself again, was a machine that I would simply wheel out whenever I needed fresh air or a trip to the Post Office or maybe lunch, duties which are currently and heroically handled by my modern Triumph twin.

So that particular certainly not a project foundered because apart from a mysterious urge to own a bright yellow Commando (there’s a pattern; my very first Commando, back in 1977 or so, was bright yellow) I could see no justifiable reason to unload a lot of money. However, if I saw it as a project and wasted funds and effort improving it, then I could sell it as a (better) runner for a profit! That is obviously a short path to madness, so I stopped myself.

Then there was the entirely original, unrestored parked in an open barn for thirty years BSA B25T, which was so plainly intended to be an ideal Shedmate for the Triumph T25SS which is possibly my current favourite machine. It was cheap, too. Irresistibly so. Fortunately for mental health and domestic tranquillity, someone else had the same opinion and bought it.

When you reach the far end of this excellent issue (am I allowed to say that?) you will immediately observe that there is a new bike on the bench, somehow. Its tale gets told in the appropriate place and I don’t want to repeat it here, but the plan was to finally sort the AJS 350 while casting an expert eye (well…) over the newly arrived Matchless and make a list. I like making lists. Despite decades of contrary evidence I believe that they will allow me to plan, to order the inevitable parts in some kind of logical order, and then build them into the new bike.

The weather was very good. The meadows were mowed and it was the perfect day for a simple leisure ride, maybe off to inhale some fish’n’chips somewhere by the sea. I don’t know exactly how this happened but somehow instead of drifting in a classic way along the local lanes in pursuit of comestibles I discovered myself elbow-deep in a Matchless clutch. Which is why I really do need to avoid projects!

Ride safely

Frank Westworth Frank@realclassic.net This horribly snotty issue of Realclassic magazine