Frank Westworth

We've never had it so good. Official…

Frank buys an Aermacchi that thinks it's a Harley. And thinks it cannot start.

It is so easy – too easy – to take things for granted. And one of the many things I certainly take that way is the ready supply of spares parts for my motley assortment of increasingly elderly British motorcycles. One of the others is ready access to expertise – or, at least, access to folk who have some legitimate claim to be expert in some particular motorcycles. Both, of course, can be of variable value, depending.

One of the several lockdown projects in The Shed has been a Norton Electra, for example. Remarkable machines and interesting in many ways. Stop sneering now! Strangely enough, sneering is what a surprising number of folk do whenever I reveal that I’ve been tinkering with an electric-start Norton which is neither a Commando nor a rotary. Maybe they do this because the words ‘Commando’ and ‘electric start’ are no longer much of a joke, as modern kit makes Commandos reliably self-motivating. Who knows? I’ve never been one to sneer at them, mainly because my own Mk3 Commando – excellently rebuilt by Norvil – was entirely reliable in the click-brumm stakes, as have been several others ridden by several pals.

The Electra? The sneering continues, I’m afraid. Why some folk need to sneer has always been a minor mystery. Maybe it makes them feel good. If so, why?

Norton’s less heavy twins surely do have their detractors, which is, of course, fine by me, not least because hopefully it will keep the prices – bikes and spares, both – in the realms of sanity until my own machine is totally dependable, fleet as the wind, and self-starting at the mere flick of a button. Before you sneer some more, the bike starts entirely reliably on its starter motor when warm. Less so from cold, but I have A Plan. This is to fit two beefy modern 12V batteries into the space Norton kindly provided for the paired 6V batteries required in 1963 to produce a 12V system. That’ll fix it.

It’s all good fun. Easy spares availability, lots of knowledge and even more opinion. This is what we’re all familiar with; all part of the ongoing shared nuttiness of running an old bike. But it can be different. Very different…

I have long been in awe of those seriously smart types who can successfully restore to running order some mysterious machine from the margins of motorcycling. I have a pal who resurrects Jawas, for example. Although I would, of course, never sneer at such obvious eccentricity, I do occasionally share with him my private doubts for his personal sanity. This is what friends are for. Possibly. But his strange mania is not a thing I have shared. Previously. Things change. This is the nature of things. If things no longer change, then we are all surely doomed.

And so it was, gentle reader, that, gripped by some passion I cannot now remember, I leapt into the unknown and bought an Italian motorcycle. An old Italian motorcycle, that is. A few current bikes from that fine country have paraded around The Shed down the years, but I have rarely bought an old one for myself. What is it? It’s an Aermacchi. It may suggest on its fuel tank that it is something different, but we are experts all and recognise an Aermacchi when we see one. Oh yes. You do not fool us, Mr Harley and Mr Davidson.

I bought it out of curiosity, because it looks rather fine, and because it has an electric hoof; increasingly important in these declining days. That hoof was described by the private vendor as being ‘intermittent’. A fine word. A word to remember. It was intermittent only in the sense that it may have self-started a couple of times in the last century, but not since. But we classic bikers are stout chaps, are we not? We can cause a Norton Electra to start itself. How can a masslyproduced Aermacchi 350 single be any harder to motivate into self-motivation than an obscure Norton built by a dying company in its last days?

Except. Except that there are few experts. And there are few spares; none at all for the electric trotter mechanism. Even in this globally-connected electronic age, I can find few folk who can tell me how to make my ’macchi start itself, and less still who can supply bits to help in this. It’s easy enough to kick up, but that is missing the point.

The point is that we need to value, to treasure, the frankly remarkable range of spares and expertise easily available to fans of even the most obscure British machines. We have, really, never had it so good.