w1neophyte
New Member
I'm new to the site, but not new to bikes… I used to race and restore bikes back in the day. After lurking for a while, I was inspired by some of the other projects, so I figured it was about time to get back into things by kicking off a project… something rusty that would take time and effort to bring back to life. I picked up 3 W1s in various states of disprepair, figuring I'll do a restoration on one, and a cafe on at least one other. They fit the "rusty and will take time" criteria well:
They should look something like this:
I started this thread as a way to keep track of the progress, but to also force me to keep moving forward on the project. It certainly won't be a quick one regardless… as a first step I figured I'd tear these two down, and take stock of what I have and what's missing. I have another one that is in slightly better shape that will be the restoration target, but which was missing bits or had wrong parts on it. In particular, it was missing the tank(s), original front wheel, and the fenders had been hacked (lord only knows why people wanted to put those sissie bars on these bikes). The good news is that these bikes have most of the bits that were missing, even if they are in really bad shape. You can rebuild pretty much anything except something that's totally missing…
After tearing them down a bit, this is what we see:
I'm starting to think the BSA Lightning for $750 was a bargain Seriously though, I haven't seen anything that totally precludes a restoration yet, but they guy that told me they had been sitting under a tree for about 15 years might have misguided me… the primaries and engines have stuff that looks suspiciously like silt in there, so I suspect they were actually in a flood at some point. I'm really hoping that the crankshafts aren't toast, because they seem to be a nightmare to rebuild.
They should look something like this:
I started this thread as a way to keep track of the progress, but to also force me to keep moving forward on the project. It certainly won't be a quick one regardless… as a first step I figured I'd tear these two down, and take stock of what I have and what's missing. I have another one that is in slightly better shape that will be the restoration target, but which was missing bits or had wrong parts on it. In particular, it was missing the tank(s), original front wheel, and the fenders had been hacked (lord only knows why people wanted to put those sissie bars on these bikes). The good news is that these bikes have most of the bits that were missing, even if they are in really bad shape. You can rebuild pretty much anything except something that's totally missing…
After tearing them down a bit, this is what we see:
I'm starting to think the BSA Lightning for $750 was a bargain Seriously though, I haven't seen anything that totally precludes a restoration yet, but they guy that told me they had been sitting under a tree for about 15 years might have misguided me… the primaries and engines have stuff that looks suspiciously like silt in there, so I suspect they were actually in a flood at some point. I'm really hoping that the crankshafts aren't toast, because they seem to be a nightmare to rebuild.