I was half way through building up the 'IL Bastardo' Ducati project which I was hoping to just about have done in time to go away on a European bike trip.
I had / have a pretty busy workshop schedule upon my return but as always I said "What are you after fella? I'll see if I can help ..........."
As it turns out Chris phoned to ask me to restore a bike as a surprise birthday gift for his girlfriend.
She'd learned to ride on an SL125 back in the day and had recently bought this example unseen online with the intention of sorting it out and putting it on the road etc. As with a lot of these plans the bike had made it's way further and further towards the back of the barn as more important things took precedence.
You see this particular girlfriend is no other than the legend that is Patsy Quick, first British woman ever to participate in the Dakar in 2003 and first British woman ever to complete it in 2006. She now owns and runs the Desert Rose Rally race team and Desert Rose off road training school. It's fair to say that she's pretty handy on two wheels. Chris is no stranger to the rally scene himself and is a very accomplished privateer rider. Some of you may remember a Honda CRM250 Activated Radical that I restored last year which had spent five days in the sea, that is Chris's own bike.
Patsy .....
Chris .....
"How bad is it?" I asked, "I don't know, I haven't seen it" was the reply ......... "I'll get one of the lads to dig it out and get it up to you, give me a call when it arrives"
I kid you not, three hours later a van pulls up outside my workshop and we unload this ........
I emailed the photos over to Chris and we came up with a plan. Although the bike was all there (or so I thought) every single component would need attention, the tank was full of rust, any chrome that was left was shot. It needed a full nut and bolt rebuild! On the positive side I did spend 20 minutes or so buggering about so it would run, and it did run, it sounded sweet, it selected all it's gears and didn't smoke.
I finished IL Bastardo with a couple of days to spare before my trip so I spent one of them stripping the little SL down to component form and the other ordering parts and running about dropping parts off for powder coat or chrome or zinc plating. The next day I left for my trip and hoped that all my vendors would keep to their end while I was away .............
............... They didn't
I got back and made a few calls, a few new promises and we had a new schedule, turns out that the powder coating was ready after all, the zinc plating was imminent but the chroming was still in progress (read - still in the box under his bench)
I set to work on the engine, it had been completely hand painted silver, I painstakingly stripped layer after layer of paint using solvent. I got the main crank cases, barrel and head back to bare alloy then removed the clutch and generator covers for blasting and paint, cleaned up and polished any areas that were staying un painted.
I won't prattle on any more about every stage of the process so I'll summarise by saying it was a lot of this -
-Cleaning
-Grinding
-Sanding
-Painting
-Sorting
-Greasing
-Assembling
The new parts arrived in their droves, I managed to find a NOS seat in Malaysia, a pair of NOS wheels in the States, cables, tyres, tubes etc etc etc
There are a couple of bits on the bike which aren't actually native SL125, with an endless budget of time I could have maybe tracked down a couple of the more illusive parts. However, given the time constraints and parts availability, the plan was to restore as much of what was there as was reasonably practical. A Honda purist might have something to say about it but in all honesty the bike looks very well just as it is!
I managed to pretty much complete the whole restoration in just about two long weeks :blink:
The chrome was the last piece of the puzzle which I got back two days before the bike was due to be delivered.
The reason for the frantic activity is that the whole Desert Rose troop were heading down to the Pyrenees for Patsy's birthday celebrations so the bike needed to be ready to be hidden in the race truck for the journey down along with 20 or so other bikes!
I took the bike down to meet the truck just before it boarded the train through the channel.
I got a phone call on Sunday morning, it was Patsy herself thanking me for the work I'd done, she'd been presented with the surprise bike that morning :beerjug:
