Author Topic: Recently restored B31  (Read 1895 times)

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GBonduel

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Recently restored B31
« on: 04 August, 2017, 22:57:45 »
Hello everyone, and greetings from Guatemala, this is my first post.

Decided to share some pictures of the 1955 B31 I just finished restoring. My father bought this motorcycle back in the 80's and had it lying around in a shed until a couple of years ago when I decided to bring it back to life.


Bess

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Re: Recently restored B31
« Reply #1 on: 04 August, 2017, 23:18:42 »
Hi,
     Wow,

A superb build, you must have found obtaining the parts in Guatemala an issue. I'm impressed  :) :) :)...

Regards....

GBonduel

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Re: Recently restored B31
« Reply #2 on: 05 August, 2017, 00:02:00 »
A bit more backstory.

The story began when I found in a cabinet in my dad's shop some engine parts and asked him about it. He said they were from a project he'd started about 20 years ago and hadn't worked on since.
There was a gasket set and a new piston with the parts, two carburetors and everything was already nice and clean so I decided since I like assembling engines to give it a go without even having taken a look at the motorcycle at that time.

The gearbox came next and it was in pretty good shape too so that part progressed quickly.

The magneto was restored by a specialist in the US which was BY FAR the most expensive part of the restoration. He also sent me new cables and some assorted small parts.

GBonduel

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Re: Recently restored B31
« Reply #3 on: 05 August, 2017, 00:29:46 »
After the engine and gearbox were done I finally took a look at the bike.

Fortunately, almost all the parts were there so what I actually needed to find was very little. Most of the parts I had to order from the UK but fortunately they weren't many and shipping was surprisingly not too expensive (although one order did get lost in the mail). It's amazing how modern technology has helped to make finding parts for these old machines so easy, in fact I think maybe even easier than for my modern car!

I had access to sandblasting, so pretty much everything including the wheel spokes got that done (that was NOT fun); and chroming here is very inexpensive so all of the original parts were rechromed.

The fuel tank was by a long shot the hardest thing to do, and if I were to do it again I'd definitely buy a new one instead, if anyone has any experience with the Indian ones on EBay please let me know if they're good. A rat had been living inside of it so it had lots of corrosion and holes which were a pain to fix. The result looks OK but the metal is probably very thin on several places (has a good thick plastic coating inside, don't remember the name of it at the moment) and under the rubber caps the chrome looks very bad but for the moment that'll do.

On the electrical side, the original loom was burnt so I was fearing the worst. Ordered a new loom from the US which had different color coding from the diagram I had on hand but surprisingly once connected everything worked, even the original regulator and brake light switch (which had spiders living inside).

Next step is paperwork, since it hasn't been on the road since probably the late 70's there are a lot of hoops to jump through.


Greybeard

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Re: Recently restored B31
« Reply #4 on: 05 August, 2017, 09:11:12 »
A fine looking machine. Well done and good luck with the 'hoops'  :D
Its good to know that Britain's finest are still being restored around the world.

Steve
Steve from East Yorkshire - Not the Greybeard of the A7/A10 forum who was not actually registered on this one when I signed up ;-)