When I bought the bike, the current owner gave me a copy of the previous owner’s registration document. I wrote to him a couple of weeks later to see whether he possibly still had any of the parts left that he’d removed when he modified the bike.
Yesterday, I got a really interesting email from him with some history of the bike. It turns out that he bought it in a pretty sad state, after it had been left to rot at the back of a garage for 17 years. Lots was missing from it and the wiring loom had been nibbled by rodents!
Seeing that condition, I understood why he had done the build in the way he had. Apparently, I have been quite wrong in describing it as a cafe racer - it's a "brat bike" (whatever that is!)
This was the bike when he finished his project:
He thought the mileage before he changed the speedo was around 35k miles. The compression was perfect, which was the deciding reason he rebuilt it.
He said that it was in perfect running condition, after fitting new carbs from Italy and electronic ignition, and used to run really well.
The thing that I was most pleased about was that he sent me a link to a YouTube video of bike in former incarnation and that did indeed show it running really well, so I am very hopeful that the engine should need little doing to it.
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