Why do I restore v45 motorcycles?
An excellent question, and one that I've asked myself a lot lately.
My son and I had a good time, and formed some lasting bonds, during our first project.
The rules of civilization require it - for a more full explanation of what this means, read this Peter Egan column from Cycleworld Magazine.
I'm continuing to learn. I've joked that each project bike has come with its own lesson's to teach me. Sometimes I think I'm almost done with a project, and then the bike reveals one more lesson.
I know much of this is the learning process and I'm just paying tuition.
There must be something in the psychology of 40-somethings, that compels us to take something someone else has given up on and through our own effort, attention, intelligence and parts bikes, return it to useful service. Perhaps we're silently thinking "Don't anybody give up on *me* yet!"
It's the reversal of chaos
It's that very reversal of chaos, or course, that makes motorcycle restoration so time-consuming-and expensive. Well, not expensive in my case, but certainly not cheap. Occasionally I'll read an
email from someone considering a 'project' and one of their stated reasons is that is that "it'll be a way to get a bike cheap"(in fact, I said almost the exact same thing when I bought our first project bike). But time and experience has taught me that the only way to do this kind of thing economically it to do more than one of the exact model of bike. PB98 ended up needing a carb cleaning and a $4 part(which I pulled off a parts bike, but it just as easily could have needed $100 worth of clutch plates and springs. Add new tires that these thinkgs almost *always* need, and your soon approaching the dollar amount that you could have gotten a running bike for.
It's a way to acquire bikes while continuing to put a child through college.
