Store Cupboard Special

On to part six, and momentum is still being maintained, I though the shopping list is growing ever-longer.

- JAMES ROBINSON

What started out as a joint project between my father and I has, truth be told, become his solo enterprise. While I spend my days indoors in my ‘office’ (aka the spare bedroom) at his house (where I’ve been since March, owing to you know what) staring at my computer screen, in between fretting about have we enough material to get through winter and trying to understand and remember the principles of invoicing, among many, many other things, he, pretty much, heads out into the garage, to keep up the Velocette project momentum.

That’show we’ve got on as far as we have. The other evening, I was chuckling at my colleague Matt Hull’s reference to ‘part 507’ of his own Norton ES2 rebuild in our sister title Classic Bike Guide – it’s nothing like; can’t even be half that yet… – while our own Tim Britton’s Triumph rebuild has gone on since goodness-knows-when, but it does demonstrate how time-consuming these projects are. My dad (retired) almost treats his hobby like a job, and though he’s not out in the garage at 7am, he doesn’t hang about too long in the mornings, and while he ‘knocks off’ by about 4 pm most days – unless he’s on with something he’s particularly enjoying – there’s still about six hours lavished, daily. That is how to make progress.

By the end of last month’s instalment we had a rolling chassis, and, to that chassis, has been added a whole number of parts, including the exciting news that the engine is now in – but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Before then, attention was focussed on the footrests and centre stand. The bits and pieces we had included rear-set footrests and so they were to be retained.