Well the annual VMCC Autojumble at the Bath & West Showground in Somerset was upon us and me and my Dad went down for our regular rummage for bike parts (mostly Matchless stuff), normally we leave empty handed or with some random tools as they looked shiny.
But this year was different while walking around one of the halls I spotted a large fuel tank, upon closer inspection, it was determined to be from a 1991 BMW R100GS PD (PD for Paris Dakar) and the rest of the bike sat there next to it in a somewhat dishevelled state. I looked at my dad and said we have always liked these but they have always just been too damned expensive and this is likely to be another of those moments. Then we looked at the price and we both decided we liked the look of the price and I am in a position to afford to buy another motorcycle. So my dad did his thing of looking about the bike and checking that it was actually a PD and that there were enough bits to get it going again. The owner wanders over and tells us its been stored in a barn for 8 years and he admitted he has borrowed the odd bit from it for his customer’s bikes and he would send us the front brake calliper that he didn’t rebuild. A deal was done and I bought it on the basis I could take it away from the show and save him having to take it home.
So the next challenge was to borrow a lorry from my dad’s work then to load up the boxes of bits and bike and get it home. Walking back and forth I managed to set off my watches “You have achieved your amount of steps for today”. My dad happily walked the bike down to the lorry and was rather smugly happy when people would ask if it was for sale and he could say “no we just bought it”.
So I got it home and had to take a bunch of pictures before I started to do anything on it.
At this point, I realised the bike was in a desperate need of a damned good clean. So out with some WD40 and a rag to see if I can clean this bike up a bit. But I wanted to jet wash it but decided better of it because of the engine is open to the elements etc. But I did take to
So its a bit cleaner but requires some fresh paint in places but the plan is to get it running then over the summer I can do the odd bit of restoration to it to bring it back to its former glory.