Sometime in the mid to late 1980’s, I acquired a motorcycle.
This particular motorcycle was acquired as the result of a conversation in the local bike shop in mid 1989.
An LC for sale! Arrangements to view were made there and then.
Later that day, I beheld a sorry sight.
A neglected, abandoned pile of rust tossed in the corner of someones front garden.
However, it seemed complete, although in places, broken, so a deal was struck for spares, taking into account that…
- The engine was siezed solid
- The tyres were worn out and flat, and the wheels didn’t turn
I initially purchased it as a spares donor for the 350LC which I already owned. The price was too good to ignore, but after getting it home, my inability to let a motorcycle die took over,
Once I had moved it to my garage, the stripdown and inspection showed that remarkably, it was all there, and with a bit of refurbishment could be reclaimed from the dead.
Honestly… if I did not have a “spare” 350LC engine stashed under the workbench ready to go for my main bike, that project, and subsequently, this project, would never have happened.
A couple of months work, and the application of relatively small amounts of money, and an unfeasibly long time spent splicing new wires into the loom, and she was ready to go.
Now I had two LC350s, and I could only ride one at a time, so I was pursuaded to part with this one to a friend of a friend.
He crashed it within 2 weeks.
All Par for the course in the life of an “Elsie”.
Over the next few years, it passed through the hands of a number of friends and acquaintances, until one day it arrived back in my garage in a sorry state, with a request for access to my spare parts bin so that the latest owner could rebuild once again.
He made a splendid job of it, all resprayed in original colours, (for an LC… not for this particular W-reg bike), attention to detail everywhere, (except for the hideous YPVS-F2 exhausts he had fitted).
He rode it for many years until, one day, inevitably, (It’s an LC!), it was involved in a crash. After that, it spent some years chained to the railings in front of his flat. Then when he moved, further years in the corner of the leaky shed of another friend.
Eventually, when the shed needed to be rebuilt, she returned to me along with the logbook and ownership.