Friday 9 March 2012

La Hornette

From Jorg at Single & Twin, Hamburg

The bike came from the U.S. and when we bought it (too expensively) it was in quite poor condition, but complete and quite original, apart from some American goodies like oil tank, taillight, muguards and so on.
When we stripped it down, we realized that it needed a full rebuild, including timing side roller bearing conversion, better oil pump, and the usual things like grinding the crankshaft, new pistons, valves, guides etc.
The customer wanted to keep the U.S. style oiltank, but I didn't want to keep it as it was, so I redesigned the mounting and hacksawed away all obsolete mountings for battery and other stuff not in use anymore to make the frame look clean, because we also din't want the sidecovers to hide things behind. Finally we replaced all the used and abused parts that made the bike look knackered like mudguards, front wheel (which had a big crack around the hub, as we realized later!) and after six month time and some more money spent, off it went to Belgium. What a sad moment.
The only thing I am not so fond of is the double seat, which looks a bit odd for a street scrambler, but because they want to ride it two persons up, we had no other choice.
The artwork is made by Preben, the boyfriend of our customer, probably with some kind of iphone app. The photoraph was made by Volker Wenzlawski, a friend of mine.
Hope that helps and hope to meet you somewhere sometime.
regards from Hamburg, Jorg

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