The rebuild: Autumn 2007 – postscript

It’s now 6 years and 6000 miles since the rebuild. So, how has the Le Mans stood up?

Wear and tear

I’m very pleased: owing to the quality of the paintwork and chroming, and extensive use of stainless steel and ceramic coating, it still looks immaculate. I’m particularly impressed by the ceramic coating on the engine, which has proved heat- and chip-resistant, and remains totally unmarked.

The front tyre recently wore out. The Michelin Macadam 90x tyres have been superseded by the 100x series, which last longer, so that’s what I fitted. I took this opportunity to play around with tyre pressures, to see if I could improve the already excellent handling: using the 10% rule (‘the ideal warm tyre pressure should be 10% higher than the cold pressure’) I ended up with 33/36 psi front/rear (cold) – which is what Michelin recommends for bikes using these tyres, and what I'd been using anyway ...

Reliability

I encountered three problems immediately after the rebuild in 2001. The first was minor: nuts and bolts working loose, especially from the gear linkage, which I fixed by changing fastener types.

The second problem was more intrusive: when the engine got hot, the clutch dragged badly – the hotter the engine, the worse the drag, making the bike almost unrideable in heavy traffic. As the clutch was brand new, Wessons replaced it at no cost. Although the replacement clutch was better, it still dragged in traffic, and Wessons came to the conclusion that Italian quality control isn’t all it should be, and offered to fit an after-market RAM clutch–flywheel assembly at a significant discount – which cured the problem. I discovered that the RAM clutch had two other benefits: a lighter clutch lever action, and improved acceleration, owing to the very much lighter flywheel.

Lastly, I noticed that one of the front discs I fitted was warped. Unfortunately, the discs were an uncommon size (298 mm) and thus expensive to replace; as an alternative, I bought cheaper 320 mm discs, and machined new caliper brackets out of stainless steel to suit them. The difference that the larger-diameter discs makes is startling  – the brakes are now much more powerful and very progressive.

When the bike was run in, I did a dyno run, which confirmed that the bike had a lot more low-end and mid-range power, as I intended – very gratifying! However, at high revs the power delivery was ragged, caused by too-rich carburation – which was easily sorted out by leaning off the mixture.

Has the Le Mans been unreliable during the past 6 years since these teething problems were addressed? No, not once: it’s run like clockwork every time.

Further modifications

I’ve changed a few things since the rebuild, in addition to replacing the clutch–flywheel and front discs.

In 2003, I fitted a fork brace (as the forks were flexing slightly), painted the forks black and made the handlebars taller (for comfort).

The last alteration was in 2004. The headlight was not as bright as I would’ve liked, so I replaced it with a Raybrig multi-reflective 100 W unit. Not only is this far brighter, but the light is much less yellow, improving vision. Also, the reflector is blue, which looks cool!

There’s a few things I’d like to do in the future: replace the heads with twin-plug Raceco-tuned ones; add a cross-over to the exhausts to increase torque; fit a 140 section rear tyre (purely for cosmetics!); and fit a hydraulic clutch conversion. (In fact, I bought an MG Cycles hydraulic clutch kit in 2007, but have yet to fit it.)

There’s one final change I’d like to make – every so often a voice whispers to me: ‘Supercharge it!’. The idea is not as mad as it seems: Pete, of Black Dragon Motorcycles, supercharged his Moto Guzzi 850T in the mid-1990s, and despite regular use it has proved totally reliable. Black Dragon Motorcycles offer supercharging as a service, and estimate that it would cost £5000.

Sold!

I sold the Le Mans in November 2007, after 13 years of owning it.

It was sad to see watch its new owner riding off into the distance, but the time had come for the Le Mans to move on. My friends gave up motorcycling long ago, and now won’t even ride pillion. I did try a few bike clubs, but they weren't for me: I like cafe racers, bikers (‘greasers’) and building my own bikes, whereas modern bikers seem to ride garish plastic race replicas or pseudo-American leather-tassled cruisers, and neither group appears at all interested in how their bikes work or tinkering with them, let alone building a cafe racer or custom bike – as my friends and I did in the 1970s and 1980s.

Also, photography has become an overriding passion in recent years, and, as I like well-engineered machines that use traditional materials (one of the reasons I bought the Le Mans), I wanted a Leica M8 – a cutting-edge digital camera, yet built of machined brass and having traditional manual controls that a photographer from 50 years ago would find familiar. Leica have also bucked the trend for technological obsolescence: rather than bringing out a new model every 18 months, as most manufacturers do, making current models obsolete, destined to for landfills or to langush forgotten in dusty cupboards, the Leica M8 can be updated over the years.

Unfortunately, the Leica M8 and one lens cost over £4000 …