A Box o’ Bits
Winter was coming and I needed a challenging project. The Fleabay advert said: ‘BMW R45/65 café racer, bobber, street tracker project’. The owner said that the bike was a 1978 model but had not been registered in the UK until 1990. An import, perhaps? I put in my maximum bid and won the auction. Speaking to the seller, he seemed to be a reasonable person but was a bit disappointed that the bike and its bits had not sold for more. I arranged a courier and the project arrived a few days later. So what had I got?
The bike arrived as a rolling project loosely assembled with its engine installed, a heap of new wiring, a partially installed Motogadget M-unit, powder-coated frame and swinging arm, vapour-blasted engine, two fuel tanks and loads of other bits. My first job was to assess what I had got and what to do with it, so I dug into what little was known of the bike’s past history.
It had started life in 1978 as a
