THE ART of UPGRADING
Whenever old bike enthusiasts gets together it’s not long before conversation drifts to comparing changes that members have made to their bike. On one occasion an angry member demanded to know just what I’d done to my 1948 Mark3 Douglas. ‘You left me standing!’ he complained bitterly. Well, here’s the answer – upgrades.
My Mark3 Douglas is not a collector’s treasured original. Like many older bikes it was already a bit of a hybrid when I bought it, in 1996. When it was first made, just three years after the end of the war, materials were still in short supply. Bikes were made to a tight budget, often relying on low grade materials and designed to run on very poor quality fuel. One Douglas Club member told me that he mixes a pint of paraffin with each tank of petrol. ‘They were designed to run on terrible low-grade fuel, and that’s what it does best on now!’ he said.
Since then we’ve seen remarkable upgrades in our roads, as well as a great increase in both the numbers and the capabilities of the vehicles using them. A bike that was accepted as perfectly adequate 70 years ago can be downright scary on today’s far more crowded roads. I realised this a few years back when following some old riders on their even older classics on my Yamaha XJ600 – it was terrifying!
The questions most old bike riders face are apparently quite simple. Should you alter – upgrade, if you wish – a classic to fit existing road conditions, or for your own personal preferences? Is it better to restore them to perfect examples of their original
