Carried Away
I admit that very occasionally I do get carried away - or at least perhaps allow ambition to get in the way of common sense. In 2015 I picked up a couple more 1972 GT750's and suddenly found I had no room to put them anywhere, and so some decisions needed to be made.
Just to recap - I originally found this tired old soldier and brought it home:
And then I found its assembly line mate, having the next consecutive frame number. That seemed so incredible (I mean, really what are the odds of that happening) that I decided to restore the both of them. Admittedly, it was not going to be easy as both were in very rough shape. To the right is a photo of them re-united after so many years:
Then, in rapid succession, came three more - all of them basically scrap. And truthfully, one was just a frame:
I also had several spare engines, so clearly some triage was needed.
The two consecutively numbered frames with the original engines were a given. Suzuki iterated the frame design over the course of production, and so to establish a 'theme' I decided to opt for only the original style (actually the worst designed) frame. That eliminated one frame from the list. Likewise a significant change was made to the engine design at about frame number 21133 which eliminated a couple of the engines I had. That left me with the bare frame as a candidate. All I needed was a suitable engine case having a number that was close enough to be 'correct' and I'd be in business. Luckily a search through the heap of old cases in Fred's garden shed turned up one that, once the mouse droppings and dirt were cleaned off it, looked to be in good enough condition to use.
I had already decided to build a bike in each colour offered in 1972 in Canada: basically Yellow Ochre (gold), Candy Jackal Blue and Candy Lavender. The trouble was, there were already a lot of fully restored gold and lavender GT750's here in Calgary. Looking further afield, in Japan the model was offered in a Bright Flake Red which looked really nice, and I liked the Candy Blue so a decision was made.
Everyone does full up restorations - it has turned into a bit of a competition really. A writer whom I enjoy reading by the name of Rick Parkington is a big advocate of 'oily rag' restorations - basically just do what you need to do to make the thing mechanically sound and running properly, and live with the dents and rust which really are the history of the life of that machine. While this is common with older British and American bikes, you don't see many Japanese ones. As I had access to a lavender set of tin, and as there are a load of lavender ones fully restored already, I decided to make my third one a purple oily rag rebuild. It helped that I don't really like purple bikes, and as well there was a chance it would offend a few of the self appointed judges of all things 'correct' out there, which would perhaps put a smile on my face !