The gauges to fit my 1973 GT750 arrived this week from Barbados, where they were rebuilt by a friend of mine, Allan Tucker. He operates a small Suzuki gauge repair business from his home there, and he is passionate about his hobby. I had planned to refurbish the gauges myself, but had seen his work and thought it would be just one less thing for me to have to worry about – plus knowing what a obsessive perfectionist he is, I was reasonably certain they would turn out better than if I tried to do them myself ! Looking at the results, I’d say I made the right call, as they do look virtually brand new !
Here are a couple of ‘before’ photos – as you can see the gauges looked pretty tired.
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And here is how they look now !
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I supplied Allan with new glass lenses which were made for me by Ron Walder, owner of The Glass Guild here in Calgary. He and I met at an antique auto-restoration work shop put on by the Reynolds Museum in Wetaskiwin. The new lenses fit perfectly, and really dress up the look of the refurbished gauges ! Also, as a part of the refurbishment process, Allan checks the calibration of the gauges and adjusts the mechanism as required to ensure they read as accurately as possible, so in that respect they are probably better than new as from the factory, Suzuki gauges really were not too accurate above about 60 mph !
Of course I now have a small problem – somehow I need to bring the rest of the bike up to the quality of finish of the gauges, otherwise they will make the rest of the bike look bad ! It is a nice problem to have ….