01/07/2025
Reasons to Use a Restoration Shop over DIY.
British motorcycle owners from time to time, are confronted with the question of whether or not to have a professional restore their motorcycle. Sometimes, it's a new acquisition with which the buyer is not entirely familiar, and other times it's an issue of the owner's available time.
Keep in mind, we are not speaking here of general maintenance or repair, but actual restoration of a motorcycle, or motorcycle project.
Here are some reasons to not do it yourself, and take it to the restoration expert.
Tools
Hand tools, engine lathes, milling machines, TIG welders, hydraulic presses, blast cabinets and more are found in abundance in the professional's shop. The professional will have the correct type of tool to tighten and loosen each and every type of fastener found on an English motorcycle. These are such as pin spanners, slotted sockets, very deep often odd-sized sockets, and many in impact form. Often we see workshop manuals describing a variety of special tools, and on some occasions the home mechanic can 'get away' with some substitute, 'just this once'. However, the professional will have the correct tool for the job. Often the professional will have made the special tool required or altered a standard tool to suit the job. The DIY'er will balk at the expense of shaping or grinding or welding on an expensive socket or wrench to suit one situation, but the pro will expect to do this as a matter of course.
While the home wrencher may get away with a dodgy tool or process now and then, the result often is a damaged fastener or part. Also, many instances require the application of high torque in a specific assembly that is impossible to get without resorting to an expensive compressed air tool, with application specific fittings. Not using the expensive or rare factory tool often results in:
damaged seals
improper tightening, especially in primary transmission, transmission and clutch assemblies.
Damaged nuts and threads.
Damaged fork and wheel parts such as seal holders, bearings, bearing collars, etc.
Inspection
A professional can determine the difference between scuffing and spalling, and the cause of each. Different types of corrosion have differing causes. Can you identify them? What types of non-destructive inspections can you perform? Can you perform dye-penetrant testing reliably, and do you know when to use it and when not? How can you determine when a part is worn out, or still serviceable? Do you know precisely when a weld or other process is successful? What are the main points to review to establish road-worthiness? What do you look for prior to starting a new engine and immediately after? The professional will know all of these.
Processes
Several types of repair and restoration processes are available. Welding, soldering, brazing, swaging, painting, powder-coating, electro-plating, abrasive blasting, heat treating, hand-lining, clear-coating, lapping, surface grinding, metal shrinking and stretching, and so many more. Each process should match the restoration requirement. Often a repair differs significantly from the original manufacturing process.
As a do-it-yourselfer, do you know what cadmium plating processes are, where they are appropriate, where to find them and how to prepare for them? The same questions apply to chrome plating, and other metal restoration processes.
A professional restorer will know for sure when to use paints of different types and what the results will be. A significant part of the restoration process is in preparation. Preparation includes safely repairing, sealing and protecting various types of materials used in original manufacturing from repair and restoration activities and usage. Epoxies, polyurethanes, polymers, polyesters, cynoacrylates, and many more modern and older compounds and chemicals come into play in the restoration process. Each must be selected carefully taking into account longevity, originality, reliability, suitability and more.
Parts
In a perfect and easy world, each restoration project would consist of disassembly, identification of worn, damaged and defective parts, acquisition of new parts and re-assembly. The professional restorer knows what the DIY'er doesn't, with respect to parts. Some of that knowledge is:
Parts are often damaged in the disassembly process, most often by poorly skilled work.
Once disassembled, often parts are very difficult to identify correctly, especially when they have been replaced in the past, incorrectly.
Identification of a part worn beyond use is a matter of judgement, and when availability of a particular part is questionable, replacement may not be an option.
What caused a part to fail? Will a replacement of one part require the replacement of another?
What part supplier is best to use? How many suppliers are available to you? A professional's resources will be many, where the DIY'er may have very few part resources, if any.
Often the most important decision to be made in a restoration will be when, or if, one should use and original part or not.
Safety
Often motorcyclists are tagged as being risk takers by nature. After all, every motorcyclist confronts falling down and having a relatively unprotected body out in the slipstream susceptible to flying bugs, stones and dirt on a regular basis. Thus, safety may not be the top item on everyone's list. However, once you see a motorcycle catch fire due to poorly constructed wiring, badly routed fuel lines, and oil spraying everywhere, one's opinion of the need for safety changes.
We have had customers request the usage of an old, worn and hard-to-find original part in their restoration project to enhance the value of the bike, and increase the 'wow' factor when some might say 'you don't see those...'. We will decline the usage of these old parts on the basis of safety. Old wiring connectors, fatigued fasteners, deteriorated rubber components, poorly fitting parts and more should be rejected as unsafe.
Experience
Overall, the professional restorer should have relevant experience that is not available to the DIY'er. This experience most often manifests itself when viewing a “restored” motorcycle and the items and particulars of the bike are simply not right. By “not right” we mean that the motorcycle would not have come that way as original. Originality is the acme and goal of any restoration. Anything less is just a repair at best, and most often a stop-gap measure to offload the motorcycle. Because a motorcycle runs and goes, and maybe looks nice, it is not restored.
The ways in which the professional restorer gains experience is:
He or she was there when the motorcycle was new, and their memory is intact.
The restorer has a collection of original parts and equipment that inform as to how things looked, felt and performed when new.
In addition to empirical evidence of the way it was, a good photographic library is invaluable.
A perfect example of proper restoration experience is in the painting of a gas tank. Currently, many reproduction gas tanks are available for many British motorcycles. Some look better than others, and some are simply awful. How does one judge what is correct when so many acceptable-looking tanks are available?
Before restoring an original tank, we took pictures of each detail and kept chips of the original paint.
Who Really Cares, It's My Bike!
So often we hear comments to the effect of 'lighten up', 'It's their bike and they can do whatever they please.'. There is some truth and meaning to the idea that any bike that is saved from the junk heap is worth the effort. However, for the most part we too often see motorcycles that claim to have been restored when in fact they are put together cheaply to sell as quickly as possible.
In reality, it is proven time after time, that the motorcycles are going to outlast us humans and our ownership is really just temporary. We as lovers of British motorcycles are always best served by aspiring to do the best we can to maintain and preserve these machines to that they continue to speak to each generation. The people are few who have the British bike the bought new before 1972, so it is up to the restorer to safeguard that originality we all so crave.
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