Ola Chicos - Donors bikes of mine

 As I am still moving old stuff from my website to my blog, I figures I would do a one shoot of some other bikes / projects that I have encountered through the years.  

Let's start with this one, an old lambretta LD 125 from 1957.   Got it from in the famous Monteux swap meet in Vaucluse.  My brother in law always wanted a scooter so when I called him to informed him I had found one, he did not hesitate and asked me to buy and restore it for him.

and so I started by taking it apart.   All parts was original but pretty worn down.   Best for you to watch the following video to see the various stage of the project : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ulsd3HQDEQ

Mechanically, I wasn't really sure how to make this engine work, and I didn't have much time either.  At that time I have bought 2 old motorcycles for 100 euro, but did not have time to work on them either and did not have space, so I had put them for sale on local craigslist.   When I guy called George, called me for the old Peugeot 176 from 1956 and we got talking I realised he was a scooter mechanics so I traded the Peugeot against him rebuilding the Lambretta engine.   Which he did.  

As for the Peugeot 176, this is how I gave it to him and how he restored it.  

Not bad.   

Moving on to another story.  When I build my wife Redneck Buell, I had bought a Cyclone M1 which I intended to use as donors bike, but few month later I found an Buell X12 which was more in line with my project.   So, I ended up selling my Buell to the 2nd in command of Wild Motorcycle Magazine.  He came home to pick it up, had some good Corsican meal, and took it back home near Draguignan.  Few months later he, with the help of Dual Mano workshop, they had completed transformed the bike.  

Last donors bike story of mine, is quite recent.   I lived in Houston at the time, and had found a very old Triumph TR6 from 1964, which I had started to modify.   

The idea was to build a cross bike.  For that I had bought and old chassis from a Yamaha 370, the ancestor of the XY, from the mid 70's and had chop the frame of the triumph to adapt rear swing arm and front end.   

You can read the whole project in old archives, to see how I did all that but as I was nearing the end of my project, I got transfer back to Europe and could no longer work on the bike, 

so I sold it to some english bloke that was living in Houston, and he retransformed the bike

Oh yeah, and one last one.   I had bought an Aprilia 650 Pegaso for a project and when I bought it the guy also had a Montesa 125.   When I left France for the US, I gave the Montesa to my neighbor Fabrice who wanted to rebuild it.   As he was surfing for parts, the original owner of the bike re-appear and ask him to trade his old and first bike against a brand  new one.   So now fabrice owns a trial bike