Category: Restoration

When is a Switch worth a Swap?

What is a copy? What is a replica? Aaaah! The language thing again! Copy, let me see: According to the ‘normal’, current usage of the word, a copy is something that, looks like, and if something functional, actually functions like, something else, that this ‘copy’ proposes to replace or replicate. Hmm. Another word! : Replica!…


The Waiting Game

  Don’t we all love it? At the moment there seems to be a slight hiccup with the post, due to Easter, this time… Nevertheless, I can expect delivery sometime within a week, and then I can get on with the packing! The artwork is all finished for the packing slip, just have to print…


First Production Looming

Well, it should have sort of sifted through by now… … I’m not only restoring a Velocette blah,blah, blah, but I’m also setting myself up as a sort of modern-day Don Qixote, Jousting with windmills etc. in my efforts to redress the balance and make parts that FIT, DO THE JOB they were intended for…


Real Glass Miller Rear Lens?

It finally looks as if I actually might have (after 5 months of research) found someone capable and willing to make borosilicate glass mouldings for me for the Miller 36E rear light in less than quantities upwards of 10,000 a Month! The main question is, who will buy them? All the ‘originality’ fetishists will steer…


First Stampings of the ‘Star’

Yep, the day has arrived, when I can see the results of my first ‘remote’ job being completed. As an industrial pattern-maker, my main line is making ‘wooden’ patterns for castings (not always really wooden and these days I’m working hard on some CAD to get stuff CNC’d). Due to a change in family circumstances,…


New 8″ Headlamp Brackets

Yes, that’s right! Just a quicky! Well, today was a good day… I picked up the initial batch of Headlamp-Brackets (or stays as some will still insist on calling them!) for the WEBB forks and Miller 8″ headlamp, so good for Velocette, Norton, Triumph and other manufacturers also on their pre-war Girders. NOT, I might…


8-inch Miller Headlamp

How good are the copies? Well, I have the undoubted pleasure of owning an original Miller lamp shell, with an original ammeter and switch, (the ammeter pictured above is a cheap pattern which doesn’t fit…) although the switch is a later, three-position job, as available now ‘everywhere’ in pattern form; where from I don’t know…probably…


Lucas Altette? (+ some Chrome)

Honk if you’re horny! Old car-bumper stickers are the hit! (Again?) Remember the photos of the Altette I bought a while back? Just to jog your memory, that’s it in the picture above. This is what it looks like now!! Quite a transformation, considering. I disassembled it as far as I could go (the main…


Miller Rear Light Update

A Much Better Rear Light – From Taiwan Not that anyone would (not) notice the difference in the quality of these two parts, without me saying anything about them, but here goes anyway!! Unless you see them side-by-side, how would you know? The one on the right, needless to say, is the one of Indian…


The Wheel Truth

Untruth #1: Only a magician can true wheels! What a load of rubbish! Could do with a bit of time: Yes, could have something to do with WANTING to true them (yourself): Yes. Untruth #2 PATIENCE of Job* required, No, I don’t need it and nor do you. Patience, my friend, is something you only…