Spring spruce-up

With no garage to work in, Gloria stayed under a cover through winter, while I got deep into the Enfield refurbishment in the cosy confines of my shed. Eventually, warmer days arrived and I broke off from the Enfield to scrub her up!

The paintwork on the frame was pretty bashed around, most noticably on the side tubes around the carb / airbox area and on the rear seat loop. I spent a sunny afternoon rubbing down those areas, priming with red oxide and overcoating with a couple of coats of black enamel. I'm most definitely not aiming for concours restoration here, but it came up nice.

The front tyre had been replaced with a very cheap and nasty Chinese CST old-style tyre. It felt like hard plastic and was a very poor match for the more modern section rear tyre. I swapped it for an Avon, which will allow me to also get a matching rear Avon at some point.

Looking at the 2 tyres here, I know which I would rather trust my life with!

I then spent a very happy afternoon cleaning, T-Cutting paintwork, waxing and polishing. Gloria didn't half scrub up nicely!

There are some bits that are letting the side down now, but I'll look at those maybe next winter after the Enfield is finished. The most obvious area is the engine, which has been fairly roughly repainted at some point, and also the frame loop around the engine and under the tank could do with repainting. I'll probably whip the engine out next winter and strip the top end down to check it out (a notorious weak spot on these engines) and that will be the perfect time to sort both of those areas out.

The front brake master cylinder / lever looked like it was off a trials bike and I was concerned that it might not be a good match for the original brake system, so I swapped it for a new "pattern" one in the original style.

And then I added a set of original style mirrors and she started to look like her old self again!

A couple of finishing touches for now - I added a mudguard flap to protect the engine from road spray and grit being thrown up. This photo also shows how nicely the exhaust headers came up after a good clean and polish.

And then I got hold of a reproduction tax disc from the month she was registered, as a daft little touch.

For the purists, I know that the date is incorrect, but I like that it shows her "birthday"! (In reality, the tax disc would show the date the tax expired, so would be 6 or 12 months after the first registration date!)