Jim C's UK Spec Royal
Story From Jim.
1981 Royal Wedding
I have a number of bikes including a NOS 1981 Bonneville as well as a chocolate brown T140e from 1978.
Trawling E Bay one night I chanced upon a NOS Royal with a tale. This one had been exported new to Japan where it had been stored,
(slightly damply I suspect),till the buyer died .It was then repatriated to the UK last year.
Well you have to go look- so I did and luckily it was only in Bath around 50 miles from the Southampton area where I live. Advertised for a
heady price inspection revealed it had suffered somewhat from the ravages of time and whilst definitely NOS it was in that no man’s land
of being too shabby to leave alone whilst being totally originally and unspannered.
You SHOULD AVOID bikes like this as they are only worth the asking price if original, not been on the road and factory fresh. Otherwise you
face the dilemma of spending a fortune making it good,(and somewhat destroying its factory originality), orleaving ituntouched and
wincing every time you look at it.
So I ignored ALL my own advice and bought it with a haggle on the price (still paid too much but it is pretty unique).
Japanese number plate; Japanese Speed Limiter Lamp-linked to a special version of the normal speedo with a contact wire sprouting out of
the bottom. Pretty much UK Spec otherwise.
Sadly came without bill of sale,certificate, handbook, toolkit or special tank bung.
SO -what had I bought? No oil in engine -no oil in gearbox; clean plugs -all nuts looked untouched.
BUT
Put oil in Gearbox -piddled out of the inner joint. Stripped and replaced gasket. Good
Chrome on Tank strangely marked with badswirl marks. Eventually found out they were under the lacquer and when removed the chrome
was perfect. VERY fiddly job to get lacquer off chrome parts without destroying Meriden’s finest wobbly gold lining and black paint.
Bits of the grey frame /swinging arm were going brown and were rescued with car wheel paint and a re-lacquer.
The Marzocchi rear shocks worked -but were a cosmetic disaster with peeling paint and rusty springs. The internals were perfect, with clean
damping fluid and shafts were OK. Off to the powder coaters who did an excellent job. All assembled well and with new decals look the
business.
Front forks had to come down as Yokes,(Triple Trees to our US cousins), were going rusty and the bottom sliders were all chipped and
scratched. They DIDhowever have oil in. The stanchions were junk-rusted beyond cleaning. I did consider having them hard chromed -but
that’s twice the price of pukka new ones. Powder coated the sliders and yokes. One slider was a problem as under the original paint it was
full of blow holes in the casting. Didn’t powder well and I had to refinish another way. All went back together with new stanchions and
seals OK.
Wheels -paint was peeling off the Morris Wheels and the rims were looking somewhat jaded. Much elbow grease with wet and dry and
metal polish restored a fair finish and the wheels were cleaned and masked off, (takes for ever), and painted with PJ1 Satin. Not perfect but
much more acceptable.
Both brake master cylinders were seized solid. The front one had had the actuating pin removed -nice. All the hoses were blocked solid as it
clearly had stood all those years with a fullhydraulic system. Strangely all the calipers were good and moved freely after a bit of a flush with
new fluid. I retained the lever pivots for both MCs and screwed in newSS cylinders. Managed to find NOS Triumph OEM hoses for the front
and made up a hybrid for the rear using a new hose but OEM springy wrapping.Presto all brakes worked once I had unbunged therear fluid
reservoir!
Side panels -paint bubbling and the right hand one was partially broken at the frame “clips”. The lacquer on the bottom part of the panels
was crazed. Careful sanding around the “limited” emblems and a new dose of lacquer brought them up well. But still needed tofix
thepaint/panel . Boy is it hard to find a right hand panel.
Finally found a company in Tewkesbury who repaired the broken panel and replicated the “limited” decal really well . The contrasting black
paint and hand gold lining they did were good replicas of the original.
Sourced an elusive tank bung from a mildly reluctant Bill Crosby at Reg Allen. Thanks Bill.
Chrome
Oh dear. All slightly pickled -or rusty.Cleaned up OK for the long look but not pristine close up. What to do?.I have an ace chromer nearby-
he is expensive---but you can’t get new Meriden silencers,(Mufflers), anywhere let alone all the other special components. Pattern parts are
cheap and readily available---but not original----
So all the chrome parts went in. £1000+ later they are the dogs wedding tackle and really lift the bike.
Nearly finished the bike now. Will never start or ride it. But it now looks“proper”.
The purists might say I have destroyed some of the originality and they are right. I have tried not to remove anything I didn’t have to and
ALL of the Meriden factory parts including fasteners are back on the bike.
A unique Japanese export. Money well spent on restoration?--- I doubt it. But I have rescued the bike for another 40 years and
meanwhileit’s lovely to look at.
On a personal note I studied Applied Physics at Durham University and did 40 years in the Defence Industry as a Missile/Radar Design
Engineer and then many forms of Project management , Manufacturing and Test ,General Management and latterly as the MD and CEO of a
number of companies building super high tech products for the market.
Spannering is a good counterpoint to management “speak”
I’m married with two girls and two boys. All grown up now with last two at University.
Live in the New Forest in Southern England with wife Lee and many animals.
Jim C.
