Peter’s BSA Dandy

Peter is a Classic TT racer who has this gorgeous little thing in his workshop as an ornament. It’s beautifully designed, capturing the feel of the late 1950s/early 1960s.

He’d restored it years ago, but wanted the electrics to be brought up to the same standard as the rest of the bike. (Which was quite exceptional – Peter is as good at building motorcycles as the brilliant Roger Winterburn.)

BSA originally came up with a strange system where the parking light ran off a 4.5 volt battery, while the rest of the bike basked in the luxury of a dizzy 6 volts. Mercifully, Peter was happy to drop the 4.5 volt bit. The batteries are unobtainable anyway.

Instead he wanted the option of running the lights off a slave battery in the workshop. And I took the chance to make everything as tidy as possible. All fairly simple stuff. The hard bit was getting the back wheel in and out without harming the gorgeous paintwork and unmarked fasteners. I hope I managed it.

It sounds daft but when it fired up for a two-speed, twistgrip-shift ride around the yard, and beeped the horn, it felt like winning the lottery. Simple pleasures.