1948 Vincent Black Shadow

This is a series C which owner Mark had ridden for years. At some point in its past someone had built it a really nice loom, but over several years a fuel leak had embrittled the central chunk, until eventually it stopped working. As only the middle part was damaged, we decided to patch in a new piece, and add a connecting plug just behind the rear cylinder head. That way, if the engine ever has to come out, there’s no need to disconnect everything at the front.

Vincents don’t have different cable colours for different circuits, which is a bit confusing. The factory diagram shows them all black except for one red one! I followed the colours set by the previous loom builder.

With the help of Vincent expert Bob Culver I discovered that the bike had a Chinese car dynamo, rather than the standard Miller or Lucas one. It didn’t work, and you can’t get spares anyway. Mark never rides the bike at night, so decided to leave the Chinamo and just run the battery as a total loss system.