Surly Sportster

Surly now has a project bike of his own, as well as half ownership of the BSA, and there's a Sprint in my barn that belongs to him, if I remember correctly. Too bad the boy grew up surrounded by half finished motorcycle projects. Guess I'll have to take the blame for that. He got a good deal on this Sportster, though. If I didn't have so many projects, I would have pursued this one myself. A man needs to know his limits, however. Maybe I'll learn mine someday. 

Photo From Here

But right here? Some of the nicest looking sidecovers ever installed on a motorcycle. Since the BSA needs some, maybe something like on this 750 Sport would be in order. Might be hard for the average Joe to get excited about sidecovers but the next photo should help.

The  covers on the 750 GT bump out rather than in and both Ducatis feature a real sexy seat - the Sport on the bike, the GT on the lovely model. While this might not be the best picture to showcase the sidecovers, it does show the relationship between motorcycles and sexy looking girls before the world went all politically correct. At the risk of being pegged a chauvinist pig, as they used to say, I prefer the old days. When we were young guys hoping to someday afford one of these bikes, about the only other thing we were interested in was a little cutie to ride along. Well, maybe hot cars too but to get back to the business at hand, Ducati did have both "innies" and "outies" on the 750 sidecovers to choose from and I'm voting "innie". There are fiberglass sidecovers available to fit the oil in frame BSA's. These have the look of the earlier Triumph's. While these would be a substantial improvement over the stock BSA items, I'm leaning toward making my own. 

Both the GT and the Sport are of about the same vintage as the BSA and both companies were about at the end of their rope. It seems odd that both Ducati and BSA ended up with some rather weird styling on their bikes at this time. I suppose if you're about to go under because you've fallen behind technically, adding a futuristic styling touch might seem reasonable. At least Ducati didn't put a "ray gun" muffler on the GT like BSA did their Rocket 3.

Anyway, I need to decide what I'm going to do. I didn't need another project but I need to do right by my brother with the BSA. Making some spiffy sidecovers would be a fun project. I like doing that kind of thing and it would be a chance to improve my sheet metal skills. It's also what he had mentioned prior to his passing. Give me something to think about while I'm cutting the grass next time.