Budget your restoration before you begin – Real expectations with a real budget will help in the long run
The end goal is to take something that hasn’t been new in 30-50 years and make it new again. A lot of the parts involved won’t have aged well and will need replacing. Before you get started you should add up the costs of all of the parts you may need to replace. You want to make sure you have realistic expectations and a budget to match!
Take pictures of everything – Putting everything back together easier
Remember, before you un-clip a connector, before you turn a wrench, before you do anything, take a picture of the before so that you can remember how to get to the after! We know this sounds simple, but this simple tip could save you a big headache later!
Sometimes you expect to spend the next two hours working on a job, only to get called out for an emergency, it’s three days until you can get back into the garage, and now you have no idea how to put what you were working on back together again. Take pictures of everything so that you don’t have to guess.
Go Japanese
Sure, BMW or Harley-Davidson are great picks, however we strongly recommend going with a Japanese motorcycle for a first motorcycle restoration for a few key reasons: Simplicity, cost, availability, and online community.
Japanese motorcycles are pretty simple compared to European motorcycles, they’re more cost-efficient than American motorcycles, they’re easy to find parts for (as long as you get a model that was in production for more than just a couple years), and there’s a huge online community and websites dedicated to restoring them.
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