But even putting my reservations about the diluting of a special era
I still dont believe you could build a bike from scratch for under 10k
I have no idea what you mean by diluting the era but having done a reasonable amount of study of the era and they ran literally anything in the day - you just see all the flash Metisse etc up front in National events, go check out the club scene of the day.
Because you lack imagination. Just before I decided to come to China I was well underway for my pre '65 bike and besides the engine which was a firing Triumph 500 twin (that fired as a single) that I started to build, the rest of the bike was pure budget stuff and wouldn't cost a bloke $500 (besides the engine as mentioned).
C15 (or B40) frame, Bantam tank, home made seat, cheap alloy guards from a swap meet - what else is there? Plenty of cheap period wheels around if you don't have to use CZ, Rickman, REH etc.
Forks were interesting, any old 60's Triumph steel lowers which are common as and I grabbed some non descipt old 36mm Japanese road bike forks from a wreckers for $20, cut the lower axle mounts off and turned the outside of the alloy lower legs down until they slid down inside the Triumph steel lowers (theres long and short steel British lowers btw). The Triumph forks have huge seal/spring holders and gaitors as standard so everything looks cosher. Nothing special about them and certainly no where near as good as Ceriani, CZ etc forks but safe at least and very cheap to make.
So welcome to our forum Cheapracer, a place full of those such raging egos. You certainly qualify.
Thanks! huh? hang on a minute ....