While Joe Earl and John Nesbitt had explored the possibility of getting an electric start kit suitable for Joe’s BSA B31, they had drawn a blank so decided that they had to try to make their own.
And, intrigued by the Alton electric start kit which Graham Mudway had fitted to his Norton ES motorcycle that was shown in Old Bike Mart a few issues ago, here’s their take on the process.
“We had thought about doing it for some time, but had been unable to find a suitable kit on the market. It never occurred to us to adapt one designed for a different bike, as Graham has done. We had looked into other kits available on the internet and had made several enquiries, but we were told that this bike could not be converted.
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“The available kits all required an alloy chain-case and we unfortunately had a pressed steel one. We toyed with a number of ideas, including something fitted on the right hand side, driving the kick start shaft, and replacing the kick-start quadrant with a complete gear wheel, so we began hunting for suitable parts.
“One day at an autojumble we met a guy with a 600cc Panther single which had a home-made starter fitted. His wasn’t pretty but it worked and got us thinking… Could we make one ourselves? In the words of Bob the Builder we decided ‘Yes we can!’ and so we got stuck into our electric start conversion from scratch.
Read more and view more images in the May 2019 issue of OBM – on sale now!
