Another Vincent resurrection sees the light of day and once again breathes fresh air. Steve Hamel recently (2 weeks ago) purchased a 1952 Vincent Rapide Touring basket case that was disassembled circa 1961 after a big end failure. He set-out the goal of building the bike up from bare cases in 2 weeks and riding it to the Blind Lizards Motorcycle Club Rally in MPLS MN today. Well, after rebuilding many assemblies (crank, heads, tranny, primary, etc) and putting the bits back together he made it and here are a few pictures of the gem from this morning.
Don’t want to say more than I know about the pedigree, but as an interesting aside have been told that circa ‘52-‘53 the bike was being ridden by the dealer’s son to the flat track races in Dodge City, KS where along the way he had a fatal accident. The bike was then sold by the dealer to the 2nd owner who disassembled it in 1961 as described above, and there it sat until 2 weeks ago. I’m sure there will be more known of its pedigree as time goes on, but thought you might enjoy hearing a snippet of back story and seeing the result of this labor of love. Gotta just love that green color eh? I pray he never washes it.
Don’t want to say more than I know about the pedigree, but as an interesting aside have been told that circa ‘52-‘53 the bike was being ridden by the dealer’s son to the flat track races in Dodge City, KS where along the way he had a fatal accident. The bike was then sold by the dealer to the 2nd owner who disassembled it in 1961 as described above, and there it sat until 2 weeks ago. I’m sure there will be more known of its pedigree as time goes on, but thought you might enjoy hearing a snippet of back story and seeing the result of this labor of love. Gotta just love that green color eh? I pray he never washes it.
