Matchless Manuals

These couple of manuals were really helpful for learning about the bike and the restoration process. Below each image there's a link to download the manual. You can find them on the side bar too.

1946 Matchless Maintenance Manual and Instruction Book

1939-55 Matchless Maintenance Manual

Some random pics of the restoring process

I took some pics in the process to remember where to put back each small piece like this.

Forks before painting

One of the seat spirngs already primed

Some kind of repair in the fork/brake area

Clutch basket, discs, springs, etc

Oil tank before painting

Original Ammeter, it's working but needed some fixing

The forks. They were a pain in the ass to assemble without the right tools.

Rear wheel and next to it the air compressor I used to do the paint job

Battery box

 I bought the bike with a modern battery, not the original Lucas one. So I had to look for at least a dummy box to put the new battery inside. I found this old battery that looks a lot like the Lucas box and then removed the inner parts. It looks like it was 3 cells inside.

Saddle ready!

Lycette original frame saddle

 I took the frame of the saddle to a shoe maker. He gave me a piece of leather and I aged it to look worn and old. I found some metal clips that looks like the original ones. The result is a real leather restored saddle, a lot better than the ugly one that came with the motorcycle when I got it.

Assembling start

 Assembling the motorcycle was a time cosnuming job, specially if you forget where the nuts and bolts where originally placed! I already knew I was gonna have this problem so I took my time.

I painted the cylinder engine with high temperature paint.

Engine in place

Still a lot of work left

Even in the above picture the motorcycle looks assembled there's a lot of work to be done. The clutch adjustement took me a lot of work. Also a lot of nuts and cables were damaged in the process and need to be replaced by new ones.

Almost done

New hand grips arrived

Handgrips reproductions

I got in the mail this throttle and grips reproductions. I expected the quality to be better, but they're ok.

Matchless Chromed Badge

Original Matchless Badges

 The chromed badges turned out beautiful, I couldn't resist and placed them on the tank.

This is the mudguard number plate, I still don't know if adding the license plate numbers or some other stuff like the model of the bike and year.