Once the paint had been stripped off all the parts, we were not expecting to find that many of them were original to the bike. The fact that the bike had been raced hard, in several iterations, suggested that we were unlikely to find many original parts besides the main lumps, which we knew to be correct. As we know, being a very early example, 2751 had been subject to special finishes and attention-to-detail at The Works. So, any parts showing signs of dull chrome are, without any shadow of a doubt, certain to be genuine to the bike. The /1 suffix to the parts number differentiates this component from regular unplated links which were listed in the Parts List as ‘FF3’.
This is more than we could have hoped for and leads us to believe that the Girdraulic fork assembly stayed together as one lump.
Now we had to decide what to do; whether to have it re-finished or leave as-is. The latter is, of course, the preferred course of action. However, in this case, so little of the original plating is left that we feel that we are within our rights to have it re-finished in the correct dull chromium plate. Raw castings do not keep their plated finishes particularly well and the link has already started to rust in places. This will only get gradually worse unless the surface is protected.
The bushes have been removed and this part is ready to take to the platers at the end of this week.
Grey Flash 2751 