I bought my bike in south Bristol from a really dodgy bloke who was selling off his "collection". Originally I went to look at a Triumph T100 but he sold it before I arrived. Then he wheeled out this frightening looking red cafe racer. The asking price was £550, scandalous in 1978 and in the end I paid £500. The guy acted like he was forced to give away his priceless classic but the truth was that I had been comprehensively fleeced.
I replaced the gigantic red fibreglass petrol tank with a Thruxton one and my bike started to look a bit like this -
- except for the duff home made side panel I had, the meccano headlamp bracket, the wobbily home made rear sets and I had cheap ace bars instead of clip-ons. All the same it was a Velocette Venom. Well, actually, sort of.
I was still seventeen and six months after buying it I did the predictable thing and crashed it into the side of a Ford Cortina driven by a myopic holidaymaker. I was wasn't hurt (neither was Mr Myopic) but the bike was a mess and as I looked at the damage my world crumbled. Twisted forks, bent frame, stoved in fuel tank, mud guards etc, etc. It was an insurance write-off. Being Seventeen and unreasonably in love, I did the next predictable thing and sold everything of any value that I owned to secure a new Geoff Dodkin frame and forks. I learned a lot from that kindly gentleman. That's when I found out I'd paid £500 for a Venom engine in an MSS frame that had a series of holes drilled under the top tube. Almost nothing was tangeably original. A Bitza. I'd bought and run a bloody expensive Bitza!
Where's all this leading? Well this is a blog about restoring my Velocette Venom. My Venom. If I'm going to restore this bike, then given it was always a Bitza, I don't see why it should be made into a museum piece. It could be different, more practical for todays world. it could look a bit more like this -
