Finished refreshing '74 Laverda 3C

Took 3 months but went through it pretty thoroughly, brakes, suspension, some electrics, carb rebuild, lots of polishing and touch-up painting, new gauge faces, re-chromed headlight mounts, etc. First ride today, brilliant. I was lucky to find one at an affordable price that had 12.7K miles on it and was original except for the K&N pods, which fouled the side covers. I found an airbox and intake boots, so it's back to stock. Starts on the button and runs great, just need to swap in a new charging coil, which I have lined up (with a loaner 45mm / 1.5 reverse thread puller). The ignition coil side works fine; it's not the best system, and there are upgrades, but at a cost I can't swing, so I'll fix & enjoy with the old-style system and a simple swap.

It's wearing the N15's mirrors temporarily, I have some shorter rectangular ones (personal preference for this bike) on order.

Nice work, looks great !

Great work!
Does that one have the 180 or 120 degree crank?

Looks fantastic! The frame, body work, and engine cases look like new, all original?

robs ss said:

Great work!
Does that one have the 180 or 120 degree crank?

Click to expand...

The 120 crank came along much later in the production run.
Lovely bike, rather fancied one for a long time, but now I think it's too late to start on such a tall & heavy bike. In our workshop, we have 3 Lav 1000's, two have been in bits for 15-20 years and the third was parked after a low speed crash, also about 10 years ago. The consensus seems to be that it's interesting to ride one fast, requiring a lot of effort and determination to make it go round the the corner. Also requires a "manly" left hand on the clutch, especially in traffic. It's significant that the owner of the 3rd bike took another of his Laverdas to Spa the first time he went, experienced the weaving in high speed corners and promptly built a modified Ducati Pantah for the following year! Much easier to ride and more stable he reported. With a 900 engine in it, it's probably quicker as well!!

I have another friend who is very into ground up rebuilds of them, producing a museum quality finish. Looks lovely, but not for me. He also built s couple of replicas of the factory space frame bikes. They sounded lovely, but had severe reliability problems when parading them at Spa.

The engines look so massive (and are quite heavy), so it's always been a mystery to me how they could have so many problems with the heads warping and crankcases deforming.