It's a bit harsh having a dig at the owner without knowing the circumstances. Back in the day an A10 was a £15-£25 bike. I took a complete, good condition, but very smokey A7 plunger (speedo in tank model) out of a municipal tip, for the price of a few beers for the lads......... Back gardens were littered with old broken down Brits back then.
Those of us who never wavered from British bikes, were guilty of butchery. But let's put it into perspective. When 'Syd's Place' in Radcliffe shut down, hundreds and hundreds of frames, engines, gearboxes, forks, wheels etc etc, got weighed in for scrap metal, because not one person wanted to buy him out....... not one, despite adverts all over Britain! ........That's just one shop of many, because the British bike scene was virtally dead in the water.
All that lot's gone for good, at least the frame in question is still here, and repairable.
My frame was chopped in '68, years before BSA had even shut down, and I've been riding it since '79. we did about 6,000 miles last summer alone. It isn't to everybodies taste, but having ridden it for 35 years, and 227,000 miles I think I've earned the right to have the bike as I like?
Makes me smile these days when the tut, tutting and head shaking starts by the 'origional' brigade. Watching them ride away, 'in born again, kids have left home' heaven, with stainless rims, spokes and fixings. Crank conversions, dynamo belts, upgraded clutches, DVR2 regulators etc etc. It all seem a bit hypocritical to me.
I'll finish with this, I've ridden everything in the last 39 years. Brits, japanese, Italian and American, but not one of them has made me want one over my A10. But that said, when it left the factory it was nothing more than a mass produced, built to a budget, workhorse. We shouldn't forget that when we start getting all precious about them.
