There are not very many Laverda Alpines left on the road. The one I found was in very poor shape cosmetically but was still a reasonable runner. This 1979 machine had 78150 miles on the clock and eleven owners in its past. That should have meant trouble but for only £200 it was too good a deal to pass up.
I find cosmetics easy to deal with. A total chassis strip down, paint everything that can be painted with my spray gun. Rewiring was obviously necessary judging by the way bits of wire and insulation fell to pieces when I tried to remove it from the bike. A Superdream rectifier/regulator was added instead of the burnt looking units that were attached to the frame with insulation tape.
The front forks, wheel and disc were a disgusting mess; £75 acquired GS450E units which went on with some new bearings and a bit of precision adjustment with the hammer. New swinging arm bearings, rear wheel bearings and tyres completed the picture.
A long weekend’s work was all that was needed to do the above. If you know what you are doing, have the equipment and a decent workshop there is no great hassle in doing a quick, cheap renovation. The engine I did not touch other than a thorough check and oil change.
The reassembled machine shone nicely in the sun but completely refused to start. I had messed up the ignition wiring, reversing the position of two wires put the sparks where they should have been. She came to life second go after that.
The first proper ride followed. Lots of vibration from the DOHC vertical twin motor under 6000rpm, then smoothing out with a power surge to 8500rpm when vibes became terrible and power disappeared. It wouldn’t hold such revs in the higher gears, top speed coming out at around the 80mph mark. She would buzz along at 75mph quite happily. Handling was well weird. She weaved a bit at most speeds, felt ponderous at the low end and very loose above 50mph... the GS forks may have contributed to these effects but it felt more like the frame was bent or the wheels massively out of line. It's surprising what you can adapt to, after a few weeks I rarely noticed these strange machinations.
The next three months saw another 5000 miles done. I treated the engine gently but more often than not was breaking the speed limits. The motor was able to communicate its happiness directly to me by the lack of vibes at certain revs. I took great delight in seeing how far I could ride without experiencing the vibro massage effect.
The motor then insisted on smoking badly and soon after that the camchain started to make a racket. Engine strip time. New valves, camchain and piston rings were needed. Reassembled, the engine sounded immediately better, having a deeper note and not shaking in the chassis so violently. I ran her in carefully for 500 miles, then explored the new found power.
There were still vibes to 6000rpm, then the kick and the smoothing out, but this time she wound on to 10000rpm without a significant increase in vibes. The speedo was so surprised at being expected to indicate 110mph, that the needle flipped around to the limit, oscillated wildly then sank slowly back to zero never to move from there again, until replaced.
Earlier handling deficiencies were amplified by the Alpine’s new found speed. Hitting a bump at around the ton caused the bars to shake wildly in my hands and the whole bike to leap about crazily. She was OK at up to 80mph and could be flicked through the curves like a good ‘un if you were willing to ignore the fluttering suspension.
Comfort was surprisingly good for a bare bike, but the set-up was not standard. Flat bars, rear-sets and a re-upholstered seat combined to make 250 mile journeys fairly comfortable. The riding position was way ahead of the fuel range, which at 100-130 miles was disappointing for a mildly ridden 500cc twin. Rarely did the machine better 40mpg, perhaps the original carbs were well worn out.
There followed a six month, 9500 mile period of joy and jubilation. This was the calm before the storm. The bike was rushed around the UK on a camping holiday to good effect. A front tyre blow out at 70mph gave pause for thought as I somersaulted down the road. The bike scraped most of its paint off and bent a few protuberances, but was otherwise unharmed. In fact, it seemed to handle better after that accident, so perhaps something was knocked straight.
The real problem came when the bottom half of the engine started knocking. You'd have to be deaf to ignore it - it raised people’s curiosity from a 100 paces! We limped home at an absurdly low speed, the machine vibrating like a jumbo just before take-off. The vibes were so bad that the back light assembly fell off, left hanging on its wires.
It wasn't just the main bearings that had gone. Every bearing in the gearbox had gone out in sympathy. Anything with a passing resemblance to a shaft was left mangled. The wreck was shoved to the back of the garage for seven months. Then | saw a Montjuic engine for sale in the racing column of MCN. It needed a new top end, which was about all that was OK on my old engine. The Montjuic was the tuned, proddie racer version of the Alpine. They were fast but temperamental. With Alpine top end fitted the bike was back to normal spec but the bottom end had obviously been hard used.
This one vibrated harshly throughout the rev range but seemed to accelerate faster. I suspect it had lighter flywheels. I did not feel very happy with this hybrid, so did not ride the bike too much. I had bought a Ducati V-twin as my main machine - which is another horror story we won’t go into here - so the Laverda only did a couple of hundred miles a month. It was fine for short bursts but the continuous vibes made long distances a real pain.
Perhaps because I had no affection for it, I used to thrash the bike wickedly in the lower gears. I even started performing mad wheelies. The clutch soon started slipping, another Alpine weak spot. Before I could fix that the whole engine seized solid. The oil pump had gummed up. I thought that was the end of that, put the bike in the back of the garage once more, to use as a useful source of spares.
But, no, once again MCN came up trumps with a crashed 500T for £200. This badly mangled heap had 62000 miles on its cracked clock. I cut the engine out, the frame was so bent there was no other way of extracting it. Installed in my rolling chassis, I found this engine to be the smoothest of the bunch, but power was down, top speed no more than 95mph. Admittedly fuel consumption had increased to a more reasonable 52mpg.
When the Ducati blew its crank I put the little twin back into full time use. In this form I began to fall in love once again with the machine. I had put so much work into the whole thing by then that I was treating her as part of the family rather than a collection of worn out, bent and dubious bits of metal. Another English tour followed, 3000 miles of pure motorcycling joy up the back lanes and quiet byways of the UK. On Scottish roads she was near sublime, through the Welsh hills thrilling, in more ways than one, and across the English flatlands splendid in the way she whirred away not in the least perturbed when I did 625 miles in a day.
Believe it or not, the Laverda is still running as I write this. The 500T engine has something like 80000 miles on its bores whilst the chassis has gone well over the six figure mark. Swinging arm bearings only last about 5000 miles, but other than that the refurbished chassis has given no trouble. Even the bodged electrics have not failed. The engine requires an oil change and full service every 1200 miles.
A most impressive machine, I think. I am now on the look out for a low mileage engine, or a couple of old dogs to make one good ‘un. Spares are rare secondhand but available new at a reasonable price. I have sold the Ducati, it was too much of an unreliable dog for my liking, and intend to keep running the Laverda for a few more years.
Pete Worthing