It pays to think laterally during a restoration project. Freeing the mind when sourcing stuff can pay dividends in moving a rebuild along. Keith Fryer meets a restorer who has the talent to follow this line.

Take a close look at this beautifully-restored Ariel Huntmaster. Spot anything unusual? It's certainly not 100 per cent original – although neither owner Wilf Hatch nor I would lose any sleep over that – but there's been some ingenious improvisation by Wilf when it came to sourcing suitable parts and tools to complete the job. He chose Ariel because of the styling features, notably ‘the fluted tank, the headlamp nacelle – it's more unusual than some other bikes’.
It began at an Uxbridge classic car show, where he saw a gleaming Ariel Square Four. Wilf recalled thinking: "Yes, that's the one, but I ended up choosing the Huntmaster as it was the nearest thing to the Square Four that I could afford."

That was about five years ago and the Huntmaster was Wilf's first British bike, as well as his first motorcycle restoration, although he had previous experience with cars, so he knew generally what to expect. He has a strong belief in doing things right and to this end undertakes as much of the work as possible himself. And it's been a result to be proud of.
A lot of thought has gone into the making of this Ariel, with many components being made up from materials salvaged from the most unlikely sources. Take the cable clips, battery strap, and carb drip guard, for example. They are all hand-made by Wilf from a stainless steel central heating flue pipe, as was the rear number plate mount. After he bought the bike he'd planned just to ride it, which he did for about 100 miles, then rode in the Gales Run and then went off on holiday.
Back home, he kicked it over only to find that the oil feed pipe to the rockers had been glued on to the T-piece. "So I thought I'd better have a look at this, as well as a little rattle from the engine, which turned out to be a loose valve guide."
It was time for a much closer look at what he'd bought – there was a BSA rear sprocket, spacer and wheel spindle, the wrong mudguards and a Triumph saddle base. The gearbox and clutch were badly worn and the engine sported a BSA cylinder head and barrel.
And some BSA exhaust pipes had been force-fitted, being flattened out where they ran past the crankcase. 'Mechanically poor' was Wilf's description, somewhat generously, I'd say. But it didn't need a rebore, so that was one blessing. The main bearings, however, were shot and needed replacing, which he did together with the big end shells. He also fitted some spring steel inserts on the countershaft to reduce the amount of play on the sprocket.
More bad news followed, as Wilf found the rear engine plates were incorrect and the gearbox casing had to be replaced as it had been drilled through, together with those plates to help line up a bolt. "The bike had been a cafe racer, so I suppose someone thought they'd get more money as a standard Ariel. But it'd really been thrown together."

The front mudguard was replaced by a used one that needed some work to finish but Wilf couldn't get a rear one, so he used a standard blank, carefully extending the webs to prevent any undue mud splattering. He's made it as a split version so he can remove the back section, as you can on an original item.
What did he use for that job? A side panel from a scrapped cooker, and it looks absolutely spot-on, as does the saddle pan, made from the same. "I made the pan flatter and wider, following the lines of the tank better, and then cut and shaped the foam with an electric plane before covering it with a waterproof membrane."
He made up a template for the black leather cover out of a cornflake box, which also came in handy for the mudguard templates as well. Wilf made up the seat cover himself on Carol's sewing machine.
The headlamp nacelle was in such poor condition that a copper brake pipe had to be brazed in to form the front rolled lip. Probably the most troublesome item, but one that he ended up being most pleased with, was the petrol tank. "When I got it home and stripped it, there was a 4in long hole underneath the right side flute, completely rotted. So I welded that and set about making a new set of flutes from stainless steel instead."
He cut them to shape and then panelled them over a scaffold tube to obtain those stylish curves. That took him 10-12 hours’ work for each flute – well, it had to be right.

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