The story behind The Laverda Project, part two: Coming to America

Former TV host Neale Bayly is working on a series of videos about restoring a rare Laverda Mirage he's owned since he was a kid back in England. With Common Tread, he shares the story behind the videos: How he came to own the bike and how it came to America as he launched his motorcycle writing and television career. If you've ever had a long-term relationship with a motorcycle, you can probably relate. Follow the restoration at the Neale Bayly Rides TV YouTube channel.

Actually, that was my second visit to the States. On the first trip, I hitchhiked from New York to Quebec, across Canada to the Rocky Mountains and then drove down to California in an old Ford Country Squire. I was with a friend and we sold the car in Los Angeles, split up and I hitchhiked to Florida, where I ended up living with a bank robber called Jimmy. He hadn’t yet robbed the bank when I lived with him, but he was getting ready to, so with two days in hand I left town and flew to Central America. Over the next two months I traveled from Belize as far south as Nicaragua.

There, sick and broke and with the Sandinista-Contra War raging, I finally decided to pack it in and head for home. My sister was getting married in Scotland and I felt the need to be there for her, so I whipped out my hidden credit card and flew to London. The wedding was early March, and I spent the following summer at home in South Devon, England which would be the last time I would live and ride my Laverda in England.

After arriving in New York in late 1985 with an invite to stay with Jimmy the Bank Robber’s brother, and an offer of work with a construction company, I used my $100 to buy a bus ticket for Florida. I worked over the winter and by late spring had met a girl, fallen in love and we were riding across America on a battle-weary 1973 Honda 550. We bought the Honda from Crazy Laughing Dave Wainright in Melbourne, Florida, who happened to be the getaway driver for Jimmy the Bank Robber.

That first motorcycle trip ended just shy of the Arctic Circle, and Karen and I settled in to the town of Fairbanks, Alaska, where we worked out the summer. With our pockets full of money and winter coming on fast, we sold the Honda and hitchhiked back to the lower 48. In San Francisco, we bought one-way tickets to Japan and spent the next three months traveling through Southeast Asia before heading to Australia. Landing in Darwin with $22 to our names, we began the long, hot journey hitchhiking through the red center of the continent to make it to Sydney, where we quickly went to work.

In Australia we bought another used motorcycle, a 1981 Yamaha XV1000, and added 10,000 miles to our travels, riding around the land down under, including a trip to the Barrier Reef to learn to scuba dive.

Karen, who was now my bride, and I eventually settled back in Florida. I took her home to meet my family in England one summer, and during an extended vacation we explored all my childhood haunts and visited with old friends. I did a bit of paint and polish on the Laverda and decided to box up the old Mirage and ship it to our Florida home.

The first attempt to resurrect the Laverda

Once in Florida, I got a little more serious. I powdercoated the wheels silver, installed new bearings and rebuilt the brake calipers using Teflon pistons to replace the old, rusty metal ones. New EBC pads and fluids finished the job. Then it was time for a pair of brand new Pirelli Phantom tires: The business back in the day with a whopping 130/80-18 incher on the rear.

A set of Marazochhi shocks replaced the old, worn-out stock items, and for better cosmetics the engine cases were polished. I had done a cheap, orange paint job back in the UK, and while it wasn’t perfect, I left it alone. We recovered the seat, then rebuilt and polished the carburetors. The down pipes were shot blasted and painted heat-resistant black. We welded an extra tab on the side stand to reduce its propensity for falling over. The original turn signals were junked and my makeover was complete.

Over the next couple of years, the bike got ridden to events, took some daily outings, and turned heads wherever it went, but it was always a little suspect with a nasty rattle down in the primary side that my mechanic was not too positive about. The carbs were a little worn, too, so even with a fresh valve adjustment and the timing done, it never quite ran as well as it had when I got it from Nick.

Then, one fateful day, my enthusiasm got ahead of my abilities, both mechanically and financially, and I decided to do a complete restoration from the ground up. The frame got shot blasted and painted and I started pulling the engine to bits. Unfortunately, travels came, children came, careers came and the parts just ended up moving from location to location in boxes. With all the growing responsibilities of family life, spending money on an old box of bits grew further and further from the front burner.

Laverda languishes while Neale Bayly Rides

While the Laverda sat discarded in parts and boxes, my career path led me into motorcycle journalism and a life that saw me traveling all over the world. Testing new motorcycles in Australia, Malaysia, Japan and Europe, while doing adventure travel stories in far-flung places such as Peru, Namibia and Alaska. I moved into television producing for a show called Corbin's Ride On before stepping up to host the final few episodes. I even managed to wriggle onto a couple of Valentino Rossi’s MotoGP bikes and join the 200 mph club while all this was happening. My next time on TV was as co-host of Trippin' on Two Wheels, a motorcycle travel show I came up with and partnered with TV car celebrity Dennis Gage. We had a blast, but by this time I had started my charitable foundation and thought up an idea for a new adventure TV show called Neale Bayly Rides. It aired on the Speed Channel in its final year, which was I guess a bit like getting a gig on the Titanic in hindsight.

In the midst of my writing and television career, it seemed quite natural when a bike builder friend from Delaware breezed into town and loaded up the parts with an idea to create a resto-mod for me. I was on the tele, right? We talked design, we talked style and then we didn’t talk and the boxes of parts now gathered dust in someone else’s storage area. As one year slipped into three, my thoughts of the old Laverda came only very occasionally.

Then, three things happened to change the course of my life and the life of the Mirage. First, my good friend Tom had been riding dirt bikes with me for a couple of years and listening to my crazy stories. Out of the blue one day on the trails he said, “You need to go and get that Laverda back.”

At the same time I had run across a video from my hometown talking about how Greek Mythology says we are all connected to everyone we have met, and no matter how far you go, how much you change or grow, we are all intrinsically connected to our home. My decision was made. I drove to Maryland, loaded up the boxes of parts and headed back home to Charlotte. The Laverda Project was underway and I was committed to putting it back together.

The third significant thing that happened was being introduced to a gentleman by the name of Nate Hamlin, who had recently opened a new European repair shop in Charlotte called 2Topia Cycles. It didn’t take long for him to offer to rebuild the Laverda and turn it into a modern, fire-breathing resto-mod that I could take home to England and blast around the roads of my youth once more. So, as you can see from the photos, the parts are with him, he’s torn down the bottom of the engine to see what it needs and we are off and running on the journey to bring the beast back to life.

It’s going to be a while before we have a running 1978 Laverda Mirage, and I’m certainly going to be impatient to hear that angry old 180-degree triple roar. If you’ve never heard a Breganze-built big Laverda howling through open carburetors and a “race only” three-into-one exhaust, you are in for a treat.

I know by the time Nate is finished with the engine that we’ll be making more horsepower than I could have ever imagined in 1984, and this in a package that will have better handling and brakes. And, while that will be quite the buzz, I don’t think the real excitement will start until we take it back to my hometown in England. Riding the bike of my youth, on the streets where I cut my motorcycle teeth will be the perfect conclusion to this mad journey.

Looking forward to having you along for the ride.