| The original question: jasper, i'd keep the stickers. Had the some dilemas over putting them on my strada sp5 lookalike and decided to keep them despite the fact that i tend to be someone who does not like too many graphics on a bike.
The wider discusion: my view on originality is that modifications that fit with the original design are fine - many great bikes (ducati and the 888 especially) have left their respective factories with minor differences between different examples of the same model. When you look at racing versions of bikes such as the 888 many of the greats include non factory modifications made to the bikes so that they went faster: we now look upon these as contributing to the legend. Two things that spoil classic bikes IMHO: modifications that do not fit with the original design (Jool's examples of fitting modern wheels is a good example), and over restoration which takes away the patina that the bike has developed over the years. |