Agree with most that you should keep them on, looks great.

Alan...

Keep 'em :)

Stunning looking machine Jasper, couldn’t fault it.

I think you've been fettling for too long. Get a grip and just ride the bloody thing !

Absolutely agree mate.

My aim is to keep any modifications I make consistent with the spirit of the bike, but since mine is a Strada I'm not the custodian of anything especially rare so I think I have a bit more leeway and don't have to be a purist.

What do I mean by that? Well one day, when I've got enough money, I would like a set of sexy lightweight wheels. I obviously wouldn't put 10 spokes on it and I would think long and hard about fitting C/F wheels, but apart from that I wouldn't be dead set on Marchesini's for complete accuracy, a nice set of similar Marvics or Dymags would be fine because they would be in the spirit of the bike and right for the era - people may well have fitted Marvics or Dymags in 1993-4 and wouldn't have been worried about originality.

The other thing is that I will make sure that all my mods are reversible so that the bike could go back to standard just by unbolting bits and putting the original stuff back on.

With an SP5 you may want to keep everything spot on original and that's cool too - since most of the mods to my Strada will be to make it look like an SP and you've already got it, but if you're being an absolute purist you'll re-route the rear brake line into that S shape as well (I prefer the way you've got it on yours but it's not like the one in the catalogue) ;)

Jools,sorry mate,but the brake cable was routed like that originally!!I think it was routed the other way for different countries.I have an additional bracket bolted to the swingarm to carrry the brake line.

Why go to all that bother of converting a strada to an SP?Why not be patient and get an SP?It would pobably be the cheaper option!!

'Cos fitting tasteful mods and putting your very own mark on it is half the fun of owning a bike IMHO. My Strada won't be a direct SP wannabee it'll be what I want it to be. I don't care about cheaper options either because I look upon both bikes I've got as keepers, so if it takes me a few years to get it how I would like it it'll spread the cost so that it's not too important.

And I deliberately chose a Strada because I'm not the most concientious of bike owners. I prefer to ride them and track them, they often end up with crash damage and being a tight git I push the replacement parts for as long as I can as well (I need a new chain at the moment but I keep adjusting it rather than replacing it).

Don't get me wrong, I try and keep my bikes reasonably serviced and looking reasonable but I'm not the best at it, and a genuine SP deserves somebody more scrupulous than me to own it.

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.