Hello to all. I’ve been on the forum for a while but mostly lurking and learning. I’m sprucing up a 1980 SG and putting it back on the road. A little background for those interested, if not skip down this rather long post to get to the project. I first encountered an XS when one of my coworkers at Montgomery Ward (remember them) rode his 1978 or 79 to work during the summer of 1982. Fast forward a few (20+) years and my dad, who used to ride a Norton Road Atlas when I was a kid, wanted to get back into riding. He was thinking about another Brit bike but I talked him into the less leaky more reliable XS alternative. He wound up getting THREE 1983 Specials (don’t ask me why all the same year) which we used to ride whenever I was in town (I’m near Cleveland and he was in Chicago) and he would ride out to my place a couple of times a year and we would do some riding. He was starting to find the 400 mile trips out to visit more difficult as he got older, he was in his 70’s, so I thought it would be good if he had a bike like his to ride at my place, which is why I think of it as dad’s bike. I looked around on Craigslist and found a 1980 Special that had not run in 10 years that had a clean title and looked mostly complete for a price I could afford so I trailered it home in February of 2010.