Wow, you guys are a mine of info! Where to start...?! I guess many thanks for the congrat's!
The hunt for a frame number has come grinding to a halt as I decided to get everything stripped down. I took the engine out, split the casings, degreased and cleaned it and that has come up quite nicely. Not found any major damage apart from a chunk of casting inside to the rear of one casing that has obviously been broken and repaired at some time. There were a few little bits of metal in the
massively sludgy oil (found a piece of newspaper in the bore that is dated February 1988 so she's been sat that long at least!) one of which looked to be a small circlip possibly. See attached for the before, repair and after.
The speedo only reads just under 8000 miles, which I guess would be pretty spot on if it was only registered in 1972 and was stripped and laid up by 1988!
Re. the dating... I was told by the guy who had it, he bought it at Cadwell Park
years ago and was told at the time it was an Elite. I'm inclined to belive this simply on engine size and some of the spec's as you've listed. Seems from some of Mick Walkers books these would be the only options. Few strange things I've noticed, however: there is a third lever attached to the handle bars. I think this would have been for decompression during starting, but in Mr. Walker's
Ducati Singles Restoration I'm sure it states these only came on 450's? (Please correct me if I'm wrong!) Could be that these bars were simply pinched from a 450 though I guess? Also, the shocks on the GT pictured seem much more similar to the ones I have.
Next thing: the engine. I've been reading about the build of these engines. Now I've messed about with a 54 Ford Pop 3.5 V8, a Lotus 7, various VW's and a Lotus Elise and none of the aforementioned engines have seemed as fussy or as 'needy' as Mr. Walker seems to suggest! Am I going to be up to re-building an engine or would you recommend an engine builder? If the latter, who? I have a good garage, most standard tools and a few specials such as bearing presses etc but no lathe, mill, crank balancing V, or quite a few of the other items Mick mentions! Amusingly, he only lives about six miles from me so maybe I should just call in and see him haha!