51 year checkup

[bloke]

I just finished doing seemingly endless repair things to a 1974 186 C with its original left hand fifth valve. It's in pretty good shape now, as far as staying just under $1,000 is concerned.

If I was going to do one more thing, I probably would zip a few thousands of an inch off of each of the bearing plates (based on measuring how much travel each one currently features) and remove the vertical play. They are satisfied using the screws in the valve caps, so that's that.

This is an original owner instrument with a tremendous amount of mileage on it. I told you whose it was, most of you probably know of it and the player.