pentti salonen, motorcycle racer, photograph looks like it was taken in the paddock, early season judging by the snow on the ground!

things getting a little strained in the loveless shed tonight, sometimes them's the breaks, trying to set up the rear brake/master cylinder/brake lever/fluid reservoir up, we are arguing like fuck, that's what happens when you care i guess?

puch, vs 50d, my first road legal bike, bought for the grand total of £35 off my old man's mate, it was the summer of 1975 and i was 16, i felt the world was out there for me to discover, my mates brian fennelly, [yamaha fs1e, six months later i bought it off him for twenty brick after he had right royally seized it], des reddy, [garelli tiger] and fraz, [nsu quickly], were out every night, up to the priest house pub at castle donington and swimming in the river, up to the john thompson and trying our luck to buy four halves of mild, ['not tonight lad's, have a nice coca-cola..'.], down the chip shop in allenton, yeah, we used to ride around on the fields on mark wildman's, dad's, panther outfit and barry fould's brother's lambretta, [that's why i was so fast back in the day on my puch, three speed, hand change, yeah, whatever!], but, the puch?, i loved it, the half chrome tank, the aluminium on the flywheel /fan cover, the dinky tool boxes under the seat........

sometimes, always

power to weight ratio, that's what it's all about, trimming the weight from your motorcycles components is the most cost efficient way of gaining performance, it's not rocket science, the less weight your given propulsion unit has to propel the faster it will go, i've been pretty brutal in my trimming of the sporty, no headlight, all the unecessary flab like the steering lock, exhaust hanger brackets and original wiring harness junked, the cam cover cut down, the original mag wheels changed for lighter alloy rims and spokes, [when they actually arrive, sore point], i've junked the twin disc, twin brembo caliper's i was running for a single disc/caliper, [more weight, more braking power needed, less weight, less braking power needed],  might need to make a forkbrace to stop the forks twisting when using this set-up, but it's still lighter than a twin disc/caliper set-up like i said , simple, egg/chicken thing, also, less unsprung weight, lighter wheels and one less disc?, i've cut weight everywhere, used carbon instead of alloy, everything on a harley is heavy, check out the original rear master cylinder/ fluid reservoir compared to the cagiva mito breaker item and plastic fluid reservoir, junking the standard drive pulleys and belt has saved a massive amount of weight compared to the chain and sprockets i'm going to run, no ignition barrel, no indicators, race seat, junked original speedo, replaced with lightweight trailtech unit, even dropping down to seven-eight's bars, [with japper clutch/brake lever combo], no switch gear, bar-end mirror instead of two heavy stock items, holes drilled in everything and ball milled everything else, no padding on the seat, race foam only, cut it down, make it lighter.........

silvio grassetti.

andy saunders, bmzrc champion and holder of the number 1 plate, my bike wouldn't start for qualifying and the only way i could qualify was to go out for practice with the yamaha past master's, i lined up with the boy's on their lc's, tzr's etc, then i heard the unmistakeable sound of a 'zed, mr saunders nod's to me, i nodded back and i got a lesson in riding as andy passed most of the ypm's on a bike with half the bhp, respect due, i hate you andy.......

keep on keeping on....

i'm in the shed tonight working away on the sporty project, dangerous is away playing caravan's and i'm wallowing in 'me' time, cup of tea on the go, dog's doing that dog-nap thing on the chair, the backdoor is open to the garden for the first time this year, spring is here, radio six chugging out the tunes in the background, i hear it and can't quite place it at first, then it click's, sounds like the groundhogs but not a track i'm familiar with, i turn up the costco dab mono radio/i-pod dock, it's a new tune, the mighty groundhogs are back, respect due to tony mcphee....

franta stastny

heinz rosner, check out the left hand, fingers hovering over the clutch lever, anyone who has ridden a highly tuned two-stroke will know why, eeeeeeeeeeah, eeeeeeeeah, eeeeeeeeeah, scrich!

trial fitted the exhaust header pipes tonight, the rear pipe catches the top right mounting bolt on the plate we have made up to carry the rear brake master cylinder, right hand footpeg, fluid reservoir, either going to have to reduce the head on the bolt or counterbore the bolt head into the plate to give us some clearance, whatever, the pipes still look the business....

i'm working away on the lathe, reducing the spacers that mount the rear brake / master cylinder / brake fluid reservoir when i notice the lathe getting noisy, dangerous looks at me like it's my fault, 'what's that noise?' , 'it's the lathe dangerous, it's gone all noisy', 'i don't like that noise', 'neither do i mate, let's strip the lathe down to it's component part's and investigate, it's not like the sun is shining and we should be riding, i've just done a twelve hour shift on my day off and i need to shower and eat something before i faint or anything...' i struggle to get the bolts off the motor in the confined space of the base unit while dangerous has a chat with stuart, i drop the motor off and discover the pulley is wafting about on the shaft, we dig some shimming steel out of stock and shim the pulley back onto the shaft to square it up, the pulley has sheared the key off the shaft sometime in the past and the previous owner has bodged it to keep the lathe going, i sort out two old quarter bolts from the scrap bin and we manage to fashion a repair, not ideal but sometimes needs must.......

ditched my rearsets and gone back to the traditional 'mid's', spent loads of time trying to come up with something trick for the rear brake lever but i keep coming back to the standard lever, sometimes i search too hard to change things when the answer is staring me in the face, ten minutes with the hacksaw, file and wet and dry and i have what i've been looking for all along....

mad john the painter brought my stuff back today, he decided that the seat unit wasn't up to his standard and put it back into his motor to respray, me and dangerous looked and looked and tried to find something wrong with it but couldn't, we set up the trusty workmate to machine polish the cut-down front aprilia mudguard, i'm holding it and mad john's polishing away, cutting compound, water, polish, water, cutting compound, polish, he's at it for twenty minutes, i'm covered in compound, mad john decides he's going to have a roll-up, i put the kettle on for a brew, i hear the polishing mop start up, then the sound of the mop picking up the towel that the 'guard is sitting on, the guard spins up the garden, contacting on the path in two places, the dog's, who are sunbathing in the milky sunshine scatter as the 'guard lands between them, mad john turns off the mop and winds up the lead, i hand him his tea and we don't say a word as he throw's the guard in the car boot, the tank though?, well, the tank is a different story, i drill out the holes for the screws, mad john has put so much lacquer on the tank that the screws won't fit, i tape up the 7mm spanner to hold the screws in place and fit the gasket and filler, i stand back and.......

i love this bike, everytime i open the shed door and see it i get a buzz, started life as £300, dog rough, commuter bike, me and dangerous cut it to bit's, made stuff for it, argued to the point of fisticuff's and i ended up racing it for real, i'm not very good but i love the underdog, when i talk to people about bike's they just dismiss it and ask why i don't get something faster, better handling and more reliable, they just don't get it do they?

rear brake pivot, made from stainless, from the left, this is to space the footpeg away from the bottom high-level supertrapp that runs from the rear cylinder, the middle section acts as a bush to stop the pivot 'picking up' on the aluminium mounting plate, [dis-similar metal, you have two metals of the same physical make up and they will pick up on each contact surface], the right hand, [tapped thread] section sits in the aluminium mounting plate  and is locked off with the original castellated nut to duplicate the original mounting, small piece of work, loads of time, essential if you want your rear brake to work, always a bonus that, even though i only use my rear brake if i'm on wet grass......

had a few shed break-in's locally over the last few weeks, we got done a few years back before i had the dog's, they broke into the house while we were in bed, jemmied the front lounge window open, they were in the kitchen when i woke up, down the stairs in my boxers, i chased them up the street, large kitchen knife in hand, they had  a head start on me and ran into the field at the end of the road, i was barefoot and my feet were bleeding from running on the tarmac, i swear if i had caught them i would have cheerfully cut their throats, mr's b phoned the ob and told them i was after them with a large stabbing implement, they were on the scene within seconds, funny how they can get there so quickly to protect the scum who rob peoples houses, to be fair, they released the police dogs on the bastards and the german ripped the shit out of matey's arse when he caught him, they had pinched mrs b's purse, [with the grand total of fourteen quid in it and our four pay-as-you-go phones, mr's b contacted our telephone company and they provided us with a list of the phone numbers that the cheeky twat who got away had used our phones to ring, let's just say, i had a lot a fun with that one, pizza?, concrete delivery?, funeral service?, phone calls at stupid-a-clock? double glazing?, that's why i put the sign on my back gate, you try and get in my shed, you get hurt, simples.

onwards and upwards then, edges of the mounting plate milled clean, dangerous rads the edges by hand with a file, [i like to keep his feet on the ground and make him go back to basics every now and again], i turn up four bushes from stock and drill them after centring them on the lathe, the bushes are to space the mounting plate off the crankcases, mount the right footpeg, the master cylinder, rear brake lever and brake fluid reservoir, it's also got to give clearance for the chain run in one direction and clearance for the high level supertrapp exhaust system in the other, so, a bit of juggling to do, we offer the plate up and it fits ok, chain clearance looks ok, try the down pipe on the rear cylinder and ..... it fouls the plate, bollocks...

despite a sterling effort by chris w. to repair the damage to the front sprocket / rear master cylinder / brake lever mounting cover it was just too much to get everything lining up straight and strong enough to trust, so, plan b, piece of 10mm dural from the stock bin, trace around the cutdown original cover, centre through on the pillar drill to mark the mounting holes onto the crankcase, rough out with the trusty hacksaw and onto the miller.....

heinz rosner

the 'infamous' derby vs forest 'waterfall' incident........................

pentti salonen, imatra, 1975.