dangerous nipped up to nelly's at cornerspeed mid-week to pick up the ducati750 engine for the 'peaky blinder' project, there's good news and there's bad news. the good news is that the motor is in rude health after a good shoeing by nelly, he even managed to find us a couple more bhp by careful measuring of the base gaskets and swapping them out to raise the compression, a little work on the heads and a valve job. the nikasel barrels are like new, no horror stories with the cams or desmo valve gear, the clutch and bottom end all clean and fit for purpose, a right result then. covers screwed on with turned up stainless hardware, [thanks rich and sarah!] all good then? well, err no. ok it's me, i'm sorry. i try and ignore the finish on the motor, i cleaned it up before despatching it to nelly's for the engine work, but, i, err, really can't live with the 'tired' finish especially with the newly powdercoated silver covers. i go as far as cleaning off the powdercoating from the frame to mount the engine, careful filing and finish with wet and dry to enable fitting. the ducati engine is a tight fit in the cradle frame. it should be, it's a stressed member, the engine hanging on two bolts under the beautiful trellis tube frame. a night spent fitting the engine, [after removing the shock, swingarm and back wheel of course, the frame and front end 'wheel-barrowed' by your's truly while dangerous tries to align the mountings. i'm stood on the hydraulic bench, i'm banging my head on the roof joists and swearing loudly at dangerous, 'hurry up you twat, this fucking thing is getting heavy!' ' you calling me a twat?' say's dangerous, 'have a look in the mirror, what's that hat all about?' he is, of course, referring to jessica's beanie hat that she left at our house on her last visit and which i have purloined] i like this hat, especially the ears on it and the big daft eyes, mrs b say's it gives me a 'softer' persona rather than the miserable git i normally am, [hey, i take that as a compliment, take them while you can and anyway, the dogs like it so i'm going to keep wearing it, imagine if obama or cameron or clegg or merkel or putin wore a daft hat when they were talking politics, everyone would take them far more seriously, or perhaps not.....] anyhoo, back to the plot, dangerous is giving me 'that' look, he know's what i'm going to say, 'i can't live with it', 'we can't spoil the ship for a 'hapenny of tar', blah, blah, blah. we spend the next four hours masking up the frame, swing-arm and anything else likely to get hit with the overspray from a rattle can. simoniz vht matt black, two-tins, warming on the radiator ready for sshhh, sssshhh, shhhh, black index finger and choking paint fumes in the tiny 'tardis' shed..........
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