'ernst degner wanted to become the bike. he was tucked in so hard that it hurt. he had flattened his torso so tight against the fuel tank that his chest was getting battered black and blue as the little mz skipped from bump to bump. his chin was squeezed as hard as it'd go into the cube of foam rubber that had been glued towards the front of the fuel tank for that purpose. every muscle in his arms and legs strained inward, like he was  trying to hug the machine to death. his knees were dug as deep as they'd go into the cut-outs that had been hand -beaten into each side of the aluminium fuel tank. he had shifted his hands as far up the handlebars as they'd go and he had moved his toes back onto the footrests, so his feet were fully hidden inside the bodywork, looking at the man and machine, it was difficult to see where the muscle ended and the metal began......'

our mate stuart is a painter and decorater and was doing a job at a customers house near chesterfield just before christmas, the lady said he could leave his ladders and tools in the garage and he spied a little boxford lathe covered in dust and obviously unused, he enquired about it and found out it was her husband's who had sadly passed away six year's ago, stu asked if she wanted to sell it and the lady said yes so long as whoever bought it would use it and not just sell it on for a profit, we went up to see it today, mr's penny is a lovely lady and i asked her about her late husband, he used the lathe to make parts for making aeroplanes and made a replica, flying model of a sopwith camel first world war plane using a rotax motorbike engine, she showed us loads of pictures of his projects, the bloke was a genius, i would have liked to have had a chat with him for sure, i got a real feeling of my own mortality standing in his workshop, you never really own anything, you just have it for a short while during your span and when you are gone?, well, that's it, we met one of his son's and he really wasn't bothered about owning and using the lathe that his dad had enjoyed using, i thought about my own kid's and they will be the same, when i'm gone they will be selling all my stuff off or chucking it in a big skip, thing's i've spent half a century collecting and loving, my vinyl collection, tools, bikes and books and all the other old tat that means nothing them but everything to me, i explained to mr's penny that i needed to rent a van to move the lathe and base and she said no problem, just give her a bell and collect it when we were ready, she just wants it to get used, i assured her we would wear it out for her which she liked, on the way back we called in to the harley dealership, the usual collection of people buying into the lifestyle, only one thing to do, a guerrilla '51' sticker attack on the bikes, thanks for your support harley davidson........

stripped my front brembo caliper and gave it a good clean, pushed the four piston's back and flushed all the old fluid out, cleaned up all the component parts with a spray of car wheel cleaner and an old toothbrush carefully removing all the brake dust from them and the caliper body, the pad's will go again so i dressed them with some p400 wet and dry to bust the glaze on them and scothbrited the mounting pins to get the surface rust off them so the pads won't bind on the disc, easy job, but so satisfying when you put it all back together.

finally picked a copy of performance bike [pb] up this afternoon, well chuffed with gary's article and paul's photo's, gary's obssesion with motorcycles is infectious, his love for everything two-wheeled comes across and although we had not met each other before, [apart from commenting each other's blogs], it was like seeing an old friend, if you fancy getting your sheds, workshop or bikes featured contact gary through the http://sideburnmag.blogspot.com/

hsr-42. the very best there is. when you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.

the dangerous bonneville project advances, mad john the painter called in to see us this week, he laughed at our attempts to strip the lipstick red paint off the tank with nitromors and tucked it under his arm and chortled as he walked away with it, 'nitromors? fucking rubbish, i drink it for breakfast, i'll sort it', next day, text, 'fucking bastard bin low-baked, leave it with me....', he turned up the next night, his right eye twitching, 'had to hot gun and scrape the paint off, took me seven hours you sheep shaggers', [this is a reference to me and dangerous being rams fans and mad john being from nottinguncrimecitydown the roadwithashitfootballteamham], there's a dint in the tank on the offside, looks like one of the previous fourteen owners has dropped it and the bars have made contact with the tank, dangerous cleaned out the eyebrow triumph badge holes with a 2ba tap and screwed them on, we both agreed it looked mint but will he have the bottle to keep it like that or will mad john get the gig?.....

really need to get a list of stainless fasteners together so i can replace all the tatty zinc plated crap i've stripped off the sporty, i'm going to go for the cheap option and replace anything with metric that is a 'clearance' fit, unfortunately that still leaves me with quite a few old school fasteners to buy, both coarse and fine thread and these are not so easily available from the local fasteners shop, i've been on the 'net and found a few places, the classic car world seems to offer a decent selection at a cheaper price than a lot of the bike outlets who seem to delight in ramping up the prices, tonight i spent a couple of hours cleaning out the powdercoating from the swingarm races and tapping out the top shock mountings, sporty's are peculiar in that they run two paired bearings in the offside swingarm mounting and a spacer between them so they do not bind on each other, the other side is a simple plain bush, i don't know if this is because of the lack of space against the primary cover or not but it seems strange on a twin shock, twin forked swingarm?, i cleaned up the pivot with some scotchbrite and greased everything up and mounted the arm and the new njb shocks in the frame, the njb shocks are racing shocks, which, strange as it may seem we use on the mz racer too and find them really good, they are non-adjustable but tailored to your bike, just ring norman up with the bike model and your weight and he builds them to suit you, i ordered one- inch longer shocks than standard as i want to get some weight over the front wheel, i'm dropping the forks through the yokes to quicken the steering a little too, i won't go into all the in's and out's of fork rake v's trail as there is plenty of reading out there that explains the effect's or if you look back through the racer project build i covered it in there.

sportsters rule, frenchy on his 'green meanie', called in today for a brew, what were you doing? scoffing the last of the quality street and watching 'telly?, i was walking the dog's, eating fish-finger butties and hiding in the shed, kev was out and about on his sporty, loved it when he gunned it away from mine, back-end kicking out as the back tyre struggled to grip on the wet leaves, respect due.....

after yesterday's mammoth shed session i needed to take a break so breakfast, rouse the dogs and off for a long walk, i'm lucky to live on the southern edge of the peak district so there a lot of walks available without having to drive before i can walk,[ had a bit of a proclaimer's, 500 miles thing going on today], i walk a lot, i find it cathartic, i set off to the west for a change, not done this walk for a while,i walk for a little distance along the old railway line, i've mentioned it before on the blog and guess what?, some genius has realised that the a38 which runs parallel to the railway line and which is a major route between the m1 at junction 28 and which is a total bottleneck if there is anything as much as someone breaking down on it would benefit from a direct link between mansfield and derby and they are talking about trying to re-instate it, alleh-fucking-lula! over to horsley church, a church on a hill basically, same as most churches built on an ancient pagan site, over to horston, horeston, or horsley castle or the remains of, love this place, really foreboding with a real sense of history, mentioned in the reign of stephen between 1135 and 1154, a major norman earthwork in the 1200's and built into a stone castle by king john who added a keep, bailey's, chapel and gatehouse with wide deep ditches defending the castle to the north and east, it fell in to ruin in the '1500's and was stripped of it's fine stonework to build local farmhouses all but the remains of the 'keep. i'm lost in my imagination as i try to picture how the castle would have looked, a little further on and i'm bought back to reality by a burnt out car, end of the road?, for sure, how did they manage to get it up here?, up to brackley gate and back along the ancient packhorse trading route that would have been a major route between the northern counties and derbye, in to little eaton and over to duffield before making the ascent to holbrook and home, as i make my way back along the ridge overlooking the ecclesbourne valley i come across black plastic bags full of rubbish that some bastard has taken a lot of effort in dumping in the countryside instead of either taking to the local tip or getting a skip like the rest of us would have done, there must have been foodstuff in the bags as an animal had ripped open the a couple of bags to get a free lunch, must have been something good as my boy's took a lot of interest in it, big mistake though, i picked up a a gas and electric bill with your name and address on it, you deserve what's coming...........

old steering head races drifted out, powercoating cleaned off bearing surfaces and new races drifted in, top and bottom yokes centred, spot faced, drilled and tapped 8mm, not running a headlight but a numberboard, [carbon fibre like on the mz] casting marks filed, wet and dried and polished, bottom yoke ball-milled on front edge, i was reading an old classic bike where peter williams was saying how important it was to lose as much weight as possible from the steering head to enable the bike to turn quicker so thats why the bottom yoke got the treatment, decided to run big disc and one caliper so the offside forkleg met the miller and the mounting brackets shaved off, busy, busy busy......