caught up with ben today down at the shop, not seen him for a while, we have been trading insults via the blog,  text messages, e-mither's and phone so i thought i'd pop in for a brew and catch up, saturday is probably the busiest day in a tattoo shop so i find it amazing that people book an appointment, knowing they have at least a three month wait and then don't turn up, the bloke ben was tattooing was a nice guy, he had done his research and wanted a run-of-the-mill piece of tribal on his shoulder covering with a japanese piece, a big peony, lotus flower, cherry blossom and wind bar's, i was suprised when he dug out a photo of my hanya masks that he had scanned as a reference! i love tattoo shop's, i reckon ben has the best job in the world, the people you meet are proper, [well, the majority are], he get's to strip ladies down to their scanties and he get's paid for the pleasure, oh yeah, his t-shirt?, 'los bastardos de la muerte', this came from a mammoth tattoo session i was having and we decided to make up a fictional bike club based on one of the 60's biker exploitation films, the name of the gang?, the bastards of death!

alan shepherd on the works mz, silverstone 1962, how things have changed, no brolly-dolly for alan, just his trusty duffel coat to fend off the elements, no helmet or visor technicians, pudding basin and goggles the order of the day and check out the leathers, don't think i would like to be racing around silverstone on a temperamental two stroke on those avon speedmasters either thanks.

be prepared to be confused, the original sporty bars are one-inch diameter but i want to junk the original 'lego', chunky, switchgear and horrible master cylinder and brake levers, i bought some japper stuff from the local breakers and cleaned them up, [see earlier posts] and they look pretty cool, unfortunately the jap controls are seventh-eighths diameter, so, i pulled a pair of aluminium renthals out of my stock to fit, i needed a pair of handlebar top-yoke clamps to fit them, frenchy had bought a pair of trick, black anodized renthal items but, unknown to him, they are inch and one eighths diameter because they were originally fitted to a motocrosser with fat tapered bars, so, surplus to requirements he donated them to the sporty project, now we have the lathe up and running it was an easy job to turn a couple of reducer sleeves so we can fit the seventh-eighth bars, just got to carefully hacksaw them in half now, result.

i used to follow a blog by a bloke called mark dicker called 'weird old bikes' which chronicled mark's adventures travelling on his collection of east german motorcycles around the country, his mechanical disasters and some of the character's who he met on the way, all good stuff, i was shocked to find out that he had passed away in november as a result of a heart attack, i left a condolence message which was picked up by one of his friend's who has contacted me to let me know that they are continuing his blog under the title 'more weird old bikes', they are currently sorting out his estate for his family, i hope they don't mind me sharing this picture of a tea tray that they found in his collection, i love this, brilliant piece of east german nostalgia, good luck with the blog lad's, keep posting.

 next step on the front pulley cover was to mark it out for some slots milled across the face, i found the centre of the new sprocket and scribed a circle the same size on the outside of the casting, bit of a fiddle to set it up square on the miller bed as the cover is convex so i had to pack it up with a couple of bit's of aluminium stock, dangerous made short work of milling the slots but i had not given the cast webbing on the inside of the cover a thought, [top photo], i dropped the cover on the bike and it looked odd where we could see the webbing behind the milled slots, only one thing to do, reverse the cover and mill out the webbing, easier said than done and with hindsight it would have been easier to do this first, [bottom photo], then mill out the slots, we had to use a very small end mill which leaves a lot of hand finishing to do but i reckon it will look pretty trick when it's done.

monday night, time to give the pig-ugly front pulley casting some therapy, i'm ditching my rearsets and going back to mid-mounted footpegs so need to keep the footpeg mounting lug, the brake lever mounting and the master-cylinder bracket, [even though i'm scrapping the big, ugly harley master cylinder and reservoir and using a little brembo item off a cagiva mito], still leaves a lot of redundant aluminium to cut away though, so, out with the trusty hacksaw and rough out to shape, the back of the casting has strengthening lugs cast into it so you have a good idea what to chop away, dangerous dropped the work on the miller and saved me loads of time hand filing to shape, going to take a lot of work to smooth everything back and get a nice shape to it but i reckon it will complement the cut-down timing case nicely, i spent a couple of hours last night cutting cardboard cut-outs and trying to make a pattern for a new cover but, whichever way i tried it, the pattern would just have been a slab of aluminium, this standard casting cut down should look much more interesting.

dug a bit of carbon fibre out of the stock bin and made a point's cover for the sporty, scribed around the standard cover and clamped the piece of carbon to it with a toolmaker's clamp, hand filed to size and wet and dry to finish, just got to centre the mounting holes and drill to suit.

the loveless shed, thirty years ago, asbestos and steel framed, paid thirty quid for it, secondhand, advert in the local paper, used to run an extension lead down the garden to get power and light, heated by a stinking parrafin heater that used to make everything wet through with condensation, out there every night building bikes, some things never change.......

derby day, the rams v forest, less than a month after our dicking at the city ground the red dogs come to town for the home fixture, we are on the slide, down from fourth place to fourteenth, i'm awake early with p.m.t, [pre-match-tension], we have to beat them today, we have to get some pride back into pride park and the players need to man up and get a result, we catch up with the tail end of the scum being escorted by the o.b from the railway station on their short walk to the ground, they are full of it, giving it the big one from behind the safety of a police cordon and dogs, one big, fat ginger twat is really fancying himself, he soon shuts up when i start to cross the road, 'i'll see you later fatty...', into the ground and it's rammed, wish it was this busy every home match, our attendances are sliding like our league positions, although we still get more support than a lot of premiership clubs and last year we were only second to sunderland in our average attendances, the game kicks off, nil-nil at half time and the rams are holding their own against the dogs, second half substitution  see's our ex-striker earnshaw come on and he slots the ball past our keeper, we huff and puff, searching for the equaliser to get the draw but it's too little too late, i'm numb, beaten for the first time at home by the scum in our history at pride park, i feel sick in my stomach, i can't even go for a consolation pint with the lads after the game and make my way home, gutted....

 because i'm having a couple of wheels built with 17" aluminium rims it means i have to junk the standard belt-drive pulleys to enable us to run a conventional chain and sprockets, to get the front pulley off is a right job, you can't just drop it in gear and try and undo the retaining nut so i fitted the belt and tie-wrapped it to the pulley then dropped the open 'loop' end around my hydraulic work stand that the bike is standing on, i had to heat the nut up and borrow a 'jims' socket and bar off frenchy to shift it, they are bloody tight, must be hammered on at the factory with an air tool, i got chance to do a bit more on the bonny tank too, dangerous bought a tank repair kit which is similar to the one we used on the mz racer, [couldn't get the 'frost automative' kit as they are out of stock at the present time], washed the tank out with the marine cleaner and dropped a handful of old nuts and bolts into the filler cap and rolled the tank to knock the rust off the inside surfaces, [the bike had stood for a long time and condensation had made a real mess of the tank], i dropped the etching solution in and left that overnight, dangerous washed it out this morning and spent most of the evening drying out the tank with a heat gun ready for the sealant, we decided to leave this stage until tomorrow so we can make sure the tank is totally dry.