boxer racer project

stick with me on this, it's hard to explain, i've fitted the new spring's added the oil and used the spring compressor i made up to re-fit the original fork caps and circlips, the top photo isn't very interesting i admit, but, here we go, the 10mm 'coned' bolt is the spring pre-load tensioner, i turned up six spacers, four 10mm and two 5mm, the 'coned' bolts are 30mm long, this gives me six different pre-load options, on a dummy run, [the bike off the stand, up on the bench, me sitting on it and the front brake applied, two 10mm spacers, 15 weight oil and 20mm slugs], tie-wrap to measure the travel] the front end felt a hundred times better, got to try it on a racetrack to be sure, but, we've lost the 120mm travel, the front end diving like a leed's united player and got a nice progressive feel, the springs aren't rifling now and i reckon we've got a much more planted front end for less than fifty quid, result, got a replacement rotor for the venhill throttle too, the domino is good but just needed two-turns to get full throttle, really heavy on the wrist, so, re-fitted the venhill and set it up, still heavy compared to the domino, but the venhill is quater-turn compared to the domino two-bites-at-the-cherry..........

the stock springs in the forks were well past their sell-by date and were a coil and a half shorter than they should be when new, i ordered a set of progressive heavy duty springs and fitted them along with a fresh set of fork seals, [if you look closely you can see the rifling in the forkleg where the spring has been hitting it], i carefully cleaned all the damper components and refitted them and filled up with a 15 weight fork oil, the little aluminium bush sitting on top of the spring has a locator dowel turned into to secure the spring at the top of the fork and will prevent the spring rifling again, i', going to fit a couple of stainless shims on top of the bushes and then i can use the bolts that were originally the oil filler plugs to use as an adjuster to alter the pre-load of the springs, that's the theory anyway, it's basically a crude, shed built version of the beautiful 'speedmerchant' pre-load adjusters that i've fitted to the sporty.........

manx gp

jamie coward clocked the fastest lap on his r6 yamaha posting a 119.528 mph lap to put him at the top of the senior leaderboard, just take a second to study this photo, jamie is two feet away from somebody's front door,tucked down behind the minimal screen and going for it, just remember, this is all run on real roads, none of that nancy short circuit stuff, proper racing on real roads, kerbs, walls, tree's, you crash you probably die, the human body is soft, the landscape is very, very hard, do the math......

boxer racer project

not going to beat about the bush, the forks on the boxer are shite, the front end felt very strange under braking on the track at darley, the forks almost seemed like they were 'binding', something definetly wasn't right, i stripped the front end out of the bike, first job was to make a spring compressor out of a bit of scrap stock, remove the circlips that hold the stanchions in and get the legs on the bench, one of the previous 16 owners has had the same problem and made up a couple of 15mm slugs to pre-load the tension on the fork springs, ahaa, thats half the problem, the stock bushes have a 3mm location peg to keep the fork springs in line, whoever added the spacers didn't take this into consideration, the springs were allowed a free reign and have 'rifled' the inside of the forkleg, i've got an idea......

manx gp

the manx gp, the late summer road races, run on the same course as the tourist trophy in june, michael dunlop lead in the first session, posting a 102.57mph lap on the suzuki xr69 suzuki, ryan farquhar waited for the second session and put in a 107.56 lap to eventually top the leaderboard, looks like the paddy's are on a mission......

aermacchi

dangerous's dream bike, an aermacchi-metisse, the beautiful, high revving italian single cylinder engine, wrapped in a nickel plated rickman frame, they were originally built in 1967 and enjoyed a short production run until 1972, seem's funny after forty- five years of lusting after one his dream might just come true.....

darley moor

we first met bruce hosie when we had the pleasure of parking up next door to his van at the festival of a 1000 bikes at mallory park, bruce and his mate len kept us entertained all day with stories of their racing exploits throughout the years, these boys are the real deal, they've raced all over britain, the continent and the manx grand prix in the isle of man, i couldn't get a close look at the seeley 7r wedged between the vans at the festival but darley gave me the chance to have a closer look, this is a serious racing motorcycle, i didn't realise how special it was until bruce nonchantly told me the story, the frame is, as you can see, a seeley, it's running 18 inch rims with ap racing disc, caliper and mastercylinder, six-speed close ratio gearbox, external heavy duty forks, ally tank, scitsu rev counter and manx fly screen, the interesting part is the engine, based on a 7r bottom end but the top end is a four valve item, cast up to bruces specification, it's running a combination of vauxhall and honda valves, [sorry,can't remember if it was vauxhall exhaust valves or vicky-verky]bruce machined up the casting, fitted the guides and gasflowed the head, absolute brilliance and i thought i was a genius nailing an old baking tray to the bottom of my bike.......

tattooed love boys

there's sexy tunes and there's filth, dirty, suggestive rock and roll, inxs, 'i need you tonight', sexy tune, the pretender's, 'tattooed love boy's'? 'i shot my mouth off and you showed me what that hole was for...........' pure dirt, [this tunes for you whitey, i know you are a ms hynde fan too] three minutes of music porn............

classic racer

the term 'classic' is much over used today, anything from a early computer game to the new mini's and the 'classic' fiat 500's, from the 'classic' hinckley bonneville's to the 'classic' bestaff jacket, [worn by style concious people the world over, i used to have an original belstaff wax cotton jacket, the fucking thing was horrible, it stunk, it used to leave a greasy smear over anything and everything it came into contact with, my old ma banned it from the house in the end and i used to have to leave it in the shed, just think of the damage to your average gucci wearing penny loafered,no-socks-thank-you, white, original levi's fashionista] stick the name 'classic' to any item and it gains instant credibility, here's a classic, [note no quotation marks, this is a real classic] mervyn stratfords rudge motorcycle, winning races back in 1934, yes, 1934 and still winning races today in the hands of mr stratford, mervyn started racing this machine back in 1967 and is still the man on this four valver, [yep, four valve, honda only took forty years to catch up] this, ladies and gentlemen is a real classic, check out the full skinny at www.stratford-rudge.co. and be prepared to be inspired .......

darley moor

well, so much for the 'new improved blogger experience' mr's b has worked out a way of posting using the old html system that just shows you lines of computer codes instead of photo's until you actually post, very time consuming and frustrating, especially after a few glasses of red and you can't remember which photo's you are trying to post because you can only see the lines of code, blah, blah, blah, anyhow, here's some random's of people at darley moor, well, i hope that they are some photos of darley moor.....

fucking blogger

really struggling to post at the moment, everytime i try and upload photo's i get a message. 'upload failed-server invalid response' really, really frustrating, anyone else struggling to post? if this carries on i might have to sack it and start a new blog.........