manx grand prix

motorcycle racing can be a cruel sport, from the high's of victory to paying the ultimate price for pursuing one's chosen path as a racer, chris palmer's victory on the 350cc aermacchi on tuesday and ryan farquhar's win in the 500cc classic race on the paton, the sad loss of steve osborne in the manx gp practice and trevor ferguson, [ryan farquhar's uncle] today during the supertwins race highlight's how narrow that path can sometimes be.

'little' johnny blair - 'momma's gone'

northern soul.

the loveless vinyl vault a.k.a skeletons in the cupboard

bank holiday monday in merrye olde englande, one thing you can guarantee is that the weather will be shit, how does that work? bank holiday's are a precious thing, you can get drunk on a sunday night and not have to worry about getting up for work on a monday morning, as i drifted into consciouness this morning i sensed it was raining, the dog's are not impressed that i'm dragging them out into the inclement weather when they would rather be snuggled up on the sofa, two hour's out and i'm wet, wetter than a very wet thing with added comedy buckets of water wet, home, shower, brew and we settle down, me and the dog's to watch the b.s.b coverage from cadwell park live on eurosport, the afternoon drift's by, frenzied tea drinking, farting and watching the t.v. i never do this normally but it somehow just feel's so right, wet jack russell's, tea, bean's on toast, bike racing, early evening i decide to dig out some northern vinyl, love doing this, i just open up a box, dig in and grab a handful, sort through them and find them on you-tube, here's a load of stuff on the pye disco-demand label, i collected a lot of british releases back in the day, the disco-demand label had a short run from 1974 to 1976 but released some great tunes, here's a few of them....

boxer racer project

me, at darley, photo's by s. daine and nicked off the vmcc/bhr site, here's the instructions for viewing them, look to your right, that's it, now, turn your head as far as you can to the right, ok, hold that position, now, look at your computer screen from the corner of your eye and when i say go, turn your head to the left as fast as you can, ready?, one, two, three, GO!, see, i told you i'm fast......

harley davidson

photographic proof that all harley davidson rider's are old, chap-wearing, mid-life crisis, born again biker's who couldn't handle a modern sportbike, h.o.g patch flying, scaring no-one, in fact people are actually laughing at you, wallet-on-a-fucking-chain, wannabe bad-asses, here's the picture, another toss-pot on his leisurely way down to the local 'dealership t.m.].........[irony, often lost in translation, i know whitey get's it at least]

charity shop / oxfam

saturday, jess is off to reading for the festival, i'm drifting in and out of sleep, shower's, hair dryer's, 'mum, where's my ticket' it's the weekend, a bank holiday weekend, natch, no-way am i getting up at stupid 'o' clock, i do that every working day, mr's b's alarm goes off, she drop's jess off at the train station and me and the dog's enjoy a saturday morning lie-in, i can't even be bothered to bollock them for snuggling on the bed, i drift off and mr's b wakes me with a kiss and a cup of tea, lazy, late summer morning, breakfast, walk the dog's, more tea, down into belper for some groceries and the traditional 'chippy dinner', so? i'm good all week, saturday comes, so, beat me up, white bread, butter, chip's and peas, me and mr's b hit oxfam, i love this shop, i never, ever, don't buy anything from here, be it cd's, vinyl or books, today was one of those day's, i scored a copy of 'dogtown-the legends of the z-boy's' for one ninety nine and five, [count them cd's] for the same paltry sum, check this out, the pixies, 'trompe le monde', lemondheads, 'it's a shame about ray', lemonheads, 'come on feel the lemonheads', 4hero, 'creating patterns' and the breeders, 'last splash', five cd's and a book for the same price as a round of drink's, you really can't go wrong, support your local charity shop.....

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......