aermacchi

johnny 'owd bollock's dropped off the fairing mount and what do you know, chalky and sweary mick turned up with the paintwork for the 'macchi, deep, italian, racing, red, i think it look's shit, be much better green or black, but there you go, no accounting for taste i guess...

aermacchi

cast your minds back a couple of weeks, [ok maybe three, maybe four] and you may recall a couple of photo's that i posted up of some yokes that johnny owd bollock's had cast up for his mettise project, i don't remember the exact word's but it went along the lines of 'it's not what you know, it's who you know' today that came back to us, when owd bollock's came up to collect his yokes, i asked him if he could replicate the horrible fairing mount/speedo mount/lockstop combination that blighted the front end of the 'macchi project, owd bollock's came up trumps for us, he has remade the bracket in thin wall stainless, half the weight of the old 'steam-pipe' original item, beautifully tig welded, no money has changed hands, just an exchange of skill's, [and a re-distribution of wealth based on the age old barter system, as well as a healthy dose of 'recycling' raw materials from the scrap bin's of multi national corporations, it's a 'win-win' situation, we use material destined for the landfill sites and cut down on the bureaucracy of waste transfer notices and all the associated bollock's] and at the end of the day not only are we doing our part to save the planet, but, we get a lovely, hand made part for sweary mick's bike....

boxer race bike

i'm loving this photo, it just gets me fired up, the day's are getting longer, january, the most hateful month of the year has gone and spring is hoving into view, [ok, ok, there's a long time to go yet but..] can't wait to get my airhead back from jim's now.......

football

a week really is a long time in football, to be frank, derby were absolutely outclassed by a strong blackburn side last saturday, knocked out of the fa cup, today the rams needed to turn it around big time and did they ever, huddersfield, our visitors today were taken apart by a clinical derby team, derby totally dominated the first half, out playing and outmuscling a lack-lustre huddersfield side, craig bryson scored first before jamie ward made it two-nil before half-time, huddersfield came out fighting after the break but derby just played as they did in the first half, keeping the ball for long periods of possession and eventually sucking in 'town's callum woods to foul paul coutts, keogh rose unmarked to head home jamie wards free kick to put the game beyond 'town, a great performance all over the park by the lads, this win see's us up to ninth in the league and six points off the play-off places, four-four-two works nige, don't fucking change it, oh yeah, the dog's got beat at home today too.....

marchal

a comment from long-time loveless blog contributor. jan. regarding my choice of headlight for the sportster set me off on the nostalgia path the other day, jan likes the k-c 'daylighters', complete with the old school, [is it me or is that a really, really overused term today, 'old-school' in musical term's is ten years ago, 'old-school in motorcycling terms is five years ago, have you noticed how young policemen are looking these day's? what happened to the 'old-school' coppers of yesterday? the big, fat bastards who used to give you a dig in the rib's for cherry knocking , knock you into semi-conciousness with a wooden truncheon for daring to pass wind in public or slap you in irons and feed you bread and water for exceeding the national speed limit on your motorised bicycle? achtung! achtung! irony warning in place], smiley face headlamp covers, used mainly on off-roaders, me? i prefer the classic, [is it me or is that a really, really, blah, blah, blah..], marchal's, to me they just remind me of the bol d'or, the french twenty four hour endurance race, i used to love reading about the exploits of 'team-bike', funnily enough in 'bike' magazine, it really caught my attention when a couple of mates raced a basically stock honda 900 against the might of the works teams, brilliant, almost every photo from that era, [the 'old school' early eighties], showed bikes with the legendary french 'marchal' headlight's, i was so took with the imagery of the classic 'pussy cat' marchal's that i fitted a pair of old lucas spots to my old mini pick-up and got a pair of the iconic marchal lamp cover's off a mates dad who used to do a bit of rally driving, well, when i say 'got' them, i mean i sort-of-borrowed them, ahem, on a sort of permanent basis-type-thing, 'cor blimey guv, it's a fair cop'........

sportster

as i said in the last post, i've been looking out for a small digital speedo for the sportster to replace the dodgy pushbike one that i've had on the bike for the last couple of years, i'm sure it would be great if you used it for it's intended purpose but bolting it onto a big, vibrating vee-twin motorcycle was i suppose just asking for trouble, the speed reading fluctuated by twenty to thirty miles an hour difference as the pick up struggled to relay the information to the wireless unit, it looked sort of legal and didn't cause me any hassle with the annual mot test but it's time to move on and fit something made specifically for a motorcycle, i just cannot afford either the point's on my licence, the fine or possible ban especially as we live in one of the nation's police 'safety camera partnership' hotspot's, i literally stumbled over this little gem at the recent newark show as we were making our way to the car at the end of the day, it's a gps unit, reads mph/kph, total mileage and a tripmeter, it works on the same technology as your sat-nav, literally shaking hands with a sattelite and displaying the information on the tiny digital unit, it's waterproof and it's plug and play, two wires and that's it, got to make up a bracket to fit it and the receiver to the top yoke, don't know how good it is or whether it's up to the rigour's of being shaken to near destruction, but, i'll let you know....

sportster

with the bmw boxer down in kent at jim cray's having some much needed bee-haich-pee shoved up it, the aermacchi sitting on the bench waiting for sweary mick's mate to get the paintwork sorted and dangerous away in the canary islands spending his winter heating allowance on sangria, it was left to me to keep the candle burning in the shed, i'd been thinking about putting a headlight back on the sporty since the end of last year, the lack of light in the autumn evenings was getting frustrating as it cut the riding season short and i was getting fed up with having to bail out early from the local bike night's due to no headlight, i'd got a couple of tiny 'projector' light's put on one side from a previous project and had idea's about mounting them one above the other, slightly off-centre like the 'stacked' lights on the ducati treble-niner's, after a couple of evening's trying to figure out how to mount them using the carbon number board on the front of the bike i decided it would look too busy so went back to the time honoured taiwanese 'bates' copy instead, i had a black powdercoated shell and rim from year's ago, [in fact barse ran it on his shovel for a summer or two before giving it me back after finding an old tractor spotlight at a jumble], so, i had the mashings but not the lens and reflector, a night on the 'tinterweb trying to find replacement gut's ended in frustration as apparently they are not as widely available as they used to be, [not the mini-bates innard's anyway, you can get the five a and three-quarter one still though], i ended up having to buy a new 'bates' mail order and decided that the chrome shell and rim was just too 'glam', i swapped the bit's around, keeping the powdercoated shell and teaming it with the chrome rim, i reckon it looks a lot more classic that way, i gently cut the blue clear plastic fullbeam indicator lens from the top of the chrome shell and stuck it into the black shell with some contact adhesive, spun up a mounting out of some roundstock and bolted it up, i reckon it looks ok and makes the front end look a lot lighter, now i just need a set of black rubber forkleg gaitors to 'drop' the front end down and make it look shorter than the massive expanse of exposed chrome forkleg and a trick little speedo......

manx grand prix / classic tt

well, there you go, we have been talking about it for the last five years dangerous and me, today i booked it, team loveless are going to mona's isle, well when i say team loveless i mean dangerous, sweary mick, chalky and me, the 'boy's' are going over in sweary mick's car, splitting the fuel and ferry cost's, me? well, i can't get the time off work so i'm making my own way there, a day later than them and coming home a day earlier but, i'm going on my bike, should be good fun on the sportster, it all seem's a long way off at the moment, but, i'm revved, i've not been to the island since 1981, oh dear, is it really that long ago? what was i thinking of? the infamous honda 'black' protest day's, [look it up if you don't know], i'm going to be riding around the famous 37.33 mile course again....

sporty

barse has put up a link to his old webpage which features loads of old bike builds and party's from back in the day, this photo is of my old four-speed sporty that eventually ended up as a hardtail, crammed into an old santee frame, [i bet all the hipster's are getting a little excited now?] this was how it looked in the swingarm frame, almost seventy-five percent complete before the santee frame turned up and well, you all know what happened after that, [the famous 'saltracer' ridgid chop] looking back on this bike i realised i should have finished it off and rode it, i love the old 4-speed's, dead lazy torquey engine, i know a lot of the early evo's were fragile but this thing was a lovely mill, check out a few details, i mounted the crane coils off the tank, the tank had a massive crease in it from a previous accident and the tank had just been filled and sprayed, so, rather than scrapping it, i made up a bracket and welded it to the tank to mount the coils in, it looked well hard, as did the rest of the bike, i rattle-canned it matt black, polished up the motor and wrapped the pipes, if it was on bikeefix today it would have had a load of comment's from all the trendy dudes, 'i don't like this, i don't like that, i'd have done it like this, i'd have changed that, the seat isn't right, the tyres should be old school firestones and oh yeah, lose the pipewrap' well bro, show me what you built, oh, you ain't built shit? well, what do you know......

football

fa cup, fourth round day, after heavy overnight snow i really didn't think we would be able to get to the game today, jack spent an hour digging the car out of the snow and clearing off the drive so we could get to the road, which incidentally was impassable at 0800hrs, even the normally un-stoppable white transit van's were turning around and admitting defeat, the bus service cancelled and i decided to just go for a walk with the dog's instead, by 1130 hr's there was a definite two-tyre width track on the road so we decided to chance it, down into the fair city of derby, park up and do the last two miles on foot, four inches of slush and ice on the pavement's, made the ground by a quarter to three, quick beer and find the rest of the lad's, our normal section of the ground is closed, [it's a cup match, all the glory boy's from last week's match against forest are doing something much more important this week, don't get me started...], we take up a row of seats next to the blackburn faithful, not many have braved the journey down from lancashire but they are in good voice giving the current board of directors loads of stick and calling for their resignation, 'you can stick your fucking chicken up your arse..... sideway's!' in reference to the owners business interests, the match kick's off and it's apparent from the outset that it's not going to be derby's day, the blackburn team are a strong, skillful bunch who dominate the game from start to finish, we go a goal down just before half time, rovers stick two more past us and to be honest deserved their comfortable victory against a toothless derby side who didn't even manage a shot on the blackburn goal, the lads bail out early doors to the pub, me and jack stick it until the 87th minute, that's football, at least the red-dog's went down at home to the same scoreline, big-up's to the blackburn faithful, you were the better team and i wish you all the best for whover you draw in the next round, at least we can concentrate on the league now....

motorrad zschopau

one of my mates dropped me a load of bike magazines off at work, he's sold his bike, a lovely, late model honda 600 sportsbike, [don't ask me which model, it's the one with the underseat exhaust pipe, very tasty], he has decided to bail out after three years of motorcycle ownership, a combination of pressure from his nearest and dearest, [regarding the dangers of riding a bike, the death toll and horror stories of ruined lives, orphaned children and young widows] and lost income, driving ban's, ridiculous insurance premiums and perhaps, the fact that riding a bike just isn't as cool and trendy as it was two-to-three years ago, [my mate suprised me when he told me he was going to take his compulsory bike training and buy a bike because 'everyone who is anyone rides a bike now dad!' fuck me, how times change, a series of un-connected events as a boy led me down this path, the greaser on the fair at butlin's holiday camp with the knuckle tattoo's, my mate, mark wileman's dad's panther, tradesman outfit, blasting around on the field's where we lived, chris goodall, who lived across the road who had a beautiful vespa scooter, the lad's who waved at me on the way to the osmaston manor races when i was sitting in the back of the car my dad had borrowed off his foreman at work, the pulp biker novels i swapped on a geography field trip to aberystwyth in welsh wales, 'chopper' mama' 'button's-the making of a president', dicking about in the shed with a long list of cast off, small capacity commuter bikes and scooter's, it's how you learned, snapping off bolts by overtightening, getting wheel spacer's the wrong way round, boiling battery's, dropping circlips into the crankcases, [ahem], making leather patches with the legend 'black eagles mc' getting filled in for wearing a backpatch with the legend 'black eagles mc', being asked how old you are when trying to buy a copy of easyriders magazine, buying one of those paul something-or-other backpatches mail order out of the back of the new musical express adverts, getting filled in for wearing a paul something-or-other patch, yep, it's been a long, hard road, has the bubble really burst with bikes?, no, i don't think so, i just think things are reaching that natural equilebrium and that it will weed out the people like my mate for who it's more about the image than anything else, i'm not saying that's a bad thing, it just mean's that there's more bikes available for the rest of us to buy at a reasonable price, here's a few fact's for you, in the past three year's he reckon's he's spent, [at a conservative estimate], twenty thousand english pounds, holy shit batman, that's a lot of disposable income, when quizzed further he add's it up, his original training, test, licence, two set's of leathers, three helmet's, insurance, servicing, [by official dealer], aftermarket exhaust can, trackday's, tyres, magazines, fuel, chain and sprockets and a hundred and one other bit's and bob's that we spend on our, uum?, our lifestyle?, hobby? blah, blah, blah, when you add it all up that's a serious amount of filthy lucre, no wonder people are bailing, so where does that leave the rest of us? well me, i'm happy dicking about in the shed with old air-cooled stuff, building half decent bikes out of scrap and just having a good time, which bring's me back to the original post, mz's, brilliant, i really want a 250 trophy, a four speed or five speed ts or an etz, i'm also still after a copy of the jan leek 'mz racer's' book, money's waiting, bail out now, you know motorcycles are just too dangerous and expensive.........