aermacchi

finally sorted the 'macchi today, after yesterday it all seemed to be slipping away from us, i woke up early, i just knew i had to get it nailed today, down to roy's, viny's sorted, [we are running traditional green numberplates until the bike is sorted properly, then we will run with the full fairing], timing sorted, checked all the fasteners, robbed the kill-switch off the sporty and wired that up, just got to add oil and fuel and tomorrow?, well, tomorrow should see us pushing the bastard up and down the road to try and start it....

football

you really couldn't make it up, even the most die hard rams fans were predicting a dicking at the hands of our east midland rivals leicester city, this match has never been a 'derby' match to ram's fans, just an annoying team from down the road, [leicester's derby match is against the struggling coventry city who are facing a winding-up order from the stadium owners, excuse me?, it's a football stadium, ok, you get the occasional rock concert there, but, first and foremost, it's a football stadium, why do the owners of the ricoh stadium try and force a winding up order on their source of income?, fair play to coventry city football club and their fan's, even if you have to play on the local recreation ground the real fan's will be there supporting you and hopefully the 'owner's' of the ricoh will be left with an empty stadium] anyhoo, back to the plot, leicster need to get promoted to the premiership this season, they have spent a massive amount of money on player's, the wage bill is huge and expectations for automatic promotion huge, shame then that they are rapidly dropping points and their season seem's to be taking a turn for the worst, derby hadn't beaten the foxes in the previous five matches, we were without a win in the previous eight games, leicester needed the three points to keep their promotion hopes alive, derby needed the three points to stave off the fear of relegation to the third tier of english football, richard keogh rose to head home jamie wards free kick to give the ram's a goal advantage, derby struck again a minute befor half time with on loan player chris martin, [behave, not the nerdy bloke who sing's with the beat combo coldplay!] heading in from close range to give the rams a deserved two goal advantage at the break, leicster managed to get a goal back early in the second half but the rams managed to get the win even after a ridiculous six, yep, six minutes of extra time, where did the official find that from? i have my suspicion's that it was to pad out the sky tv coverage? but, by far the most satisfying moment was when me and the boy jack were walking home after the match, i decided to give my foxy mate merv a quick ring, 'ey up foxy, hope you and the rest of the banjo-playing in-bred's are crying at the result!' 'sorry timmy, you're breaking up mate...' football, fucking brilliant.....

walking in the sunshine

this tune got played today on my favourite radio station, bad manner's 'walking in the sunshine' i'd almost forgotten it, lost  forever, but then, it just struck me, i remembered the video, dougie trendall and the rest of the band, diving in the horrible, cold, grey water of the english channel, [somewhere off southend, or 'soufend'for our essex-dwelling, southern pooftah's would call it?] a snapshot of england in 1981, horrible really, dangerous, and dark, a time of civil unrest, [don't even get me started about the miner's strike and mr's thatcher, the falklands conflict, heysel and bradford], years later, they were booked to play at the 'rock and blues' biker festival at nearby pentrich, if ever a band got booked at the wrong gig then this was it, a hard-core biker festival and the headline band? bad manner's, a ska/bluebeat combo, brilliant, dougie, aka buster bloodvessel, gripping the mike, 'right you fucking greb's. we are bad manner's and you smelly bastard's are going to dance to some ska or i'm going to jump down there and chin you fucker's!' you know what?, apart from seeing the hells angels dancing to rave music in the tent at kent in the early eighties, watching the hardcore, cut-off, rally-patched heavy metal, 'biker's' skanking along to this tune will be one of my abiding memory's, the power of music, there's just something so naive about this tune and video and yet something so, so, so, so ........

aermacchi

well, don't say i didn't warn you, sweary and chalky shot over to bilsthorpe to pick up the pvl coil that had arrived this morning from germany, talk about cutting it fine, i got home from work, literally ran the dogs around their usual five-mile walk and headed straight to the shed, dangerous was already in there, [i wonder if he actually goes home sometimes?], i'd had a full-bangladesh english veggie breakfast early door's, [one a month as a special treat, two fried eggs, beans, grilled and tinned tomatoes, couple of hash browns, mushrooms, two rounds of thick white bread, hp sauce, [the genuine 'dutch' item, what the fuck?, used to be made in that there birmingham, then they sold the manufacturing rights to the dutch, sometimes i can't get my breath...] set's you up for the day a good fried breakfast, my carnivour friends [and my boy jack], eagerly devouring the processed pig produce, by 1600 hrs i was ready for something to eat, i'd called in at the co-op at five-lamps to get fuel and spotted the toasted tea cakes on offer, be rude not too i suppose, kettle on, tea cakes in the toaster, sorted, me and dangerous sit quaffing a brew and munching, a sense of self-satisfaction waves over us, dangerous is idly polishing invisible marks off the 'macchi frame, last job to do is time up the bike now we have the ignition coil, houston, we have a problem, for some reason, [which i later put down to leaving a job half way through rather than finishing it] is that either me or dangerous has got the pushrods the wrong way round, bugger, exhaust off, carb off, head off, try and work out which rod goes where, bloodyfuckinghell, i can't locate the pushrods back in their respective 'cup's' dangerous is flapping, dropping fasteners all over the floor, we need to step back, take a minute and reflect, kettle on, [no celebratory peroni tonight], a nice cup of tea and everything makes sense again, slacken off the tappet adjusters, head back on, pushrod's in, proper sync, torque head off and that's it, still need to put the exhaust back on, time up the motor, rocker covers back on, re-fit the carb and a few other jobs, but, you know what? we have been here before, that's what keep's you going, the dissapointments just make you more determined to get it right first time, next time, if this thing run's i promise, i'll show you my arse on ripley marketplace, [standing on top of the burger van, saturday night, wearing a smith's 'meat is murder' t-shirt].....

shovelhead

yeah, i've posted some of these photo's before, but, i think they are worth posting again, here's barse and the infamous punk-rock shovelhead, owned from before they were trendy and featured on all the blog's, owned and ridden, owned and cursed, owned and tattooed.........

aermacchi

getting down to the nitty-gritty now with the aermacchi project, tonights job was to get a catch bottle mounted on the bike and a hose off the crankcase into it, you can't just vent the hose to atmoshpere just in case you end up spewing oil all over your rear wheel or the track, so a catch bottle, [just a humble old plastic vitamin bottle], was just simply tie-wrapped to the frame between the engine mounting plate and the rear frame rail, the rest of the night was spent playing with my new toy, a pair of genuine aircraft lockwire pliers, [borrowed by sweary mick from a well-known aircraft engine manufacturer]after i got a comment on the blog about my sloppy lockwiring technique on the boxer racer i thought i'd better sharpen up my act, the pliers are a brilliant bit of kit, dead easy to use and turn out a decent finish, i really don't know why i struggled for so long with those silly little twisty handle jobbies, onwards and upwards....

aermacchi

well, a week on thursday, [21/03/13], team loveless should, if everything goes to plan, be at the bhr test day at mallory park, hopefully with both the aermacchi's, but sadly without the bmw boxer which is still sitting in jim's workshop on the thames marshes waiting for the race cam to arrive from germany, there's still a hundred and one little jobs to do on the 250, we still haven't received the ignition coil [spooky, again this is allegedly on it's way from germany too], if this doesn't arrive, it's a trip over to bilsthorpe to borrow one off dave at d+r engineering, dave gave us a knackered one so we could work out how to mount it, no point in re-inventing the wheel, the rickman frame already has a split-tube welded to the lower frame brace so that you can just slide one of the old coil's into the orifice, unfortunately the pvl coil is nothing like so, a piece of nylon engineering stock was turned to the right diameter and we turned up an aluminium 'button for the other end, a long, 6mm set srew pinches the two together, i tapped the nylon for two 6mm screws to mount the pvl coil to it, the nylon should damp out some of the vibration that can cause the coil mountings to fracture, just to make sure we are going to mount the coil off two rubber bushes, i've used these to mount battery boxes, numberplates and all manner of stuff that you want to isolate, they are nothing very glamourous, just old valves that tyre fitters cut off when replacing tyres, if you go to your local tyre place and look on the floor there's usually dozens kicking about, ask nicely and you can usually help yourself for nothing, a week on thursday? easy peasy, what could possibly go wrong? [if you've followed the blog for a while you will already know the answer to that question.....]

aermacchi

try as i might, i couldn't persuade sweary mick to part with just over a hundred quid for a scitsu rev counter for the 'macchi, he insisted that he wanted the veglia analogue, cable-driven original item used on the bike, we made a stainless bracket up this afternoon to mount the tacho off the top yoke, after all my moaning and groaning, swearing and bitching, once the veglia was mounted up? yep, he was right, can you imagine anything else?, i went back into the shed and it hit me, the rusty screws, the 'crazed' white backing, the slightly hazy glass, real heritage, same as the dinted and scraped exhaust header pipe, something's you just can't polish out or paint, 'contagiri per competizione'....

northern soul

the jewels, 'we got togetherness' digging through my vinyl collection tonight i came across this gem from the jewels, one hundred mile an hour, northern soul stomper, fucking brilliant, 'we gottt soulllll!'

northern soul

right, if your doing all-nighter's one of the most important thing's you have with you is your , 'nighter-bag', usually an adidas, covered in soul all nighter patches, showing which all-nighter's you have actuallly attended, [like now, people 'faked' it, buying patches and sowing them onto their bag's] i was there, i hold my hand's up, i never attended an all-nighter at the fabled wigan casino, [remember, this was from a time when the mainstream had caught onto the whole 'wigan' thing, fuck me, they even had a manufactured band called 'wigan's chosen few' on the top pop programme, 'top of the pop's' back in the day, me, as alway's, i sort out the more obscure venues playing real soul, cleo's in derby, nottingham palais, samantha's in sheffield,[ the 'oldies' room playing stuff that was more obscure than a very obscure thing, the majority of the crowd being in their late 'forty's /early fifty's], the st ivo recreation centre in cambridge, wirrina stadium in peterborough, derby tiff's, sheffield tiff's, coalville, mexborough, a thousand and one night's all over the country, the all-nighter bag was a neccesity, it contained everything you needed to survive, clean, vests and cap sleeeve t shirt's, storage for your essential record buy's, a toothbrush, soap and 'brut' deoderant so you were fresh and clean, talcum powder for the dance floor, your 'soul club' membership card's, train ticket's. [when you actually bought one instead of just hopping on a train to another city and taking the chance] and condom's, [although i own up, i never got the chance to use one], no mobile phones, no inter-net, just people with a common interest, soul music, the rarer and the more obscure the better....

sporty

in-between all the work on the aermacchi, chasing up progress on the airhead race bike, sorting out loads of other little jobs for mates and mates-of mates, i'm trying to nail the sporty together for this year, i'm acutely aware that this is my sole transport for the summer, my old vw polo isn't going to pass the dreaded m.o.t test this time and along with getting to work every day, i've got to get it sorted for the manx, or classic, tt, paul the sparky has been up twice 'laid hands' on the bike without actually connecting a wire up yet, i've been suprised with dangerous, i never realised he had it in him, but, he's turned up trumps with the rattle can paint job on the sporty, i wanted it satin black and the man dangerous has done me proud, the paint looks the bollocks, he's spent ages filling, priming and spraying, nibbing off between each coat to get a gorgeous satin finish, i've got to let the paint harden off before i nip down and get me old mucker roy to add some decals, i'm thinking racing stripes down the centre of the tank and seat unit, perhaps battleship grey or olde english white, [cream?] and just a plain 'harley davidson' in a nice typeface in the same colour, on the side of the tank, i had thought about going the traditional harley racing colour combo of orange and white on the satin black, but, now i'm not sure, is it too predictable?, any suggestions greatfully received, [i'll probably have changed my mind by then anyway], after i decide on the stripe/typeface thing dangerous is going to rattle it over with a clear lacquer to try and protect it and then wet and dry it back to the satin finish, the more i look at it, the more i like it, it's really changed the look of the bike, in fact, i don't think i'll ever own a shiny paint bike again......