one step forward, two steps back, carefully cut the reducing bushes in half, quick clean up on the bridgeport and mount the renthal bars in the renthal risers and slide the renthal grips on, [ok, i like renthal stuff,], i take care to line up the cuts with the riser splits, [i know, i know, i need to get a life], i measure the bar's and centre them between the risers, clean up the socket head set bolts and apply the loctite, step back to admire, kettle on and brew, nitromors the sprocket cover, singing away and feeling smug, dangerous spots it first, he's got eye's like a shithouse rat, 'casting's split youth...', i don't want to believe it and try and kid myself it's just paint clinging to the casting, i stick it in the vice and move it backwards and forwards, bollocks, he's right, common fault on sporty's, all that work milling and cutting the cover away, filing and emery cloth, fucktastrophe......

been a busy day in the loveless shed today, after breakfast i got a long walk in with the boy's, still a long way to go but, the season's changing, first time this week that i managed to walk the dog's without using my torch, the day's are getting longer and all of a sudden i realise that the new race season/riding season is approaching, down to see rob at racing lines to order a couple of brake fluid reservoirs for the racer and the sporty project, then called in to see ben and tim at second skin tattoo shop, got home and dangerous is hard at it working on the bonneville, i give him a hand milling his stainless chain guard down and barse turns up, kettle on and he has rescued a load of late seventies early eighties speedway programmes from the recycling bin, someone had obviously wanted someone to find them as they had left them at the side of the bin rather than consigning them to fiery oblivion, barse had taken what he wanted from the collection and passed the rest on to us, mad john the painter turns up, better get the kettle on then.........

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.......