broke up for the christmas holiday's today, i've always worked over christmas until last year, our firm suddenly decided that we would shut for the whole holiday, i loved it and can't imagine having to work it now, we were in late today 0700hrs, got stuck in and we are munching breakfast cob's at 0900hrs, 1200hrs and we are off to the pub, my mucker, mo, is retiring today, we have worked together for nearly twenty-five years, it's emotional, i have a pint of shandy in the same time that it takes the rest of the crew to block three pints of magner's, too much to do today so by 1300hrs i'm out of there, get the chores out of the way and get in the shed by 1600hrs, mug of tea, mince pie and the pogues chugging away, 'you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap, lousy faggot, happy christmas you arse, i pray god it's our last........' got the cleaned up shock's and the diff mounted, new brake shoes in, up to frenchy's tomorrow to get the skinny on the engine, i'm feeling that it might be time to get my purse out, 'you'll no be having a sale will you?.....

                      thursday night, dangerous still banging on about me betting him that we wouldn't get the frame back for christmas and baying for blood, 'ripley, are you ready? here'sssssssss timmy's arse!' i play it cooler than a cool thing and concentrate on fitting the swing-arm, not the conventional fitting of a swinging-arm spindle, rather two, adjustable, pivot's, i measure them with feeler gauges and lock them in position with the new lock-nuts, a dab of loctite to make sure they don't vibrate loose, bolt the subframe roughly into position, 'phoned the british historic racing entries secretary this morning to get my race entries sorted, i also wanted to find out about getting my race number sorted, i wanted #51 but this has already gone so it look's like i'm going to be running a new number, the bad news is that there are no numbers less than one hundred left so it look's like i might end up # 369 or whatever........

well, there you go, a week to the day that dangerous dropped the frame off for powdercoating, we only just went and got it back, dangerous is in his element, 'right then toss-pot, where actually are you going to expose your nether region's to the good people of ripley?, i seem to remember you saying standing on top of the burger van, or, when the second cobra hit the spot, shinning up the xmas tree?, well? well?', very funny dangerous, so i got it wrong, but, i'm that used to being let down that this came as a pleasant suprise, the frame, sub-frame and battery box are sitting on the bench, a thick, lustrous coating of deep, deep, black, i removed the blanking pieces and even though i had spent time blanking the surfaces off, the powder had coated some of the bearing surfaces / threads, i chased the threads with a tap and cut the swing-arm bearing surfaces back with a stanley blade, check me out, no hi-vis, no risk assessment, no gloves, no toe-tector boot's, just a raw, sharp, blade, guess what?, i didn't cut any digit's off, result.........

 this was going to be a couple of photo's of my gearbox, i set about cleaning thirty year's worth of road-filth from it by a liberal dowsing with gunk, applied with a paintbrush and scrubbed in with an old toothbrush, to tell you the truth, i'd forgotten about the 'box until tonight, it lay under the bench and i only noticed it when i dropped a bolt i'd been turning down and stooped to retrieve it, an hour's work and i have a clean 'box and seven boring photo's, so, i thought i'd post these instead, the photo's aren't mine but it's a french bmw racer that i first saw at the thundersprint a couple of years ago, don't know anything about the bike but i'm digging the r65 tank, the eighteen inch rim's, [the rear is massive and i reckon it must be built with an off-set to fit that rubber], the rear sub-frame is welded to the main frame rather than being 'bolt-on', frame bracing run's from the steering head to the swing-arm pivot, [like the smith and butler superbike racer's] the crankcases machined with cooling holes around the clutch, the twin plugged heads and dyna coils, the modified front engine mount's [to raise the motor in the frame and gain some ground clearance [and the 'skid's' welded to the rocker covers in case you run out of clearance] and last, but not least, the machined front engine cover exposing the dark secrets of the elektickery system, stunning bike and a lot more interesting than a load of photo's of my grimy gearbox of a monday night.......

the high-bar moriwaki kawasaki, first time i saw one was at donington park, early '80's, wayne gardner, wearing a red bodywarmer over his leather's to fight the cold, i seem to remember it being early march and there being snow on the ground, it was bloody freezing, especially when your only transport was your bike, you couldn't afford the luxury of a cortina or escort to fend off the weather, ride to work, work to ride to quote the harley bro's,  here was a bike that road riders with 'sporting ambition's' could relate to, it still looked like a streetbike, no fairing, high-bars and based on the bikes that we were riding, croz was another racer from the antipodeans, like the irish lads, hard-as-fuck real road racers, not worried about racing amongst the wall's, kerbs and telegraph poles that line the road circuits, racing at 11/tenth's, no wonder people still build replicas........

peroni, so easy to drink, they have it on draught in the waterfall, that's the pub opposite derby railway station, they serve it in the proper 'tulip vase' glasses, had our work's xmas 'do' last night, i'm a twat me, up early door's, shift, home, walk the dog's, shower and in the waterfall for 1745hours, drinking peroni, 2100hrs see's me dancing to some classic motown and northern soul, 2230 hrs and i'm throwing shapes to '80's erasure, bronski beat and the communard's, 'don't, leave me this way, ooohhh baby.....' wake up, 0800hrs, head like a hole, mr's b looking smug, big carbohydrate packed breakfast and a long walk in the cold with the boy's, ahhh, that's better, i feel like...... shit, i don't feel better at all, dangerous arrives at 1130hrs and cheer's me up, 'you look like shit youth', he drives and i try and focus, we pull up at the breakers to discover that they've moved, we drive around the industrial estate and eventually find their new premises, mark, the lad we usually deal with clock's us, 'fucking hell, you look rough youth....' we spend the next hour rooting amongst the old bikes and parts bins, i eventually discover a brembo integral master cylinder and lever, [no remote's allowed in the bhr b.e.a.r.s series] and a clutch perch from a late '80's yamaha, forty quid and a fiver for mark for a drink, [alway's pays to grease the palm's of industry] we make it home and i put the kettle on, barse is kicking the front door in on his way home from kev's, the dog's are barking and going ape, i get a brew together and we sit in the shed eating hot mince pies and quaffing tea, 'fucking hell youth, you look rough', i nitomors the master cylinder, clutch perch and both levers, the clutch perch is ok and soon shed's the powdercoating, the brembo master cylinder proves more difficult, it's anodized, break out the mr muscle oven cleaner, just what i need on top of the king of all hangover's, a large slice of chemical solvent abuse, parts eventually cleaned, new stainless hardware, turned up and a new pivot made for the brake lever and mill the writing off the master cylinder lid, we break out the cobra's at 1945hrs, suddenly i start to feel a little better........

the drain / fill / level plugs need to be drilled to allow them to be lock-wired to stop them shaking loose under race conditions, this is easier said than done and turned out to be a two man job, well me and dangerous, you can't see the angle to drill the bolt head on your own and need a 'spotter' to make sure you are drilling in the correct plane, in both directions, at the same time, dangerous marked the head of the bolt with a milling bit while i watched the depth so that he didn't hit the bolt-head with the cutter, this let a flat into the work so that it gave the 1.5mm bit a chance to get a straight cut, we are using .75mm lockwire, so 1.5mm is adequate to clear the hole so the wire isn't stressed against the bolthead when the lock-wire is twisted, just to lose a liitle weight from the plugs i dropped a milling cutter into the head to dish the head and finished them with some wet and dry in the lathe.......

 so, dangerous dropped the frame off for powdercoating today, the lad's there still saying they will have the job done and we can pick it up next wednesday, call me mr. cynical, but, i've been here before, oh well, i hope they prove me wrong, anyway, instead of hanging around until next week, i bashed on, there is always something to do when you are building a bike, i cleaned up the retaining springs, piston dust cover rubbers and fitted the new pads to the brembo calipers, tonight i really feel like we are moving forward, the mundane cutting, fettling and cleaning job's that are the basis of most projects [and the stumbling block of 75% of un-finished projects] is out of the way, the build will really kick off when the frame is back but there are still a thousand and one little job's to do before we get there, i was going to buy some stainless fill/drain/level plugs to clean up the final drive diff until i saw the price, i would have spunked the best part of thirty quid on them, i dug some stainless bolts out of stock and started to machine them up to replace the corroded mild steel item's, i hit problem when i measured up the threads on the fill/drain plugs, the threads are metric fine 1.25mm threads, not the more common 1.5mm thread, i've got a die so i chop some bolts down and tap the clean shank down to the correct thread, i ruin the first attempt as i get lazy and try and just tap the stock straight down instead of turning a lead-in on the lathe, lesson learned, don't know if i've mentioned it but, i'm tighter than a very tight thing me.......

what's a matter with people? the boxer frame, subframe and battery carrier is ready for blasting and powdercoating after the last bit of fettling and drilling of lightening holes, i phoned around today, all six powdercoating, stove enameller's and shotblasting firms in derby didn't want to know, 'too busy mate', 'i've got bike part's from june that i haven't touched yet, i've got a contract with the council and i ain't got time', 'can you get it blasted yourself and i can paint it for you around the end of march' etc, etc, etc, bollock's to that, if i don't get the frame back for xmas i'm going to be standing around for a fortnight over the holiday, i can't afford to do that, the practice day is at mallory at the end of march, first race is april, i cast my net wider, i contact a firm in nearby burton-on-trent, they are busy but when i tell them of my plight they re-shuffle and promise to get the job done within a week, that's more like it, i tell dangerous about it and he agree's to drop the frame off tomorrow, then he start's, 'why do you always have black bikes?, black bikes are boring', 'i like black dangerous, it's not a colour, it doesn't distract from the shape and form of the bike or the engineering', 'well i think you should go for a different colour to stand out', 'i don't want to stand out dangerous, well, not by the colour of the bike anyway', 'black's boring, i'm going to tell the bloke to do it a different colour, think outside the box for once', with that he leaves, i strip the bit's for coating down to their component part's and leave a message for the sprayer, i like black bikes, what's wrong with that?........

powdercoating. the toughest thing in the world to remove from bearing surfaces and threads, i know from bitter experience trying to chase threads and cleaning up surfaces to allow fitment of  bearings, it's worth spending some time masking off the surfaces before it goes for spraying, it's not just a matter of taping up the area as if you were going to hit it with a rattle can, before painting, the frame and associated parts will need to be blasted with a medium to remove rust and dirt, this will provide a clean surface and a 'key' for a good finish, i used some celulose thinners to clean all the grease from the swingarm pivots, the bottom engine mountings and the steering head, [any grease will ruin the the finish as soon as the parts are put into the oven for baking, the grease thins with the heat and will leave nasty runs in the finished job, been there, done that], a couple of 16mm flange bolts and washers to mask off the swinging arm pivot points and i made a some blanking caps from some scrap aluminium sheet to mask the steering head and clamped them together with a piece of 6mm rod, not the most interesting of jobs i know, but, it will save loads of time when we get the frame back and start building..........