so here it is, merry xmas, everybody's having fun...

happy christmas everyone, i mean this, our own xmas will seem a little hollow this year, my father in law, desmond percy holden, royal navy veteran, dad to betty, hazel, danny, donald, mr's b and darren, beloved husband of his wife katherine, sixty year's married, passed away last friday, a lifetime in anyone's reckoning..... me and dangerous had the loveless xmas party tonight, opened the shed and found santa had called, i love you mr's b, after all you've been through this week you found the time to hang a couple of stockings on the 'macchi......

tattoo

ben jones, roadhouse tattoo, chellaston, derby, england, this is typical of 'the world's most handsome man' i was blissfully unaware of this photo until tonight, but, if you know ben then you know it's typical of him, want some quality ink? get yourself down to roadhouse, take a big stack of money, sweet's and chocolate, a hanky to wipe away the tear's when you are laughing, flower's, a good attitude, have a wash and clean your teeth, make sure you are wearing decent shoes, express an interest in black women, harley davidsons, ducati panigale's and gun's, knive's and eating meat, [meat is murder] don't take your kid's and you won't go far wrong, quality tattooing, don't haggle and you won't end up with a cock and bollock's hidden in your piece like barse and marshy.......

boxer race project

i've been so wrapped up with the aermacchi recently that i've let the boxer project slip into the background, that changed today, up at sparrow's fart, sweary mick turned up at 0545 hrs to keep me company, he's armed with salmon sanwiches on brown bread, a flask of strong coffee and some home-made ginger cake, it's raining heavily and off we go, the roads are flooded, surface water, limited visibility, fog, dark and cold, the traffic is light, just articulated lorry's delivering their cargo to supermarkets, m1, m25, m2, a2, all drift by in that strange, misted up windscreen, heavy spray and limited light thing, sweary mick keep's passing me little nip's of hot, strong java, the 250 miles pass in what seems like an hour, the dartford crossing bringing back memories of me and barse riding side by side over the bridge on our way to the kent custom bike show, did i mention it was rather inclement today? past the 'three mariner's' pub and along the single track road to jim's house, sweary mick guides me into the driveway, bloody hell it's tight, i have to fold the mirror's in on the van to get into the drive, unload the boxer into jim's workshop and we spend the next couple of hours shooting the shit, catching up after twenty years and discussing what we want jim to wave his majick stick at regarding the boxer, we are away at 1130 hr's, stopping to grab a butty ovelooking the thames estuary, [did i mention it was raining by the way?]the boxer is going to get what it deserves, a right royal shoeing, some serious bee-haitch-pee, not cheap, [quality never is], it's a nightmare journey home, it hasn't got light all day long really, we are back and sitting in my shed at 1600hrs, drinking tea and eating hot mince pie's, nearly five hundred miles under our belt's, fuck it, it's xmas, fancy a peroni?.......

aermacchi

footpegs, small detail, you put your feet on them, that's it, they don't serve any other purpose, somewhere to rest your size ten's while you change gear or use the rear brake, i love footpegs me, i look at them like i look at someones shoes, weird?, yep, scruffy, beat up converse?, yep, that's ok, brogues, loafer's, d.m's? if you ever turn up wearing them un-polished, [in anything other than ox-blood polish], then you are a lazy-arsed bastard, scruffy training shoes? get the fuck out of here, there's an old saying, 'clothes maketh the man' for me that's true, there's no place on earth for a pair of too-short, boiled, grey, nike jogger bottom's, stone wash denim jeans or those 'baby-sick' yellow, low-slung jean's, anyhoo, enough of the loveless sartorial fashion tip's, i'm obsessed with footpegs, here's the latest offering, knurled, shorty's, [less than two and a half english inches long, [that's sixty-five metric millimetre's] hand- turned, white nylon, peg-end's, like a pair of hand-made english loake's, [look them up] no, we aren't going to offer them for sale through our blogspot, 'web-shop' 'big-cartel or any of that other fucking self-promotion, wanna-be trendy wank, two blokes in a shed in derbyshire, nowhere near london, not buying bmw's and selling our z1000's because the monkkee-boy's say we should and have suddenly discovered that it's that it's the thing to do, [note, have a look at my blog and bikes and post all about how you are going to 'cut-up' and 'racerise' your bmw twin, quoting all the stuff you've thought about doing to 'your' bike while pumping me and dangerous for 'information' wanker, just a 'trent' in disguise, 'top-yoke, drilled-for -lightness' it's a stock top yoke without the plastic cover........

aermacchi

the rearsets on the aermacchi were, too put it bluntly, shite, the linkages sloppy, the footpegs heavier than a ship's anchor, time for a remake/remodel, [must dig out the old roxy music track and give it a play] a new aluminium linkage with a rose joint, new brass spacers, loctited the stainless stud between the rose joint and the actuating arm, the knurled linkage on the gearbox shaft was another story, we don't think it's original, the mounting bolt is drilled for an 8mm bolt but the shape of the case doesn't leave enough room to use an 8mm, we use a 6mm socket head and turn up a couple of brass sleeves to take up the slack, i sit on the bike with a pile of old motorcycle news and old bike mart's under my arse to get the right height whilst dangerous measures the shift angle, cut the rod off, tap and loctite in position, sorted, dangerous dig's the 'triumph' gearchange rubber out of one of the collection, it seem's quite appropiate somehow.......

northern soul

the late, great, lou pride, 'im coming home in the morning' endless hour's waiting for train's on derby railway station, every weekend seemed like the start of a great adventure, can you remember that feeling? check out this northern legend, the whole song just sum's it all up for me, the chugging bass and the honking horn's, lou's world weary vocal, the wanting and the passion, brilliant.....

northern soul

brian cannon's 'northern soul - a photographic journey' project, i stumbled upon his fantastic photo's when i was trawling the northern soul underground on the 'tinterweb, [don't know if it's the same bloke who did a couple of the early oasis cover's back in the day?] for me his photo's sum up the northern soul scene totally, the atmosphere, the sweat, dancing, lost in a moment, the vinyl, that 'caught in time' moment, it moves me to tears when i look at these pictures, what happened to me? same as everybody else, i've become a moaning old cynical bastard, this music takes me back to a time before all that, soul music, keep the faith....

aermacchi

it all went pete tong yesterday, after the freezing conditions of the last three day's me and the boy jack awoke to heavy rain, falling on the frozen ground, not a good scenario, i'm finishing the dreg's off my tea while jack scrapes the ice off the car, he stick's his head around the door, 'dad, it's like a friggin' ice rink out here' bloody hell! is it ever, i nearly go arse over tit just walking to the car, we are halfway to work and some bloke comes out of the paper shop and gives it the full on 'dancing on ice' thing, both feet off the floor, arm's flailing, we are pissing ourselves, that proper, tears down the face thing, we make it to work and i can't open the gate, i try and thaw out the padlock by blowing on it, my lips are stuck to the cold metal and a few thousands of an inch of lip are ripped off in the process, i load the two lorries in the steady, freezing rain, fingers numb and that searching cold, wet soaks into my trousers, another lorry turns up, i spend the next hour and a half standing on the back of an articulated lorry trailer slinging the loads while one of the boy's forklift's it off, i'm fucking soaked, i stand in the gents with the hand dryer blowing luke warm air onto my trousers in the vain hope that i can get dry, no chance, skin out at 1300 hrs, i have to get my eye's tested for my race licence, walk into town, get wet, have some sport with the optician, [one of the test's is for colour blindness] 'ok tim, what colours can you see on the page?' 'what page is that then?' 'let's try that again tim, tell me what the sequence of colour's is?' 'red and orange and purple and blue', 'no that's not correct', yeah, i know, i'm just singing a song that's brilliant' he get's it. we laugh and i complete my eye test, get my doc's signed up and walk home, in the fucking rain, home, tea and a hot mince pie, i don't bother getting changed, got to walk the dog's, light fading and it's raining, i get wet, big time wetter than a very dolphin type wet thing, home, shave, shower, and me and the boy jack get the bus into derby, meeting the lad's for a few beer's and a curry, we stand in the steady, cold, rain, waiting for the bus, it's twenty minutes late, i'm cold and wet, we decide to get a taxi to the pub, there's no taxi's, we make the fifteen minute walk in the rain, italian beer and indian food, forget all that foreign muck, [attention, attention, irony warning approaching, for the benefit of our foreign reader's, irony or piss-taking is a very british and australian thing that you might not get, hence irony...]stand in the taxi rank in the cold rain waiting for a cab, up this morning, decidely second hand, when you are working on a project like the aermacchi racer you get a reality check, you can't just get part's off the interweb, i've had to do a lot of digging to source part's, got the front brake master cylinder re-built today, it's took forever, mixing and matching parts, the clutch lever? yep, it's upside down, an old racer dodge, they mounted them upside down so you could see if the cable was fraying, it was dry today.....

aermacchi

when we stripped the 'macchi down to the component parts, i didn't even notice the rear splashguard fastened to the frame, it wasn't a mudguard, just a piece of metal sprayed that horrible 'great weastern' maroon colour, dangerous nitromorsed it off ready to take to the painter for a coat of two-pack, i stood and looked at it and started idly fettling it with some wet and dry, gradually working the aluminium to a matt finish with scotchbrite, we both agreed it didn't look right against the nicklel plating of the frame and i polished it to a shiny finish, tell me now, can you imagine it with just a coat of paint or does it just disappear into the ether when it's shiny?, spent loads of time dicking around with cardboard cut-out's for the footpeg mountings but, for once, dangerous was right, we need to keep the original rearsets, i straightened the bent, right hand, gearchange pedal in the miller vice and dangerous spun-up some new bushes out of nylon and some bronze stock i'd found in the scrap bin at work, the gearchange on the aermacchi was, to put it bluntly, a little sloppy, to me it's worth a bit of effort getting it sorted, i can't remember the last time i rode a bike with a right hand gearchange pattern, must be twenty five year's or more, nevermind a right hand, race pattern, gearchange, one up, four down, remember, i'm hopefully running the boxer, [left-hand, one down, four up] and the 'macchi in the same weekend races, just different classes, a recipe for disaster or what?

can you smell petrol?

i'd noticed a faint wiff of petrol in the shed for a couple of day's but just dismissed it, [we use petrol for cleaning parts and i just thought it might have been on a discarded rag], i'd decided to crack the sporty up and get some charge back into the battery, [our sparky, strange paul, confirmed that the battery optimisers that we all use in england at this time of year were a crock of shit and would eventually knacker your battery so i binned mine after replacing yet another battery on the boxer last year] i opened the up-and-over door and cracked up the sporty letting it warm-up on the choke before adjusting the tick-over screw in the big mikuni so it was running at a nice 'brisk' rate, at this point, my ma made an appearance from next door but one and we stood talking in the fading light of the bitterly cold, mid winter afternoon, after a few minutes i turned around to turn the tickover down and to my horror raw fuel was gushing down to form a puddle on the top of the timing case and smoking off the hot supertrapps! i immediately turned off the ignition, shut the pingle fuel tap and attempted to mop up the surplus fuel with a roll of shop paper, after the bike cooled down i removed the tank and found the problem, the fuel pipe had de-laminated and split, i couldn't believe it, i've used this fuel line on everything from chops to race bikes and never had any problems before, the only thing i can think is a combination of heat off the rocker boxes and the amount of ethanol in modern fuel being increased resulting in the fuel pipe rubber going brittle, close call, closer than a very close thing, just have a quick look at your own lines, could save you a world of pain......

aermacchi

whoah, well there you go, stripped the aermacchi down today, made up some stainless mounting's, used some of the 'extra special reserve stainless flanged nut's'to mount the mill, everything about this engine scream's class, the lightened valve gear, stellited rocker's forged piston, super-trick clutch assembly, extra, central machined spark plug, this is definetely a very special engine, loads of work to do though, got to figure out a way of running a pvl ignition system so we can junk the point's and battery combo, save loads of weight too......