aermacchi

i'm sorry, i know i go off on one sometimes, but, last night i got a bit 'tired and emotional' after a couple of beer's and a couple of bottles of wine, it's almost thirty years since the miner's strike, but it had such an effect on me at the time that it still comes back to haunt me even today, the sense of struggle and injustice, anyhow, back to the shed, sweary and chalky turned up with another dell'orto 30mm carb to try on the 'macchi, still don't know if it will work and i'd rather have a new gardener carb but we have to give it a go, we spent the afternoon machining a new carb to crankcase mounting stub, the previous carb was solid mounted to the engine rather than the preferred rubber mounting, we carefully selected the mashings of both carb's and tried to make one decent carb out a couple of shonker's, will it work? i don't know......

shovelhead

barse and the punk-rock shovelhead, nearly there, this year, he will mostly be having his kidney's mashed and  filling's loosened by running it in the rigid frame, not sure about those 'bar's, dig those 21 inch apes out of the cupboard and cank them forward a tad?

the english civil war

1984, england was a very different place, two years after we defeated the argentinians in the falkland war, mr's thatcher  and the conservative government thought they were invicible and decided to take on the miner's, mr's thatcher described the miners as 'the enemy within, much more difficult to fight and a greater threat to liberty' i was working as a pipe fitter/welder at the time, one of the job's i was assigned to was a re-vamp of the doncaster royal infirmary in south yorkshire, i was working for a, [excuse me while i clear my throat] a nottingham firm, nottingham miners were seen as 'scab's' during the strike for not supporting their brother's in yorkshire, [even today at football matches you will hear the yorkshire fan's chanting  'scab, scab, scab!' at their nottinghamshire opposition in retaliation of the nott's miner's breaking the strike and carrying on working] i was stopped every day on my way to work in yorkshire by the police,  i got pulled over because of the nottinghamshire address on the side of the van, they thought we were going to cause trouble with the yorkshire miners, we had the van bricked a couple of times because the local's thought we were 'scab's' intimidation was rife, either as a miner, strike breaking to pay his mortgage, or as a member of the police force, waving their wage packet at the strikers, boasting about the amount of money they were earning on overtime, the met officers were the worst,  fucking cockney's, i got spreadeagled across the bonnet of the van one morning, no numbers on their tunic's, giving it large to the 'northern monkey's', 'what you doin' round 'ere you facckin' caannt!, you a facking picket?' there were no winner's, i've deliberately not posted any photo's of scargill or thatcher because, really, they were bit player's in the english civil war, whole communities ruined because of politic's and ambition, father's against son's, mother's against daughter's, brother against brother and a whole legacy of hate that still exist's in my neck of the wood's even today.....

derbyshire

well, winter certainly came back and bit us on the arse today, i cannot remember such a spell of bad weather like this, from last april, [2012], flood's and week after week of heavy rainfall, cool temperatures throughout last summer, snow at the end of october, more rain, more rain then a very rainy place, wet, muddy, cold, miserable, here we are nearly at the end of march and still no sign of spring, this morning we woke up to heavy snowfall, a freezing easterly wind and drifting on the top's, i saw something today that i have never seen before, the wind had blown the snow away from the dry-stone walls on the lee side, i'd heard old-timer's in the village talk about it but never witnessed it myself, we're doomed, the new ice-age 'cometh.......

Katana

Katana, I actually had a real live-blade in my hand's once, I turned up for training one night at the dojo, Sensei Reg Andrews had bought in his Katana that he had been awarded for his services to Sankokai Karate, he gently powdered the blade and handed it to me, I had,of course used Bokken's in training and seen and felt the many Chinese copies that are passed off as a 'genuine' Japanese Katana, but this was the real deal, a genuine, 'live-blade,capable of decapitating a man so quickly and efficiently that he would continue talking, unaware of the mortal injury he had sustained, Sesei dropped a tissue onto the blade and it actually cut straight through it, the Katana felt nothing like the clumsy, wooden training Bokken's that I had been using, when Suzuki decided to name their four-valve-per-cylinder machine 'Katana' they knew exactly what they were aiming for, as the owner of a GS 1000, i thought I had the best bike in the world, then the Katana was released on the un-suspecting motorcycling public, i had to have one and four year's after they were released, i traded up, still regret selling it to a neighbour to buy a Citroen BX as we needed a more family friendly car to ferry the kid's around at the time, Katana, it's on my wish-list, loud, heavy and fast and like no other motorcycle in the world.......

Location:In The Shed

Boxer Race Bike

Sorry for the lack of post's this week, a combination of running around getting tyre's for the Sweary Mick 350 Aermacchi, trying to build a decent carb out of two duffer's and my computer getting nuked by another virus, (my i-tunes library has gone yet again, anyone got any suggestions about how to get it back before I 'restore to factory setting's' and spend endless hour's re-loading cd after cd?) so, the Mallory Park British Historic Racing test day isn't going to happen, the boxer race bike is still down in Kent awaiting the camshaft, the 250 'Macchi? Ready to rumble bar the rubbish, worn out carb, booked a day off work to be there, had to cancel the van too, very disappointing, might still have a ride over and see if anyone turns up, (the weather forecast is bad, cold, snow and cold rain shower's in-between, ideal condition's then) so, here's some photo's of a couple of class boxer racer's built in Japan, the stunning Krauser framed machine and the equally beautiful R75 racer built for a Buddhist monk who races bikes by Yoshimi Koizumi, brilliant, roll on Spring......

Location:In the shed

aermacchi

what did you expect? i filled the 'macchi with three pints of silkolene r40 oil, added some petrol, checked for any leaks and dropped it off the bench, i'm wearing short's and a t-shirt, i push it two steps and it chimes in and fires up, settling into a steady tickover, perfect, if only..... i can't tell you how many times i ran up and down the road outside the shed trying to bump start the 'macchi, choke on, choke off, soft plug, race plug, choke half on, choke half off, doesn't help that the road is wet after a heavy rainfall and the temperature is ten degree's below the seasonal average, push, push, push, jump, skid, nothing, at least thirty times, it's a cold, cold, wet day in derbyshire and me and dangerous are soaked in sweat in our efforts to try and start the bike, in the end we lift it back onto the bench and tell sweary mick what we have known all along, the carb is fucked, he need's to dip in his pocket and get a gardener or the 'macchi is destined to sit under a blanket for another twenty-five year's and that's no good to me, i'll be long gone by then....

sporty

after loads of time trying to decide what i'm going to stick on the sporty tank, a few long night's agonising over different type-faces, font's and logo's, the one i finally decided on was the one i new was the only real choice, the traditional harley-davidson, 'bar and shield' design, while i was down at roy's to get the number thirteen numbers printed off for the 'macchi racer, i might as well get some 'bar and's' printed too, roy had painstakingly laid out some racing stripes on the tank and seat for me, 20mm wide, 'old-english white ivory' perfectly symmetrical, and as soon as i got the tank and seat home and tried them on i knew it wasn't going to work, just too busy, i left them overnight to see if i would change my opinion, half-past seven this morning i was in the shed peeling them off and applying the 'bar and's' instead, what a job, the design is cut out by the machine but i never realised that you had to carefully pick away at the stuff you don't want, the lettering is actually the paint finish, so you are working back to front really, after a couple of aborted go's i eventually got my old brain tuned in and with a scalpel picked at the edges to peel away the stuff i didn't need, two hours later i'd cracked it........