tonight, i am mostly listening to lcd soundsystem, drinking red wine and dreaming of mz racer's.......

got home from work to discover the dog's had wreaked havoc on my brand spanking new copy of sideburn, don't know if it's some sort of dog-punk thing where they de-construct the contents and reform them in the old sex pistols/jamie reid blackmail letter form, or perhaps they just don't like kawasaki's?.......

heinz rosner, mz racing legend, top photo, isle of man, bottom photo german classic bike meeting, the more i look at this bike the more i reckon a replica based on an etz250 will be my next project, i'm driven by the fact that loads of honda replicas with a modern, watercooled honda engine are allowed to race in the vintage motorcycle club races, they are not original in any way, shape or form but allowed to compete because they look like the hailwood/robb bikes that were raced in the '60's, i got ridiculed for trying to enter my 33 year old mz in vmcc races because i run jap wheels and italian brakes, hello, surely my bike is more eligible in classic racing than a honda engine from 2006, a replica frame from 2011, pattern bodywork and japanese copies of a grimeca four leading shoe brake?, my bike is an outlawed two-stoke, surely the sound of classic bike racing?, i'm on a mission with this one, and to the unhelpful twat at the vmcc eligibility team, fuck you.....

aj chopper, don't know where from but would bet a pound to a pinch of shit it's british, i like strutted bikes, it's an easy and cheap way to get the back end down, i reckon this bike is early '70's judging by the front end, overstock forks with a modded rake to keep the bottom frame rails parallel to the ground, many '60's chop's were unraked, kicking the headstock into the air and generating the whole 'tall' bike thing, i'm digging the tall backrest complete with dead sheep, the hi-level pipes and three headlamp combo, [i bet all three of them didn't work at the same time], it's easy to ridicule bikes like this now but they were at the forefront of the british customising scene back in the day, forget the so called bobbers and chop's [including my own] that people call 'old school' now, proper bike this.

barse nipped up to see us this afto, i'm just washing the dog's down and i hear the off-beat sound of a shovelhead approaching, barse is frozen, his fingers are white through a combination of vibration and cold, we catch up in the shed over a brew, he digs out in his blue primary school pe bag that he carries all his 'special bits' in, he roots through the bag and finds the kickstart off the dangerous bonneville that chris w has repaired, pulls on his gloves, jumps on the kickstart, the shovel coughs into life and he rips off down the road, listen mate, you need to get yourself a modern bike and stop fucking about with that old nail.........

so many things still to do but running out of stuff without the wheels, sunday afternoon, sort out the primary side footpeg hanger, i've run rearsets for the last couple of years, but, to be honest, with the combination of low seat height, old bones and acute leg to footpeg location, i've decided to bin them and go back to mid controls, typical me, had the footrest mounting powdercoated then realised i had to chop the bracket up, hacksaw the casting, drop on the miller to clean up and paint the bare metal with smoothrite, stand on the radiator to dry while we knock up a pair of footpegs out of 25mm roundstock, 75mm long, counterbored for lightness and knurled on the lathe and tapped out 8mm to mount them off the primary case, other hoodies are available but my batman logo one is my favourite.....

the finished coil mounting bracket, the hole centres on the coil were different to the head steady centres so a little careful drilling was required, drilling through from both sides so as not to break through into the other holes, all the edges were radiused and the front and rear profile ball-milled to lose some weight and make it look more interesting, cut the stainless socket caps down, cleaned them up on the lathe and slapped it on with a dab of loctite, still waiting for my wheels back from frenchy, the hubs are back from the powdercoaters but the rims were only 38 hole instead of the 40 holes we need to match the hubs, that's one of the frustrating things about projects, waiting for parts, the hubs went to the powdercoaters the week before christmas and we have only just got them back, the rims were ordered at the same time and now we have to wait again while the correct items are sourced, this has a knock-on effect with other jobs that need sorting, until we fit the wheels we can't make the mounting for the rear brake caliper and brake reservoir, both time consuming and beard tugging projects, we need to make a spacer for the gearbox sprocket to bring the chain in line and we can't make the subframe to mount the seat because we don't know the height of the new 17" wheel and tyre in relation to the suspension travel which determines the height of the subframe, i love projects me...............

keep on keeping on, the coils on the sporty sit over the front pot, this doesn't look good so decided to move them, when i built the chop i mounted them off the head steady, that worked so why change it?...........................

the '70's were shit, don't let anyone else tell you any different, i was there, i was an apprentice fitter working for the mayor of derby, my life consisted of getting nailed to the site cabin door through my thick blue overall's and getting a round of fuck's off the coddy for 'pissing about', going to northern soul allnighter's where everybody was taking too much speed that made everyone edgy and aggressive, following the mighty rams all around the country and getting my head kicked in and strikes, coming home at the end of a shift, light's go out, no electricity, cold bath because my ma hadn't put the immersion heater on in time, a bloody sandwich for tea because the stove was off, i used to just go to bed early, then, punk happened, this was our music, not the prog-rock that our mates elder brother's were listening to, fresh and well, dangerous, i was 17 in 1976, i can remember the stink when the pistols did the infamous bill grundy interview on tea time telly, the next day i bought my copy of the daily mirror on the way to work and my life was never the same again, all of a sudden, overnight, i felt like i belonged to something, when the anarchy tour was announced i didn't sleep, there it was, kings hall derby, where i had previously seen hawkwind, gentle giant, fruupp, brian eno and the heavy metal kids, now, i was going to see the damned, the clash, johnny thunders and the pistols, until, the good, upstanding guardians of public morality that were otherwise known as the derbyshire county council, [including my boss, the mayor of derby], decided that they needed to view the show before they would allow it to go ahead, the pistols told them to fuck off and refused to do the 'audition', the show was cancelled and derby lost out to a piece of history. they also left a 17 year old apprentice fitter with a lifelong problem with authority................

there you go then, the result of three night's work, the speedo/tacho mounted, you can't even see the bracket now that it's fitted, we had actually finished it last night but i couldn't live with the numberboard being mounted so far out from the forklegs, in my mind it just wasn't right, so, it had to be stripped off and the mounting dowels shortened back 10mm, i had loctited the dowel pins in and struggled to get them out, i damaged the studs extracting them and had to make two more studs, dangerous milled two flat's onto them so we could get an 11mm spanner on to tighten them in, then the flats were not in line so i had to keep cutting the studs down on the boxford until they were in line, mad john the painter came over tonight to show dangerous the bonneville tank in base-coat, he sat and watched us and came up with the following thought, 'you've got ocd you pair of derby bastards', you know what, i reckon he might be right.............