oxfam

mr's b. is on a mission to get the loveless housold tidied up for the new year, so this morning i got 'volunteered' to do the run down to oxfam with a load of book's to donate to the cause, two, big, heavy bags of book's in fact, trouble is, the oxfam shop is at the opposite end of the street to the carpark, up a very long, very steep hill, deep joy, i'm breathing out of my nether regions when i eventually make the shop, i just point to the two bags and the young man say's thank's for the donation and heaves them into the rear of the shop for sorting and pricing, i take a moment to recover and peruse the secondhand cd rack, here's what i came up with, now all i've got to do is try and sneak them into the house without mr's b sussing me out....

aermacchi

with a top-end gasket set winging it's way to us in the post, i set to and dropped the valves out of the aermacchi head, after all, they've been stuck in the same position for the past 30 year's or more, i measured the valve springs and they were well within tolerance, the inlet valve was perfect, but the exhaust valve and exhaust port were very sooty, sweary mick confirmed that it had been running very rich and not running very well all those years ago when he managed three laps of donington park before calling it a day and consigning the 'macchi to three decades under a blanket in the secret 'shed two', i lapped the valves in and span them up on the lathe to give them a good clean, finishing them with solvol to a high finish as recommended in the tuning manual, the ports in the head are a real work of art, once i removed the sooty deposit with some fine scotchbrite and a quick rub with white spirit the workmanship was revealed in all it's glory, the exhaust port had been polished within an inch of it's life, whilst the inlet port is cleaned up to remove the casting marks, but not polished and left slightly rough, added a few drops of clean 'r' to the valve stems and re-assembled the valves in the head after carefully cleaning any residue grinding paste from the valve seats with thinner's, once the valves were back in i dropped a little thinners into the ports to see if the valves were seating correctly, not a trace of fluid, job's a good 'un.....

aermacchi

way back at the beginning of december, me and dangerous had a day out at the bike show at the n.e.c where we had a very interesting chat with a bloke on the rickman stand, he had in his possesion a copy of the original sales ledger, listing all numbers of frames that they produced, the date and to where they were originally supplied, i gave him the number off our frame and he was able to tell us that it was originally supplied to lawton and wilson in september, 1968, the bloke on the rickman stand asked for my e-mither address and today this popped up in my inbox, brilliant, a copy of the original lawton and wilson sales brochure.....

newark [part four]

after my post about the scooters the other day, here's something else that might put the cat amongst the pigeons, 50cc racing motorcycles, this selection belonging to sjl racing, photographed at the newark show, i've seen the trellis frame yamaha before, but check out the tank on the other yam, these tiny machines really are beautifully prepared to a very high standard, i've got a soft spot for the tiddlers, raced from the early 1950's until 1983 when they got dropped from the gp race itinerary, from the humble itoms to the honda dohc four valve, the 50cc capacity may be scorned on by some people but not me, i think it's great that enthusiasts are still racing these jewel like machines today...

newark [part three]

alongside the racebikes, scooters and classics, the dragbikes alway's catch my eye, i suppose it's just the whole thing that they are built to do just one thing, go down that four hundred and forty yards in the minimum amount of time, just that, nothing more, so simple and yet the amount of money, time and engineering that these lad's spend is amazing, all in the name of those oh so brief moments on the strip, the tough, matt primer grey gixxer and it's pretty little sister in full replica paintjob were great bikes, check out the turbo and wastegate, extended swingarm and quickshifter, but then what you saying about the expansion chambers on the 'stroker.....

newark [part two]

the scooterist's had a seperate hall to show off their bikes this year and they certainly turned out in force to support the show, i ignored the moaning off dangerous, [he just doesn't 'get' two strokes i'm afraid, i love 'em me] and followed the geezer in the paddy smith, rally patch be-decked, m1a jacket into the scooter show, dangerous bitching and shuffling along behind me, there really were some very nice machines on show but unfortunately they were packed in a bit too tight to get any decent pic's, one of my favourites was the vespa streetracer, loads of s.i.p german tuning parts including the lovely billet race caliper and dropped headset, [the scooterist version of 'ace bars' or clip-on's but a lot harder to carry off, the headset has to be cut and rewelded at a lower angle as well as the top cover to match, lot's of work to achieve what we can do by just changing our 'bar's], for all you 'unbeliever's' like dangerous, do yourself a favour and have a look at the work that goes into some of these bikes and remember, they ride them all over the country and europe to scooter rallies, not like a lot of 'biker's' who think the world end's at matlock bath....

newark [part one]

first weekend in january? f.a.cup football and of course the newark winter classic bike show and autojumble, it's become a bit of a tradition now, so me and dangerous, armed with a long list of 'wants' made the fifty-minute drive, stopping at the golden arches for a coffee in, uhm, an hour and ten, the morning dawned mild for this time of year, but very foggy and it seemed to get worse as we travelled east, up to the entrance and the punter's are queueing back from the roundabout onto the dual carriageway, it's very busy, we park up and join the long row of people at the ticket office to pay our eight quid entry fee, ten minutes and we are in, everyone is turning left so we hang a right and enter the first of the many exhibition hall's, the newark 'jumble had declined in the last couple of year's, the vendor's selling used part's and broken bikes seemed to be in the minority, huge piles of, what is basically scrap, lying on the wet grass, the prices ridiculous for what was frankly just junk, lot's of stalls selling cheap, 'snap-off' tool's and consumables and 'bikerwear' [whatever that is?], last year they got their act together and the 'normous newark 'jumble' became the 'carole nash winter classic show' owners clubs were invited to attend, along with the two classic racing clubs and the show is certainly becoming one which i feel can only grow into better thing's, [anyway, what else are you going to do on a miserable, foggy day in january?], first bikes that caught my eye were the guzzi racer, the two yamaha's, the lovely little ducati 200 and the mighty wraith confederate, the engineering on the confederate is amazing and it's not just for show either, this thing is a world record holder at bonneville and i was going to tell you what speed it achieved, who's bike it is and when they got the record but my picture of the card detailing all the information was unreadable due to my camera being on the wrong setting.....

football

the f.a. cup, the best cup competition in england, i always look forward to cup weekend's, today we were drawn at home to high flying tranmere rover's of the first division, [one league below derby, but only fourteen places seperate us on paper], our normal seats in the stadium were not available today due to the small attendance and only certain sections of the ground were open, we opted to sit in the lower teir, roughly underneath our usual viewing position, oh dear, old folk and kid's all around us, i had to curb my usual 'industrial' language and nearly bit off my own tongue at some of the performances of the rams squad during the first half, the visitors huffed and puffed, but to fair to them, played some nice, neat football, on the ground instead of trying to play the long-ball game but they didn't really threaten the derby goal, the rams went ahead, just before half-time, with a scrambled goal from ben davis, we regrouped with a hanful of the regular's who we usually sit with and taking advantage of the almost empty ground, [official attendance 12,000, all rattling around in a ground that hold's 33,000!],we found somewhere else to sit in a less 'sensitive' area, [which just happened to be right next to the 1500 or so tranmere travelling faithful, at the restart, derby wasted no time at all and added another from conor sammon, john brayford and jeff hendrick to put the tie beyond the visitor's, teenager mason bennett, a product of the rams academy made an appearance on 84 minutes and three minutes later blasted home a scorcher to send derby through to the next round and send the visitor's home to the wirral with a stark reminder of the reality of championship football if they get that promotion, personally, i thought they played some nice football and didn't deserve to be on the end of a 5-0 dicking by the rampant ram's, but there you go, that's football and just to make the afternoon complete, forest got knocked out at home by oldham, a team, like tranmere, in the next division down, oh yeah, guess who we play in our next home game?

Des...

it's not what you know, it's who you know...

it's not what you know, it's who you know, especially true in the case of renowned rickman metisse owner, builder, gixxer riding nut-job and ace welder to boot, johnny 'owd bollock's, after searching high and low for a pair of 'arces' top and bottom yokes to hold a pair of autojumble find, period ceriani fork's to complete his latest bike. good job then that he know's someone who work's in the foundry at a certain well known, local, world famous, aircraft engine manufacturer, [ahem], who could cast up a couple of blank's in a top quality alloy, beautiful, just leaves us the job of machining them up then....

renzo pasolini

after a rather 'late night' [ahem], it was a rather subdued start to the day in the loveless household, mostly trying to re-hydrate with endless tea and idly flicking through one of my xmas book's, the brilliant 'italian racing motorcycles' by mick walker,renzo pasolini is obviously featured a lot and although this picture is not from the book itself, i just wanted to post it up, such a great photo from back before the publicity machines that are today's grand prix superstar's, don't get me wrong, i have the utmost respect for them, but can you imagine a modern racer just slumped against a straw-bail taking a breather without an army of p.r. people, dietecian's, physio's and brolly dolly's fussing around?