more nec bike photo's.....

thursday is the new saturday, my shift pattern since the holiday is all over the shop, so, today is my day off, finish work at 0700hrs, dog walking and domestic duties out of the way and me and dangerous are heading down the a38 to birmingham for the bike show at the national exhibition centre, didn't make it last year due to the snow, i'm suprised how busy it is, i'm pleasantly suprised about the quality of bikes on show, for me the outstanding stand was the yamaha '50 year' display of bikes, from the old air-cooled bikes to the last of the two-stroke 500's to the latest gp bikes, the custom bike scene was well represented with a couple of really nice shovel's and the john reed[esque] little 500 bsa single, what was notable in this economic climate was the amount of people walking around with their free carole nash calender bags and not loaded down with new helmets, leathers, exhausts etc, perhaps we will see everyone chopping and changing their current bikes instead of hocking themselves with a load of debt for this year's model? i hope so........

 trying to get all the bits and bobs of fabrication done so we can get them welded on in one hit, i can weld but there's welding and then there's welding, chris w can weld, mad john can paint, ben 'fucking' jones can tattoo, barse can pogo like a banshee at a gallow's gig, dangerous can use the 'c' word like it's going out of fashion, i turned up a couple of spacers and tapped them 8mm to mount on the headstock so we can mount the 'avon' fairing off it, one of the previous 15 owners had 'drilled and tapped' [i use the description lightly, looked like they had attacked it with a spark eroder], the thread in the top mounting hole was shagged so dangerous stuck a helicoil in it while i made the spacers, couple of 8mm bolts to hold them in position while chris uses the 'majik' and we will have a good anchor to mount the fairing bracket, worked out the centres for the seat mountings/bracing for the rear subframe and found out we had no 30mm flat stock so i hacksawed a couple of pieces out of some sheet, dangerous faced them up on the miller and after a quick rub up to remove the teddy's i marked them out on the rear subframe........

finished cleaning up the redundant brackets from the bolt-on subframe, the subframe really does look very flimsy, held on by four 8mm bolts, if it was just a seat mounting like on a modern monoshock bike it wouldn't be so bad, but when you consider that it also act's as the top mounting for the twin shocks and all of a sudden it starts to look pretty feeble, i know a lot of people who modify the boxers make up a beefier subframe and have it welded to the main frame cradle, [i've done this myself on a previous project], but i really don't want to go that route this time so i'm sticking with modifying the stock item instead, i got a couple of pieces of 25mm round stock and faced them up in the lathe and drilled and tapped them to take the 8mm fasteners, chris w is going to apply some sparky majik from his special wand to weld them in position, this should add some much needed strength to this crucial area, i'm going to knock up a couple of bracing straps to weld to the subframe fore and aft of the top shock mountings to try and stop some of the 'whip' applied by the shaft drive and to also double as seat mountings, i had to try the manx slimline seat and tank on for a quick 'visual' before i called it a night.......

couple of hours more preparation on the swingarm, finished scraping off all the old enamelling, rubbed down with a couple of grades of emery and a final clean up with a copper cup brush in the drill, masked off and a wipe down with some celulose thinners to remove any stray oil and grease and hit it with a couple of coats of silver smoothrite and hang up to dry.

something to soak up the saturday night beer-fest, a mr's b breakfast cob monkey face special, veggie bacon, tomato, mushrooms, two eggs, hp sauce, double egg and two hash brown's.

                               

                               had this photo of me on the mz at mallory park hairpin mailed to me today,
                                 [thank's lee, appreciate your kind comment's, fuck the honda replica's!]  

                                saturday come's slow, shift pattern draw's me the short straw and i'm at work for the second saturday in a row, in early doors so i can get away as soon as, home early afternoon, match today, we lose again, home, walk the dog's, pissed off, grab a cobra and in the shed, can't face scraping and sanding the swingarm, [i'm easily distracted you know, don't know if i've mentioned it?] pick up the top yoke, the handlebar casting's bite the dust on the miller, another beer, doesn't look right with the mounting holes still exposed, grab a sharpie and doodle different shapes, back on the miller, have a beer, aluminium swarf, yeah, that's better, dog's bitching and moaning as i turf them off 'their' chair, [soon jump back up on my knee], glance at the clock, y'all know what time it is? it's beer 'o' clock......

 yukimi nagano