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......

northern soul

saturday night, x factor final on the box, me? i'm checking out some real music on you tube, here's one that i love, from the film, 'northern soul' by elaine constantine, not got a copy of it yet, but, this is for real, to me the girls in flared skirts, talcum powder on the dancefloor, high kicks and backdrops, six pocket trousers, brogues, tank top's, button downs, braces, fred perry polo shirts, penny loafers, sheepskin coats, 'fry's' chocolate on a deserted railway station, middle of winter, you've just fed it forty-pence, still no chocolate, fuck it, prise it apart and rob it, standing in line, dodgy 'soul club' membership's, big, hard, bouncer's, ready to smash your face in rather than look at you, chalkies, pro-plus, dexadrine, brown and clears, somebody's mum's slimming pills, vinyl in wooden boxes and record boxes, that smell that only records have, paying a weeks wages for a tune, waiting for a train to get home in the morning, meeting up with rival fans on the platform, getting kicked to shit, home, hungry, beaten and aching, tired,but can't sleep, too many chemical's buzzing around your system, bath, shave, match and then? you do it all again on the saturday night.......

eight and hate

after the fixtures are released, the one that i always look for after the forest dates are dirty leeds, what can you say about dirty, dirty leeds that hasn't been said so many times, so much history between the two old clubs, leeds came to town today, early kick-off, looking for revenge for their last seven, yep, seven defeats on the bounce to the mighty ram's, they weren't going to get it today either as the rams coasted to an emphatic victory over our yorkshire rivals, that's eight in a row now then, victory almost as sweet as over our scutty neighbours down the road in snottingham, the derby fans were well up for it today, baiting the leeds fans with 'jimmy saville, he's one of your own' which, credit due to the leeds fans, earned a round of applause before they retorted with 'jimmy saville, he shags who he wants', totally and politically incorrect, but, for all that one of the reasons it's great to go to football, black terrace humour at it's best, the world isn't a very nice place, the fan's are not condoning it, just making comment on something that should have been sorted out years ago, don't beat up the football fan's, don't feign indignation or shock, the powers that be in lofty positions knew what was happening and chose to ignore it, but, back to the football, when ben davies curled a beautiful shot past paddy kenny four minutes into extra time, peeled off his shirt and threw it onto the ground, [only for the ref to pick it up, look at the number on the back and book him]it was one of those truly sweet moments in football, eight on the bounce, i bet a certain 'ol big 'ead is smiling tonight....

aermacchi

the aermacchi has been sitting on the footpegs with a couple of old axle stands for support, not the ideal arrangement, especially as we are going to knock up some rearset mounting plates so we can pull the peg's back a couple of inches too, if we use the traditional 'roll-on-roll-off' paddock stand's they tend to stick out beyond the end of the bike bench and, with space at a premium in our crowded little shed i decided to make a stand, the rail is just a piece of 21mm x 21mm pipe bracketing, a couple of 't' pieces and two-hole angle brackets, guestimated the length of the two horizontal's, cut them to length and end-milled to finish, measured the upright's, cut and milled, the aluminium 'v' brackets were just a couple of offcuts of 10mm dural stock out of the scrap bin, didn't even have the 10mm x 25mm bolts in stock and i was buggered if i was going to waste stainless on a stand, so, i hunted through one of my big boxes of skip-find bit's and bob's and found some 10mm x 40mm bright zinc set's [that i think were left over from one of the kid's old ikea beds] and just cut them down to suit, dead chuffed, we can get the back wheel out easily, dick about with the rearset's if i have an off, the bike's secure to work on, transport in the van and we've gained valuable space in the shed, result, especially as it's cost 'nowt......

bosozoku style

the last of the speed tribes, bosozoko, with thank's to jan tomlinson for the stickers, more to follow, soon.....