Retrograde Mechanica: March 2013

Saturday 30 March 2013

Wheels wheels wheels

Another set complete - Nick's lovely wheel ready for the ongoing CB550. Those Coker Diamond treads look great!

Friday 29 March 2013

Z400

Our Andy's gone and got himself a wee KZ400 project......a bit more than a bit of spit and polish on this one - we'll make it cool tho!

Remembering Summer

Last year.....short summer but a good one!

Monday 25 March 2013

Pathracer Progress

Just gotta find the right tyres and get a chain on it.......(excuse the shitty iphone picture)

Rock Solid Light

Hugo shot me a great deal on one of his beautiful hand made lights.....simply beautiful craftsmanship.

Cheers buddy, I love it!

Check out RockSolidMotorcycles awesome work Here!

Sunday 24 March 2013

The yellow peril....

Is home and ready to play in the snow....

Friday 22 March 2013

Tuesday 19 March 2013

CB350......

The slow burner three fuddy project took a small leap forward this weekend, got the wheels built up, need to polish the brake plate up some more though.....

The two stroke yellow trouble maker

First off, I have no idea how to green lane, second, I hate yellow bikes, thirdly I only ride 4 strokes...and old ones at that, so what possessed me to buy a two stroke yellow Gas Gas ohlins model is beyond me - still I pick her up saturday, I'll be on my arse in dirt 5 minutes thereafter....50bhp and under 100kg, it's gonna happen!

2 Strokes....

Having just bought a 2 stroke (Not pretty, Too bloody yellow, but purposeful as hell...to be explained) I started looking around at two stroke customs - these stand head and shoulders above the rest!

The Jawa is just awesome and Slimfab's Kwak blows my mind!

Sunday 17 March 2013

Therapeutic Chickens.....

I love Bantams, the nicest thing to work on ever...fact!

Sammy Miller Part 2

"Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of a "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a "short between the earphones," failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself"

"That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. There's no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone's mind — number three tappet is right on too. One more to go. This had better be it — .I've noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this...that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with given shapes...pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts...all of them fixed and inviolable, and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forge work or welding sees "steel" as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine here. These shapes are all out of someone's mind. That's important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there. But what's "potential"? That's also in someone's mind! — Ghosts"