DGR London 2013

In contrast to the earlier post today, this is how they do it in the UK. The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride, London.

#BikeShed #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Black Range Rover

I don't know what to make of this.

In general, I'm pretty fond of motorcycles and I have quite a strong dislike for Black Range Rovers (it's a Celtic Tiger thing), so my sympathies would naturally lie with the bikers. However, I can't help wonder whether something happened before the 6 minutes and 27 seconds of footage starts?

Because what I see is, a group of bikers riding normally (albeit all over the three lanes) and a black Range Rover, also driving normally. As the camera man comes up to the Range Rover, one of the bikers, wearing jeans, a white tee-shirt and a back-protector seems to be engaging with the driver of the car.

Then as the cameraman overtakes the Range Rover, Back-Protector Guy pulls in front of the car and hits the brakes. This is a deliberately aggressive maneuver - there was nothing innocent about it. I've done this myself, and I'd consider it pretty high up the scale of conflict escalation. It comes just before trying to pull someone from their vehicle.

Just as the cameraman flicks his head to check whats happening ahead, we see the Range Rover shunt Back-Protector Guy's motorcycle. This shunt could have been an act of aggression by the driver, but it looks like he just didn't have time to react to Back Protector Guy's deliberate braking. All the bikes stop and the cameraman looks back over his shoulder. After a short time the driver starts sounding the car horn and there is some jostling as some of the bikers try to move out of the way. Then suddenly the Range Rover lunges forward running over at least one motorcycle and it's game on...

Clearly, the driver shouldn't have done that. However, according to reports he had his wife and 5year-old daughter in the car which may have coloured his thinking somewhat. I've been forced off the road a number of times (mostly by the Police, it has to be said) and it's an unreasonable thing. If someone forces you to a stop, it makes you adopt a flight or fight response and rational thought goes out the window. So I can understand the behavior of the driver, even if I don't condone it.

And I can understand what happened next. There have been times that I've felt so wronged that I wanted to inflict violence on  a car driver (or sometimes, just the car). And I also understand that when riding in a large group, motorcyclist can be dis-inhibited and do things they wouldn't do if they were alone.

The driver was reported to be in a coma after the incident and supposedly there were no other reports of injury, despite an earlier report suggesting that one of the motorcyclists had been killed. It's an ugly incident and the most sense I can make of it is that it was caused by Back-Protector Guy being a fuckwit.

• It's fortunate there were no guns involved.
• It's fortunate there were no additional motorcycle crashes during the chase.
• It's odd that the driver's door was unlocked.
• The Range Rover window seemed to break very easily.

#BlackRangeRoverNYCBikers #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Superlight Project - Headlight Mount

I made a small amount of progress on the Superlight Project today. I fabricated brackets for the fairing and the headlight and I decided that I'll fit idiot lights after all.

Well, it's a start.

Next up is the electrics tray under the seat-hump and rewiring the thing...

CX Cafe

I've always been very fond of cafe-racers, bar-end mirrors and Honda CXs, long before it became fashionable. So this picture makes me nostalgic for my own CX. They're lovely bikes with a particularly fine motor. And they're not the staid little plodders that most people think, they are surprisingly quick. They red-line at 10 or 11,000 RPM and once you go over 7,000, the motor goes wild. 

So, I look at this picture and I think - "I'd love to have a go on that!".

But would I go and build another one? I don't think so. They handle okay on dry roads, but in the wet they're a bit scary. And the brakes are pretty awful. And they have a few recurring problems with the cooling fan and the alternator for example. But people seem to be crazy about turning them into cafe racers and consequently they're relatively expensive. And if you look around at what else is available for similar money... Well for me it's a no brainer.

But I'd still love a go on this one...

#HondaCX500 #CX500CafeRacer #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Suburbia (1983)

Another great 80's punk movie...

#Suburbia #Punk #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Wrenchmonkees

#Wrenchmonkees #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Repo Man Soundtrack

#Repoman #RepomanSoundtrack #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Repo Man (1984)

This movie is a gem.

It also has one of the best soundtracks ever....


#Repoman #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

SuperRetards - Final Ride 2013

#SuperRetards #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

GPZ Porn II

...And if that last post wasn't enough...

#KawasakiGPZ #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

GPZ Porn

Another piece of GPZ 900 perfection from Japan

#KawasakiGPZ #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Oakland to San Francisco

Occupy All Streets! Deadly!

#StuntRide #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

The Women's Motorcycle Exhibition

This Video Has Been Removed at Source

Image by Lanakila MacNaughton


#WomensMotorcycleExhibition #MotoLady #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Evan's GPZ

Evan's Jeeper is currently being fitted with a new front end and rear wheel to replace the ropey ones it came with. It's looking epic!

#GPZ1100 #KawasakiGPZ #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Superlight Project

The Superlight in now officially a Work-In-Progress. 

This is good 'cos it's always exciting to start a new project. But it's bad 'cos the Africa Twin (seen languishing in the background here) is also a work-in-progress... It's a bit like fighting a war on two fronts and it's generally not a good idea to have two projects on the go, competing for time, space and resources.

I'm rationalising this this away by telling myself that the AT is a long-term thing (it's a pretty big and expensive endevour) while the Superlight will be finished in time to ride it on NewYear's Day.*

It's actually not that big a project because I'm starting with a reasonably well-sorted and fully functional motorcycle that's already had quite a bit of work and money thrown at it - Marvic wheels & Ohlins shock, I'm looking at you!

The motor is basically sound although it needs a service - Having said that, if a 1000DS unit showed up at an affordable price, I'd bodge that in in a heartbeat. It's a 100 bolt-in horsepower and I believe it's about 3kg lighter!

The main objectives are to...

• Tidy the bike up: On more than one occasion, punters have come up to chastise me about the disgraceful condition of the rare and beautiful Mk 1 Superlight of which I am fortunate enough to be custodian (What these people are going to do when they realise that I've taken an angle grinder to it is open for speculation).

• Make it lighter: It was pretty light when it left the factory. Since then, I've removed a lot of unnecessary stuff. A lighter battery saved about 4kg, the flywheel saved 1.5kg, the clutch was about the same I think. The magnesium wheels are maybe 5kg lighter than the original composites. It's easily 15 kg lighter now. Removing all the gubbins around the headlight should save another 6kg. I'm guessing when it's done, it'll be in the region of 150kg dry. Which is pretty light for a torquey bike that makes about 75bhp

• Personalise it: I don't really consider myself to be a typical Ducati driver, I still see myself as a courier. And I always felt a bit of an impostor on the thing in my dirty jeans and open-face helmet whereas I always felt pretty comfortable on the Buell. I realise this is my own issue but I'd still like the bike to reflect my personality a bit more.

So, the plan so far is to relocate the battery, fusebox and all the electrics to a tray under the seat-hump. This will allow me to remove the airbox and fit individual air filters (unless I can find a 60mm diameter dual-flange @ 100 centers K&N). 

I'm going to fabricate a very lightweight bracket to fit the VFR 400 headlamp to the bottom yoke and fabricate another lightweight aluminium bracket to hold the tiny LED stop and taillight and the equally tiny number plate. And fabricate some stuff to fit the bikini fairing off Evan's GPZ.

I'm going to fit a tiny bicycle speedo to the top yoke, mostly as a nod towards being road-legal. I haven't decided about idiot lights yet. I'm happy to drive without them generally except that the Ducati fuel tank doesn't have a reserve, just an orange idiot light. And if I'm going to fit a petrol light, then I might as well fit oil, neutral and high-beam lights as well...

Other than that it's mostly a case of taking it apart, cleaning it and painting it. Simples!

*I just made that deadline up without any particular consideration...

#Ducati #DucatiSuperlight #Ducati900SL #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Low

I love low, black motorcycles.

Except over speed-bumps and on really hot days, obviously...

#IconMotosports #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Drift

#EDUB #IconMotosports #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Icon Lady

#LeahStunts #StuntBums #IconMotosports #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Radical Ducati

#RadicalDucati #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Superlight

I bought my Ducati about ten years ago with 26,000 miles on the clock. At the time, it was the most expensive bike I'd ever purchased by a considerable margin, but I thought it was pretty cheap for what it was.

Imagine my surprise! This white-framed, magnesium wheeled vision was my dream-bike all through my 20's. I'd never seen one in the flesh before, and there it was, with a price-tag that was almost affordable!

What it was, was - a Mk 1 Superlight with a white frame, carbon fibre mudguards and clutch cover, and Marvic magnesium/aluminium composite wheels. Whats-more, it had been worked over by Baines Racing, Ducati race bike specialists from Silverstone. It had really lightweight aluminium replicas of the heavy steel Ducati clip-on handlebars and was fitted with an Ohlins rear shock and various other lightweight bits and pieces. It also has an aluminium side-stand which I think is non standard

Apparently, it was one of a pair of Superlights that were prepared by Baines at the time and was used as some kind of press demo-bike. I've heard lots of stuff about there being two bikes, but as far as I can tell, it never appeared in any magazines. The two bikes had different modifications, and I believe mine has a tuned engine and a reworked exhaust.

Shortly after I got it, the useless standard mirrors have been replaced with a bar-end item, and some of the small problems have been resolved, but this is pretty much what it looked like when I got it. Note, the Marvic Composite wheels have been repainted yellow somewhere along the line. The rear wheel was poorly reassembled and a couple of weeks after i got the bike, the bolts came loose, leaving the rim loose on the spokes! I discovered this a couple of minutes after a 100+ MPH motorway blast and it wasn't hard to imagine the consequences of a catastrophic failure at that speed...

It wasn't all plain sailing though. By the time I got it, the bike was already more than ten years old and had clearly had a hard life. And although, by the early 90's with cash from Cagiva, the Ducati factory had been modernised and most of the legendary reliability issues had been resolved, build quality still wasn't particularly good. So consequently, the bike was pretty ratty. It also had some minor crash damage on the RHS.

After a couple of years it got a bit of a tidy-up. it now sports  Marvic Penta magnesium wheels, an aluminium clutch from a 916 , a super-lightweight flywheel and a half-fairing off a 900CR. The flywheel makes a noticeable difference -  it's very quick to turn in, accelerate and decelerate. However, it also makes it even more of a pig in traffic and exacerbates the already horrible clutch. 

Still being used as an occasional commuter, in this pic the bike is being run with no clutch cover and exposed belts. I think this looks really cool. Most casual observers appear to be horrified. At least it deters them from approaching to tell me that my bike sounds like there's something wrong with it...

The lightweight wheels, clutch and flywheel all reduce inertia and the thing is an absolute riot to ride. For a little while anyway...

When I first got the bike I used it as a commuter for about a year and racked up more miles. This is a pretty good example of my own stubbornness and tendency to do things the hard way. In retrospect, I can't imagine a worse commuter bike - It has a horrible clutch, snatchy power delivery, a persnickety gearbox, no steering lock and the throttle needs to be constantly restrained while you constantly slip the (screeching) clutch. And the fact that it'll do 80mph in 3rd gear doesn't help at all. Also, it's obnoxiously loud - the exhaust is embarrassing and the clutch is like having someone persistently banging on your head with a pipe! It is a horror show to drive in traffic. My fellow commuters were generally appalled...

However, if you take it to a smooth, curvy road it becomes angelic and sublime. You get braille-like feedback through the bars, thin seat and pegs. And when it's moving, all the horrible noises are left behind you. The airbox BELLOWS and the exhaust THUDS. And as you slip the clutch to change gear it goes SCHZZZZZZZ-BOOM, SCHZZZZZZZ-BOOM. And it all happens together and you get the curious sensation that the thing is powered, not by a mechanical process of petrol-carburetors-compression-chain-wheel, but by noise. Your hand on the throttle controls the volume and the more noise you make the faster you go.

It's a pretty intense experience and after an hour or so it gets tiring. So I don't ride it very much (In fact, I think the last time I rode it was on new year's day!). Consequently, in the ten years or so that I've owned it, I've only put about 10,000 miles on it, most of them in the period I used it as a commuter.

So every year since I got it, I tell myself that I'm going to restore it and every year, I don't. So it's pretty skanky when you get up close. So this year, I put it up on the bench and started taking it apart. I did this with the best of intentions and then I got sidetracked by the retrieval of the Africa Twin and the damage done to Big Honda. So it's been sitting up on the bench with no headlight, clocks or fairings and it sort of imprinted itself on my brain, and I got to thinking about leaving the fairing off to reduce the weight still further...

So last night I was pottering around in the workshop and I got to thinking out loud...

The little bikini fairing is (I think) an Acerbis item and it came off Evan's GPZ when it was here getting it's wiring done. The headlamp is off a VFR and has adorned a number of my bikes over the years. 

#DucatiSuperlight #Ducati900SL #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Go For Broke

A mid-eighties violence-fest with lots of motorcycles and explosions. Deadly!

#GoForBroke #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

GPZ Race-Bike

A tasty GPZ1000RX race-bike from Japan. Very tasty...

#KawasakiGPZ #GPZ1000 #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Sticker

Buell Time Traveler

A picture of my Buell, presumably taken sometime in the mid to late 19th century...

Photo Noel Feeney

#BuellXB12SLightning #Buell #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage

Fuckwits