Inspiration and procrastination

As I was scanning through Faceache tonight I stumbled on thiss little nugget;

Take your eyes off the gallery setting and just concentrate on the machine.  Yes it's a Honda wet dream from sometime in the eighties.  As I recall, duller than ditch water but equally reliable and endowed with Honda's "Euro styling", which at the time I hated. 

No, I don't like it much now either, but whoever built this has uncovered some interesting lines.  Remove most or all of the bathroom acessories these were festooned with and you end up with a purposefull looking bike.  As I've been discovering lately, a low powered bike with good tyres and springy bits can be husled along at a supprising rate.  So much so that it can really unsettle riders of very sporty bikes not to mention run rings around expensive large engine cruisers.  

This is all very exciting!  These things are at the bottom of the heap along with CX500s and those Yamaha XS twins that exhuded an aura of beigeness.  They're machines though and machines can be fixed to become characterfull and entertaining.  Let's look at the Wet Dream again. 

The builder/ exhibiter is probably going for the "diamond in the rough" appeal.  The essence of biking lurking somewhere in the rat bike before you.  This is fine if you like bikes but don't know much about them.   It certainly works as an exhibit, but what if it had a pair of half decent forks, rear sets and good sticky tyres?  The shocks look newish.  What if you knew you could give it all the beans and hold that into the next bend with confidence?  All that and then when you arrive, you can have a cuppa and admire the lines.  Oh a double-entendre - I must be right!

Lovely rides are in the morning.

This I had to post.  Old Empire Motorcycles are one of the new wave of custom bike builders who specialise in the neo-retro style and have put a lot of effort in building their brand tastefully.  They are clearly very creative, have a good sense of aesthetics as well as practicality and seem to favour engines and donor bikes that I like.  That said, I confess to not keeping up to date with their stuff after they did a load of bikes with those silly firestone tyres (sidecar type pattern). Yes, I'm one of those. 

Then I happened on this video of theirs.  It's nothing short of heartwarming.

Lovely memories stirred up eh?

Going Slow

(Thanks to http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.fr for the graphic)

I've been re-discovering the pleasures of going slow.  Nothing to do with the Venom, althought I've hit an obstacle there, no just biking in general.

To get to work here I have bought a ratty old DR600 Suzuki.  It's not likely to turn heads, but that's fine by me because I didn't buy it for that.  We all joke about mid life crises and I reckon I need to put up my hands to this one because I suppose I'm trying to understand a bit of what would have happened if I had kept my first propper bike, a BSA 250, and put in the CCM 550 engine - I'll explain. 

I learned most of my basic spanner twirling on a 1971 BSA B25SS.  I fell in love with it before I bought it because to me it looked right, it sounded right, smelt right and above all, it felt right.  I think that a mixture of established, but expensive manufacturing methods used by the Small Heath factory and the use of common parts across the ranges, made this bike a tactile pleasure in the same way as a gun can be.  Sharing cycle parts with 650s, the frame and suspension were way over the top for the modest 250cc engine.  All the steel parts were a decent gauge, the aluminium castings were lovely and there were no plastic bits at all!

In the follwing 12 months I ran through a gamet of emotions as it dumped me in the middle of nowhere, set fire to my trousers, broke expensive bits, refused to start etc.  The night before my motorcycle test, it dropped it's clutch basket inside the chain case and I suffered the ignomony of taking the test on my brother's C90 Honda!  Every one of those faults could be traced back to me abusing or not using key parts (like tab washers!) correctly.  Consequently, bit by bit, I grew to understand what made it tick and what stopped it ticking and in doing so I bonded with it.

Sadly though, teenagers can be fickle creatures and I was no exception, bowing to peer pressure to move on to a 500.  This is how I ended up with the Velo, but at the time I was becoming familiar with that bike, I was missing my old BSA.  The angst was compounded when a bloke came and bought the BSA and took it away for ever just a week before I read an old article in Bike magazine about a B25/CCM 550 custom entitled "Staying Single" (May 1978).  It looked fast and fun and I was especially grabbed by the part that read "...a better power to weight ratio than an RD400" - crikey, on a level with the enemy!

BSA B50s look very purposeful.  CCM used to re-work these engines to raise the power and put right various known faults.  The chassis is almost identical to the 250.  Rubbish tyres though eh?

The rest is history, but I have often wondered what such a bike would have felt like to ride. Thirty four years later and enter the DR600, 45 bhp, 160Kg including fuel and oil.  Compared with the BSA B50 at 35 bhp, 135kg dry, then the DR600 looks like it may answer the question of what the CCM special would have been like, particularly when you look at the RD400 at 43 bhp and 175 Kg wet.

The DR600 with supermoto wheels

Where does all this lead?  Everyone knows that young men's biking has usually been about going as fast as you can.  Ring the bugger's neck, get to the front and above all overtake in bends to show how much better you are than your prey.  It's a culture of bravado and daring do on a par with Italian cavalry rules of fire engine driving down mountain roads.  Consequently, I wore the sides off my shoes and learned about falling off gracefully as I stuck with my mates entering the next unknown bend way beyond our limits of competence and ashen faced with fear.  Don't get me wrong though - I wouldn't change a moment, not one.

On the other hand, I would also sneak out alone and chug around country lanes just enjoying the sensation of the engine burbling away happily and the country side unfolding with each corner I exited.   A secret pleasure that was (as far as I knew) mine alone...

Some thirty years on and I have the machine and the maturity to go my own way.  It's brilliant, bloody brilliant.  The supermotard conversion means that once again the cycle parts are well beyond the engine spec to the point that I can even forgive the plastic bits.  So easy to set up for the next bend and so forgiving when I balls it up. The power to weight thing is nice, but I've run much bigger bikes, so it's just very nice.

As to pressure, well, I live in a place that is very macho, particularly in terms of things with wheels.  Here, everyone is heavily preocupied with overtaking each other from high speed traffic to jostling shopping trolleys to the check-out.  Then there's me rolling along at my speed, sometimes brisk, sometimes very leisurley but always happy.

Exhuming the cold remains of my old friend

I have not long returned from a visit to my home town of Weston – super – Mare in the UK.   The trip was to catch up with members of my family and start getting the Velocette's rolling chassis and fuel tank ready to bring home to France.

I wasn't expecting an oil painting since the bike has been left outside in my Mum's back yard for the last ten years, albeit tightly wrapped in plastic sheeting, it was going to be ugly.  As I peeled the sheets away, having cut off the brambles, I noted that some of the sheets had actually stuck together and my heart began to weigh heavy.  In fact, it took a good ten minutes to free the bike (minus engine of course) from the wrappings and I felt my worst fears were confirmed.  There isn't one area where the chrome plating is saveable, most of the painted parts are in need of a re-paint and I have a suspicion that the plastic coated frame from Geoff Dodkin will need a heavy touch up. The picture says it all.

Oh dear.

The front tyre was flat and cracked through but amazingly the rear one was still inflated. I gave it a tug and it rolled free of the longest parking place of it's existence very easily (allowing for the flat tyre).   Two minutes with a household broom removed the cobwebs, insect corpses and years of accumulated clag and dust, revealing my old friend still has those beautiful lines.

It could be worse, it could.  She is very beautiful nonetheless.

The swinging arm still works, the shocks don't leak and do still damp (mind you, with no engine, so that could change) and there was no play in the swinging arm bearings.   I expect the wheel bearings are shot though and I'd be living in denial if I didn't pull all the bearings and bushes apart for an inspection.  Nonetheless it's nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.

The exhaust is completely rusted all over, but mine had a strange kink in the end that made the fish tail ground too easily, so I don't mind replacing that part.  It may well be cheaper to replace the silencer than try to re-chrome it but I'll look at that later.

The fuel tank was very bare, the paint having fallen off in large areas, but the metal revealed underneath was in some areas not rusty at all.  Again it could have been worse.  Then I found the five gallon fibreglass racing tank that was on the bike when I bought it.  It's as ugly as sin, but somehow I was pleased to find it even though I didn't bother unwrapping it.

Then a final piece of luck. Amongst a load of old papers was a letter from Geoff Dodkin confirming that he had exchanged my old frame for the current one. I have explained previously how I had an altercation with a Ford Cortina back in 1979 resulting in a written off frame.  This could be a very important document when it comes to trying to road register the old girl.

All in all a fruitful trip.  Transport to arrange and lots of other things to get on with then.  

Trumpets, Papers and Filler

Another month slips by and I have done almost nothing to the Velo.  I am only human and so when the possibility of another bike arose last summer I took it.  It's a '68 T100T Triumph Daytona.  I have bought it, imported it and registered it French.  This took around six months and the arrival of the French log book coincided with the fuel tank leaking.  So that's where the effort for this month has gone, re-welding, filling and cutting back for the re-painting of this bike:

The Trumpet - it's a runner you see.

I'll do a blog for the Triumph seperate from this one, but I have learned an important lesson here and that's the documentation thing.  You see, although I love living here in France, one of the downsides is that you can barely break wind without the correct (and very complicated) paperwork.

To import and register a bike made by a defunct company, you must first have a certificat de datation from here:

http://www.ffve.org/

They need copies of the original log book, photos of chassis and engine numbers, photos of both sides of the bike, copies of the purchase receipts, their own form filled in correctly.  They have a manpower problem that meant it took three months for me to receive a certificate only to find my name spelt incorrectly, so back it had to go for another fortnight!

With this certificate in my sweatty hand I could send it with these other documents to apply for a French log book (carte grise):

Certificate of no TVA (VAT) to pay, Application for carte gris, certificate de datation, original uk log book, marrage certificate recognition (because the edf bill is in my wife's name), the edf bill, the photocopy of my passport, the tax d'habitition bill and the receipt from the previous owner (untranslated).  Nothing unreasonable really but so many bits of paper!

 Once registered, I took it for a blast and as I said, found the fuel tank leaked from the centre weld at the front.  This is usually vibration damage and / or corrosion, so I have had to whip off the tank.  It's been stripped down, had the welding and brazing done, and now I'm getting it ready for a re-spray.  If you've ever done this sort of thing you'll know how much rubbing down and preparation is required.

Tank stripped back around the leak and painted with flower and water (whitewash is better though).  A drop of fuel sloshed about in the tank and the leak shows up as a damp patch - erm...

Removing the old paint... Pffffffff.  I did it by hand because I didn't want to do any more damage to the old metal.  I found more sins that had to be fixed propperly. 

 
While I was at it I popped off the carbs and re-built them too.  Even if the ad says "carbs re-built by a pro" just pull them apart anyway because you'll find something wrong.  For me, the main jets were the wrong size, everything was clapped out, one needle was not straight and there were no 'O' rings in the joints to the head, the slides rattled in the bodies and they were full of muck.  The only reason the floats sealed must have been because of the viton tips on the float needles.

"rebuilt by a pro" - but probably some years ago...

So there goes a month.