Working in a van Pt 1

Used to be cool.  I had a nice 3 car garage to work in.  My parts were scattered from hell to breakfast.  Frames and bikes were everywhere.  Didn't matter what I kept or what I threw away or sold or bought.  Everything was in a nice insulated, dry ass place.

Then I moved.  Upgraded houses, or so I thought.  Actually I had to move for family reasons - not because I wanted to.  So we found a nice house, in a not too bad place, with some extra land/property.  But no garage.  And it was quite a bit smaller.

In the course of moving we found out that we were WAY short of storage space.  So we bought a shipping container.  That is cool but it hasn't worked out yet because we haven't really properly planned how to utilize the space.  The bikes were left out and all the workshop gear was crammed into our wonder bread van. 


So ultimately the bikes got covered - duh - after some surface rust and most of the work takes place in the criveway with no work bench, grinder, vice, etc.  SO the quest now is to get the van going as a workshop.  It can be powered, does have lights, etc and some workspace.  Oh and 2 years of fucking clutter.  So the FC has to be moved somewhere (container?)  which FIRST has to be arranged to accept it.  Then comes the challenge of creating usable work space.

More to come, no doubt...

Rev Mike

Technorati Tags: van, bonneville, bub, motorcycle, workshop, living on the edge

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beyond vintage

Been an interesting few days.  I picked up a donor, but it wasn't what I intended, it just all came about at once. 

I was bound and determined to build a nice sporty hardtail.  I had it all worked out as well, but days of fretting and figuring ended up playing against me and I decided to let it go.  There were a lot of reasons.  I love sportsters but messing with chopping something new and expensive is sometimes a bit daunting.  I'm sure it would be no big deal, but it just doesn't seem as much fun. 

So I was sitting pondering how I was going to make this sporty thing work when I just decided it wasn't going to happen.  Too many factors.  One of the big factors was that no matter how you look at vintage Honda CB750 choppers, they are just bad ass.  Nothing says chopper more than a stretched, chopped, CB750.  Nothing like the contrast between long skinny bike and that huge, wide engine.  That fat heavy but nimble, powerful mill.


So all this time, it's like "that Sporty isn't REALLY what you want".. no matter how cool you make a sport custom bike, it is still a sporty and they are pretty common.  What I wanted was still the anti-harley.  It's been the theme continuously and why I have a Triumph and a Moto Guzzi.

So instead of thousands to buy a Sport to tear apart, I spent a couple hundred. 



I wasn't expecting much for the price.  The owner said that it ran, but that there were problems with the charging and battery ... blah blah blah...

I didn't expect it start, esp after he had to put another battery on it to crank it.  But it fired up immediately.  And it was music.  Not many bikes have that much character out of the box.

So now it is home.  Waiting for the time I can devote to getting it going into something.  I know what I want and it is lurking just about.  I just have to get it to that point...

Speaking of vintage.  Some people were posting cool photos on the Jockey Journal, so I thought I would add a few.  These are beyond vintage and really demonstrate what even the early motorcycles could do.  I thought I would add a couple because they are interesting and great shots of the detail of the bikes to a small degree.  These were in Mexico chasing Pancho Villa...




And of course, to give equal time, the great guerrilla himself....



Be good






















Technorati Tags: honda, cb750, cb 750, vintage, harley, pancho villa, villa, pancho, mexico, pershing, indian

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German triumphs - TWN

Cliffy on Choppertown Nation posted this photo of a German Triumph at the TT Centennial on the Isle of Man.  Personally I never heard of Triumph in Germany, but some research turned up some interesting info.  Seems they started out early in the century copying British Triumph.  The logo has the flourish line above the name, opposite of British Triumph, which is below the name.  At some point, after the war, there was a pissing match over trade names, of course, and the German firm changed their name to TWN. 

Now look at this bike.  It seems like it is leaning opposite the kick stand, but possibly it just comes down on both sides...  The interesting thing, besides the salami, is the left side kicker...  Looks like many of the wartime production/military TWN bikes had a left side kicker.  I also saw some picks with right side.  Cliffy also says they had a reverse ignition (?) which allowed the bike to be started in reverse and run in reverse.  I noticed the right side on one bike has a kind of shifting lever by the gear box.  Could be this is what he means, you throw the switch and now start the bike and it is going in reverse!?!  K maybe not, who knows....???



Also, I looked at a lot of pics of these on line and most, even the smaller engines had dual exhaust.  So this is interesting in that as well.



 Dunno....  who knows?  You tell me.   Finally, they had a bitchin solid girder.  When this comes back, I get the credit... you heard it here first folks....



Take it easy




Technorati Tags: girder, triumph, german triumph, triumph germany, kickstart, motorcycles

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