Retrograde Mechanica: October 2012

Saturday, 27 October 2012

Tom

Headed over to Tom's place to look over his lovely Norton now that he's rebuilt the Engine, oh and had a little play on his Mountain Cub too.

Wednesday, 24 October 2012

Not much going on at the moment, just tidying up and servicing the CL, getting the Nickel Triumph ready for it's engine rebirth, waiting on new hard chrome on the 550 cafe's stanchions and a lot of garage based drinking, so here's some random drunken garage shots.......it's all I got today.

Monday, 22 October 2012

Exhaust Fabricators......

Anyone know someone not too far from Northampton who can make a simple but killer set of stainless exhausts for my Cl?

Seems to get more difficult each year to find people to do the fabrication I can't.

Any help - please email me.

Cheers

Saturday, 20 October 2012

Land Locked Films

Killer videos and photos all shot with a Nikon D5000 (same as mine - damn I gotta learn some sh*t)

Young uni chap, a friend of a friend, and a talented chap to boot!

Check out his site here

Tuesday, 16 October 2012

Kim Boyle

Like all that see Kim Boyles work, I get lost in the beauty and detail of his builds - His latest Norton Caff is no exception.

I wish I possessed such skills.

Adi Gilbert

Has just produced some prints of his awesome BubbleVisor Girl - get em here (but leave me one)

If you haven't seen the fantastic artwork of Adi before check out 99Seconds now and get lost in the site for a while.

Sunday, 14 October 2012

Bishops Pathracers

Been a bit of a departure from motorcycles recently, the two triumphs are off the road this weekend and the scrambler has only been used to run errands, I have however become bicycle obsessed again and these pathracers built by Bishops in nz are bloody lovely!

"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"