Retrograde Mechanica: Survivor for Sale

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Survivor for Sale

Brian AKA the Quaffmeister is selling this cool as hell AJS - and at a bargain price to boot.

Here's what he says:

Built back in '83 this 500 Ajay has spent the last 20 or more years on a pretty big shelf in a house. That's why the timing side outshines the drive side, couldn't get 'round to dusting it ya see.

Motor turns over well and there is a strong spark but otherwise it will need recomissioning before it sees the road again.

Offers in the region of £2,000

Check it out on the awesome British Ironworks Blog and snap it up quick before I buckle and buy a big shelf.

"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"