Retrograde Mechanica: October 2013

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Dreaming of Mcqueen cool and Desert Sleds

More fuel for my desert sled fire..........It's a slow project but pics like this help the inspiration

Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Classic Bike

Love waking up to find the latest issue of CB on my doormat, day got even better with Rick dropping my name in his awesome Rick's Fixes column!

Some great articles this month (Yep I've read it all already) - love the guy with over 100 Bultacos, go check it out!

Thanks Rick, and thank you for all your advice....bring on the pre war machine!

Autumn Ride to the Caff

Some nice bikes out as always...and love the shell suit on the guy checking out my Bonnie Chop

Barons....

Nipped down to see Dick and Dell and picked up a Killer NOS Wassel Banana tank for the '58 Desert Sled project and some ace Starburst rocker caps.

Also got my first lot of Stove Enamel back from Darren at Perfect Paint & Powder so got the forks loosely together and they look Ace! can't wait to get the frame done now (its not staying blue) when I've finished modifying it!

Random Garage Shots

Garden Art

Found a matching '35 Ladies Raleigh to my '35 Gents tourer.....a little beyond easy restoration perhaps, but with a basket and some flowers it'll make killer garden art!

Vintage Motorcross for £1.48.....

......as won on ebay - I couldn't resist!

Cotswolds Transport Museum

Had a weekend in the 'Wolds, so it'd be rude to have not visited - Cool little place, and I do love sitting on a tractor!

"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"