Retrograde Mechanica

Wednesday, 6 June 2012

Some days, just some days...pedal power is best!

Benny's Chicken Poo - Up for Sale

This bike Haunts my dreams, I love it!, just perfect..........buy it and have a happy life, and a smelly bike.

Details at the awesome D-T-F-P

Tuesday, 5 June 2012

hmmmmm Car Drivers!

Going through some random old pics and found this, I nearly forgot what happens when you're sat at a roundabout minding your own, when some ******* idiot car driver is on the phone. This was last year, whilst heading to the NSRA show at billing aquadrome.....This years is next weekend, I'm hoping for better luck!

Billy's got a Knuck! - Gonna be skill fella, proper skill.

That's a patient missus you got there - See you in July chap!

1 down - lots more summer madness to go!

Retrograde Mechanica Artwork

John has been busy with his crayons again!

Etchings on Slate, Drawings, Paintings and Mosaics - Contact us for one off commissions.

Sideburn!!!

Was a great day, apologies for the lack of racing shots, but the internet is littered with them.......they're out there!
And shaun, seriously give us a smile.....just the once!

Friday, 1 June 2012

The Project we wish we'd finished - Marc Woodwards awesome SR500

Our Friend - Marc Woodward's Awesome SR500, we started this project before needing the cash for the Nickel Triumph, got as far as the frame mods, pipe, seat and tank.....Marc took it off our hands and turned it into the sleak, gorgeous cafe racer you see here.

Stunning level of finish, front end transplant, all the right bits.....all I can say is WOW!

Excellent work dude, look forward to catching up again!

Pics up in the gallery soon!

"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"