hello from Barrie

i live in Scotland small world Don

i work as a HGV truck driver usually nightshift other than lights my interests are motorbike's my dogs and various other pets we have

i also have a 2 year old gran-daughter and a 8 week old gran-son

Wussup Barrie.....hope your staying warm over there.

its above freezing just now +2 i am pretty much used of the cold i don't feel it that much i wear short sleeves most of the time my friends think I'm nuts

That would be way too cold for me.....the most we get is 20degrees......

on the other hand i don't like the heat to much i suppose it just depends on what your used to

i have family in Australia who are always asking me if i would like to come over to stay for a holiday

i intend to go over next year but not looking forward to the heat i am bad enough here at 25-30 in summer

Well you wont like it here either....hot and sticky as soon as one walks out the door.

no i don't fancy that much

What i do like though is taking the kids to the beach at night.....they like to run around and look for those little crabs that nip at ones toes. lol Thank goodness that i havent lost a light yet to the ocean.

sounds nice we like to take our dogs and granddaughter to the beach and let them run around

maybe you should be looking at a floating light for at the beach

Lol, i just make sure that the lights they use have lanyards and they keep hold of the light.

He's saying 2 degree Celsius I think. Like 35 degrees F.

Welcome Barrie! A pleasure to meet you.

Okay gotcha...thanks for clarifying that for me.

I sued to work with a lot of bikers in the hospital. Used to run a truly mad device which had started out as a 1965 TZ 250 racing bike. Bit too hardcore for road use, the plod get nasty about things like lights. It had a succession of RD400 motors put in it - "If it won't wheelie on the throttle in 2nd, it's worn out." Killed quite a few engines with that. Couldn't get any more worthwhile RD400 motors. Tried a KH400 motor till the middle cylinder was on its second overbore and seized again. Probably shouldn't have widened the ports that much - it actually spat out bits of piston ring. No more Kawasaki triples for us. Sitting in the pub one night we remembered a donated DR400 which had been stolen, trashed and recovered. The frame was wrecked but the engine more or less OK.

But it didn't fit.

Ah well, cut great chunks out of the frame till it did fit.

Make an exhaust out of welding rod and Lyons coffee cans (I drink a LOT of coffee)

Run a total loss electrical system (The engine had 6V electrics) and fit a 12V battery (and charger) in the tail hump.

Go to B&Q for cheap switchgear intended for kids bicycles.

Put a sticker on the tank saying "Designed in a pub, built in a shed" which was absolutely accurate.

Uncomfortable doesn't even come close. The reversed gear linkage could cause confusion and the gearing was miles out. At 70mph it could shake hard enough to break welds. At 75mph the engine fell apart. All of my weight was basically on my thumbs - the clip-ons were a bit too radical. The riding position only began to make sense within 1mph of its top speed. You could wheelie it on the throttle in the first 3 gears. Kickstarting it was a wasted effort - just bump start it and leap into the saddle. And check the oil every 3 miles as the engine was canted so far forward if it wasn't totally full it'd seize as most of the sump wasn't where it ought to have been.

Painful, loud, completely impractical and totally legal. It had to be as every traffic cop who saw it pulled you over. Many of today's requirements didn't exist when it was road registered in 1967 - like needing lights and things like that. Awesome handling and would stop far too fast for something with that big a hump on the back of the tank. Turning circle measured in miles till you discovered that the limit on ground clearance was basically your elbows. As long as you didn't forget about the reversed gear linkage in a bend - changing "up" meant it stood on its nose and you fell off unless you were really quick with the clutch.

These days I drive a Rover 75, just not limber enough for the mad stuff any more.

Is the bike still around these days....lol.

Someone - not me - forgot about the reversed gear change at a bad place. Fortunately he was unhurt but what was left afterwards was just scrap.

I still have a decaying CB550-4K out the back. Here's one of my favourite pics - a sort of Bollywood special.

The wee boy in front is my godson Aaththitaan (Ardi). The wee girl is a friend's daughter.

Nice pic.....they look like there going fast.

well Don

that is certainly a one off creation where's the rear suspension yam RD smell the 2-stroke

don't let the Honda turn to dust it was a great bike in its day ? dose it need much to make it roadworthy

right you got me started on bikes i need to stop before i get carried away

It is just visible in the pic attached to the top of the swingarm - it is canted at 45 degrees forward - you can just see the blue coils of the spring.. Apparently this was the state of the art in race frames in 1965. Pity all those RD motors got thrashed to death -though I doubt anyone would want to pay the running costs nowadays. My S1 250 triple with a lot of port opening and polishing was lucky to get 9mpg (UK gallons are about 25% bigger than American ones so it was 7(US)mpg). Wild machine but you needed different spark plugs out of town and they only ever worked for about 200 miles after which you gave them to MZ owners. The hot RD400 motors could be even thirstier. But you can't beat the huge cloud of pollutants out the back end - nobody's going to be reading your numberplate. I always wanted to buy one of those gadgets that injected Castrol R (Castor oil) into the exhaust for even more fun smells (and pollution)

Problem with the Honda is getting a non-wrecked brake drum for the back wheel - mine is oval and most of the ones I've found were worse. The forks need rechroming too. To get it through one MoT I had to cut a beer can into strips and wrap it round the rear brake cam, grind off the punch mark, move the lever several notches round the spline and repunch it. Not that I dared use the back brake.

It is just visible in the pic attached to the top of the swingarm - it is canted at 45 degrees forward - you can just see the blue coils of the spring.. Apparently this was the state of the art in race frames in 1965. Pity all those RD motors got thrashed to death -though I doubt anyone would want to pay the running costs nowadays. My S1 250 triple with a lot of port opening and polishing was lucky to get 9mpg (UK gallons are about 25% bigger than American ones so it was 7(US)mpg). Wild machine but you needed different spark plugs out of town and they only ever worked for about 200 miles after which you gave them to MZ owners. The hot RD400 motors could be even thirstier. But you can't beat the huge cloud of pollutants out the back end - nobody's going to be reading your numberplate. I always wanted to buy one of those gadgets that injected Castrol R (Castor oil) into the exhaust for even more fun smells (and pollution)

Problem with the Honda is getting a non-wrecked brake drum for the back wheel - mine is oval and most of the ones I've found were worse. The forks need rechroming too. To get it through one MoT I had to cut a beer can into strips and wrap it round the rear brake cam, grind off the punch mark, move the lever several notches round the spline and repunch it. Not that I dared use the back brake.