here's nothing at all

today has been pretty un-eventful. I spent most of the day waiting on the lovely establishment we refer to as banks with no success whatsoever. awesome, thanks guys. so I popped down the workshop late afternoon to meet a chap who came to measure up an engine I'm ebaying to see if it'll squeeze into a frame he has. so between the chap, brushing up and generally shifting bikes around I took a quick picture of the current state of the ratitude for you to enjoy. In this photo here you can see the fire extinguisher tank that I have shortened to look more appropiate and the petrol cap I have started making. I've cut the hole and tack welded the tube in and cut two location holes for aki's old piston to be the cap cover and using one of aki's (yes he frequents, er, frequently) old chains to make sure it doesn't get lost when filling up at a station. I also crudely mounted a speedometer onto the side as I do believe crude is the term with rat bikes. does anyone have a old rat toy I can seperate from them to donate towards the project? I feel it may be suitable. Also, I now have a suitable project for this sticker I picked up some time ago now as I knew it would be good sometime...

It's all about your ratitude

The last couple of days I havn't been working on the Avenger at all as I've been forwarding my attention to my own hack called ratitude. A friend of mine had a head on crash (fortunatly still grooving along nicely) so I relieved him of his crash victim ( a Kawasaki GPZ) and decided to rat it out. I took the front end of a redundant kawasaki I had hanging in the corner and bastardised it on, adding a front lamp I've had hanging around for ages. I cut off the gay tailsection and shortened a fire extinguisher that (I thought) was empty to use as the petrol tank. Also, married up the old dragstar seat and the mudguard from a Honda CB I got in once. So far the efforts are as follows...

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exhausted with exhausts

today was one of those days where you spend 6 hours doing something to realise a: its not very good, b: it can be alot better done another way. so after much bending, cutting, welding, bleeding, beating, muttering, drilling but no milling I came to those aforementioned conclusions. but now all is much better, I started the day knowing nothing about how to mount, rotate and case the eccentric exhaust I have created and ended by having half of it done and a scribbling of material lists to be able to finish it tomorrow.

Also decided to put a suicide shift on the right hand side of the bike for something a little different, I know technically that isn't a suicide shift but I'm not sure what it is right now. A little history is as follows -

'suicide shift' - clutch operated via left foot and gears via hand shift
'jockey clutch' - clutch operated via left hand lever mounted ON hand shift

lesson over.

mechanical movements

I fired the engine up today after a little tweaking to the ignition timing and realising the temporary tank I was using to feed the petrol didn't let fuck all run through the tap. It was very tight and sweet indeed so pleased there. I finished mounting the electrics box too so the whole thing is actually mobile without dragging its electrical guts everywhere. I got the material for the exhaust cover this afternoon also so shall be doing that first thing tomorrow morning and then I can figure out how to mount the damn thing. for your viewing pleasure here's the tank decal idea direction too...

electrics box and engine timing topped with nato green dreams

This morning I set the timing chain on the bike between the valve shaft and the crank, so I'm glad that's done as its been on my brain as a must, now the valve covers are firmly locked down on top. I also welded two extra trianglation pieces into the frame and made the internal support structure for the electrics box which now only requires one more 'pin' to be welded onto the side of the frame to support the box itself. As I'm confident I built the loom correctly tomorrow is going to be mainly geared towards firing the engine so I'll have to fill it up with oil, pop some fuel in and be getting my kicking leg ready. even with a set of dyna-coils on I've been at bikes kicking for a good half hour before they decide to blub into life but we've re-conditioned this whole engine so I dont see what'll be stopping it. On another note, the mudguard and tank have been primed and I managed to get the suppliers who er, supply, the paint to the army to supply me! sweet, so thats two lots of 'nato green' I have for the first layer of the paint job before the rust is applied.

welding, welding, welding...

well, almost all welding today apart from the endless drivel of driving to pick up materials. I got the rear fender cut to length, streched the radius and the locating pins welded into place with the bracket. Also, welded threaded bar to the front where the tank straps meet and are bolted down, welded the locating pins for the trust-rod and made the spacers for the rear wheel axle. I dont know if I've actually put up a picture of the exhaust to date (which is causing problems sourcing certain materials for) so here is the Gatling Gun exhaust too....

working leather

Howdy all, I am back from me short travels. Today I was mainly cleaning and sorting out the workshop as way too much stuff is getting ontop of itself so I've been taking down a work bench that isn't really used whilst tomorrow I'm gonna be putting up a corner rack to hold more gear. I've been getting fustrated at the way bike bits and spares are spread all over the shop along with materials so I'm making a good effort to seperate these and taking the opportunity to have a good brush down is no bad thing either. I'll be pimping up the security in the shop some more too. I didn't get a huge amount done though as I was helping a good friend with his motorsickle problem. Tonight though I turned my hand to some leather work for the strapping to hold down the tank on the Avenger, I just want a simply 'Iron Monkey' lettering going down each strap, nothing fancy so this is my results, not to bad for a free-hand first go...