kustom kommune.....

.....this sounds like a good idea for all you blokes and chicks in melbourne who aint got a workshop at home.......check it here.....

its probably gonna look like a commune from the 60's...... far out.

indian chop...

 ...article in custom rodder feb 1974 sent to me by Nick Umek....nice one......he bought it for twenty bucks and invested several hundred of dollars....

i can find a hank song.....

for everything i want to say......and this is the song this week......

today

sorry for the slow posting....i've got some things going on at the moment that i have to deal with....ill be clear soon. 

here is my day today....put the gearbox back into the 47 

 looked at the design for the exhaust for the mark 5 guzz im building for mate matt.....

drove 100kms to have a meeting for some architecture stuff, then drove 50kms to see chris and pick up some parts......mike wanted to take his wl there for chris to have a look over as he built the motor....while in transit this dude was looking at the bike...just HAPPENED to have a shirt on that said vintage 1942 aged to perfection......whats the fucken chances?!?!

chris' outfit

his big lathe...3 tonne beast.

and his small lathe (1903)....same as the one taken by Douglas Mawson on his trip to Antarctica

a photo of our friends larry and dorothy (beautiful people hope to see you soon with the saddletramp and my big brother in JB)...

aussie stylin

irish rich....listened to this while i was in the shed working this afternoon.

i always enjoyed reading richs column in GKM and i always enjoy reading his blog. i love hearing someone in an interview like this.....shows what people are really like i think to hear them over an hour talking about what they love and do....its long but you can do other stuff while its on....

ducati engine....

is all apart now. I snapped a few shots but to be honest i have never seen a motor be dismantled so quickly in my life. About an hour and a half from sitting in the frame to being completely apart.

Im glad we did strip it....we found some pretty crazy things going on inside. Lots of repair work to various head sections and parts, like rocker arms etc. The head chambers have been completely altered and are now a massive size and in order to keep compression up huge domed pistons have been added which look like they have suffered a bit at some stage. Its easy to see why the extra plug was fitted to each head.....due to the size of the piston dome the combustion chamber was basically split in half...a plug located right at the top of the chamber would have been appropriate but as the standard position is on one side of the head in order to have proper ignition across the chamber another plug was fitted. This is going to make the bike somewhat cantankerous down low but obviously was successful at high rpm.....also, large valves have been fitted as you would expect....there is the thought that we could find another pair of desmo heads and do some less radical work but im not completely convinced....if by some chance someone wants to go racing and has a set of heads they would like to swap let me know....

gearbox was in good condition and mated to a beautiful hand made straight cut gear drive and massive clutch. probably a bit of overkill in size but again....obviously worked well.

in a hundred pieces....all in all an exciting couple of hours, and a lot of fun watching ian explore a motor and someone else's handiwork...I have to relay a funny story...In the photo below you can see ian's totally charming daughter, im not sure of her age but she is probably about 7 or 8 or so. At one point there was some grunting going on whilst trying to free up the bottom end. In a very casual voice she asked her father, "dad, have you done this before?".....in a quiet voice as always he said "yes angel, once or twice"....i chuckled to myself.

new years eve.....

....was spent driving to ian gowanloch's place to remove the ducati engine from the frame and take it apart.....on the way i stopped in at gundagai as i have not been there in about fifteen years...

the Hume Highway now bypasses the town...i remember as a kid having a picnic near these bridges so i went to see them again. They are so beautiful. Opened in 1867 the heritage office is overseeing the rebuild of the first couple of sections so that they can be accessed on foot...