5 day trip to western NSW

 Amazing trip in the middle of the NSW drought out to Broken Hill and back.

Lots of dead wildlife on the road as they come out of the dry bare paddocks to try and find some small amount of green picking along the road edge. A huge amount of feral goats, lots of kangaroos.

It was an eye opener seeing a pipeline being built from just outside of Mildura to Broken Hill, some 270 or so kms. Why?...What are the real motives?...Who stands to profit?...Who stands to lose?

The MAD MAX II Museum was great to see and so was the view over the Mundi Mundi Plains.

It was also real cool to stay at the Palace Hotel in Broken Hill. While we were there in the dining room, at 6.45 the nearby underground mine blasted as they do every 12 hours. I know someone who used to work at that mine and yesterday they mentioned that a shaft is only about 350m from that hotel. No wonder it sounded like the roof was coming down. 

Interior shots of the Palace Hotel.

Me above with my 84 FXRT at the lookout over the Mundi Mundi Plains. 

What a bike, what a spot.

The Machine Show 2019

If you are into vintage motorcycles of all types then come along to our shindig 29th - 31st March 2019. This will be our third show and we hold it in our local town Braidwood on the southern tablelands of NSW Australia.

For a full rundown of the weekend have a read over at The Machine Show.

We are in the process of updating the site with all the dates but the concept of our show is well explained there.

so good its crazy huh....

1954 KH Harley-Davidson

This KH came to me with a lot of issues. The scavenge pump was not working, which took a long time to diagnose because basically you have to remove the motor to get at it. It had suffered oil starvation problems at some time to the top end and the bores were scored. After resolving all those issues i had also noticed that the backbone on the frame was tweaked left and that had put the rear loop frame bolt-on out of wack. Too many other projects and work to get through over the last few years meant it sat in the corner looking sad. 

I have many projects set aside to complete over the next couple of years but last xmas i did some serious thinking as to how i should progress getting onto and completing these projects.

To be frank, I was actually feeling depressed that I wasn't progressing as fast as I would actually like on those projects and it was weighing heavy on me. To the point where after returning from Born-Free last year I didn't even want to step foot in the workshop.

My solution was to ask for help from Brado Miller my friend because he is the ONLY person in the world I could possibly trust to do work for me. I am very stubborn with regard to design on anything, let alone on custom work on motorcycles, but I have faith in Brado's ability to actually understand what i would want to do or see on my bike and that makes the whole process a lot easier. There are a couple of photos at the bottom of the post showing the bike before the teardown but the concept is to turn the bike into a show-bike. Even though I will not be pulling the motor apart again, it will get a dress up. The rear bolt-on section was always too long for my liking. Too much gap between the gearbox and rear wheel, and the bike was too low and needed to come up an inch at the rear.

Brado stripped the bike and has replaced the top tube and totally remade the rear loop bolt-on subframe shortening it by around 60mm and lowering the axle plates in order to raise the bike an inch or so.

Originally Brado put forward the idea to have stainless axle plates but we didn't have the material on hand so we went for stainless skids as a compromise, but I think actually will look even better. No more chipped paint as the axle slides back and forth. 

Couple of shots of the bike when I got it. 

The front brake was non-existent and has been ditched in favour of an original K drum with an adapted Triumph ventilated brake setup.