Take-a-Look it's worth it!
By TMX Archives on 28th May 09
I DO like shiny bikes!One of my favourite pages in each week's T+MX is whichever one our Take-A-Look feature resides on, where our readers get the chance to show-off their pride and joy to the legions of T+MX readers. I admit the page occasionally goes walkabout but is currently settled nicely on page 13 in conjunction with race-world.com who have come up with a brilliant incentive to all you keen blingers and polishers. The format is dead simple, as I'm sure you all know each month we pick a winner from the pictures published, not an easy task or one that we take lightly, and the lucky owner gets 100 to spend at race-world.com on yet more shiny bits!
If all goes to plan this week we will have featured the Kawasaki KX250 of reader Martin Foster. Now you might expect this would be a 2009 model 250F absolutely dripping with aftermarket kit. Amazingly it isn't. It is a humble 1989 – yes, 20-year-old – stroker that he bought in order to have a crack at Twin-shock races.
After Martin got his new purchase home and into the garage he decided that a bit of tidying was in order before he presented the Kwacker to the scrutineers for the first time. So he started with an overhaul of the suspension linkage and bearings, and while that was apart why not whip-out the swinging arm and give it a lick of paint and some new decals. You can just see where this is going... with a nice new-looking swinging arm, the frame now looked a bit sad, so a quick strip-down soon had it to the bare bones before powder coating began.
Of course, now faced with a mint frame, swinging-arm and lovely well-oiled suspension linkage sitting on the bench there's no way Martin could just screw all the old stuff back on and so a full-on, better than new rebuild was in progress. You can just see how this project then took over Martin's life, writing lists of parts required and checking-out the suppliers. Up at all hours, scouring the small ads and the internet for those hard-to-source bits, nipping out to the garage to see if they fit the second they arrive. Checking-out all the fastners and fiddly bits to see if they can be polished and re-used. Each wheel took a whole day of elbow grease armed with wads of steel wool, cloths and Autosol.
Then, when the modern blinger can simply throw a wodge of money on a shiny new exhaust, Martin spent more hours stripping, straightening and blowing out the dents before the painstaking job of applying numerous coats of paint.
You get the idea. And I am not the slightest bit surprised that now the job is complete, Martin is seriously thinking about NOT actually riding the bike because the only way now for the bike is down! My suggestion is that he now buys another KX250 to actually race and sticks the shiny one in the living room – he obviously has an understanding wife!
As I say, I'm a real sucker for a shiny bike, which is why I like mooning around at the Classic Shows, constantly re-assessing my list of bikes for what would be my dream collection. Maico, Husky, Triumph, Metisse,... in truth the list is endless. It is never going to happen of course, I long ago realised my many failings when it comes to the sheer focus required to build just one show quality bike. And to be honest, I don't even need to with all the shows and rallies currently in the calendar – I can much more easily enjoy the results of someone else's winter of suffering, skinned knuckles, the frustrations of badly-fitting and poorly finished pattern parts – not to mention the sheer cost of such a project!
I've said before that I have mixed feelings when I visit Sapphire Motorcycles, where Dave Rowlandson prowls his workshop with the authority that only the truly gifted achieve. Any bike that Dave owns, no matter what state it arrived in, soon not only looks around 10 per cent better than when it first rolled off a production line, it also goes 10 per cent (at least) better as well.
I used to visit Sapphire for inspiration, usually after some ill-thought purchase of several boxes of near scrap which I would, in my drastically over-optimistic mind, turn into a genuine, chrome-plated, copper-bottomed head-turner.
An hour talking to Dave and drooling over his bikes and I would creep off home, skulk into the garage and push those boxes of bits as far to the back and as far out of sight as possible.
My home garage actually boasts a deep inspection pit, at the bottom of which lurk spiders of monstrous size, into which I pushed all my stupid project bikes, along with other stuff I never want to see again, quickly replaced the boards and covered the lot with heavy objects.
It's so much easier turning to Take-A-Look on page 13....