I ride motorcycles. I have for 20 21 22 years oh hell, since 1976!. But worse, I build them...
Look at these two shots for example:-
Crazy, huh? That's the Heart of Gold, about which you will hear more later.
And here is a monocoque steel frame I built back in about '84 for a Suzuki GSX400F motor.
It even got tested at Brand Hatch by SuperBike magazine!
I started when I was 16 with a Yamaha FS1E, the standard tool of the cool youth of the day. 50cc's of raw, thundering power. NOT! It was a dog, with faulty head bolts, and mercifully got quickly replaced by a Suziki AP50 which was a little faster and in rather better condition. This little metallic blue buzz-bomb took good care of me for the next year.
Once I hit 17 (the legal age for riding a 'proper' bike in Britain back in those far off days, before two parts tests and all that) I was able to step up to a serious bike and bought a very old, but very well cared for, Suzuki T200 Intruder. This was massively customized in my first experience with serious do-it-yourself engineering. I built my own GRP bodywork, made rearset footrests, clip-on bars etc and generally made little streetracer out of it. It was quite a successful transformation all in all. I missed it terribly after I sold it.
Then a year later at 18 I got into the big time with a Honda CB400F, the jewel of the 70's. That too got the fairing/clip-ons etc treatment and was a jolly nice machine. After I started working at Rolls-Royce Aero Engines it got further work since suddenly I had some money! Useful additions like an oil cooler, electronic ignition, S and S exhaust, Cibie lights, Goodrich brake hoses, all aimed at making it that bit easier to ride rapidly without hurrying.
During my first degree in London I finally got started on plans to build my own frames (which was the original reason for pursuing an enginering degree), and decided to try out an MZ250 as a commute machine whilst the 400 was in pieces being transplanted. It was 'orrible. Never believe the sad buggers that try to tell you how nice they are as commuting machines. As I remember it was mainly the very staid and serious magazine MotorCycle Sport that convinced me to try that little experiment.
I quickly replaced it with a slightly less terrible Yamaha RD200 lightly customized for me by a friend. Meanwhile the 400 engine sat gathering dust on a stand in the bedroom (much to the disgust of my new wife, but what do women understand of true love?) while I got on with getting a degree. Eventually, technology advanced to the point where I decided to change the engine for my frame to a Suzuki GSX400F, and thus the CB engine was redundant. I ended up buying a friend's CB400F2 which was in beautiful customized condition (everything that could rust had been either replaced be 'glass, alloy or epoxy coated; all black, alloy wheels, stainless brake lines, oil cooler, full race this'n'that etc. Luvverly) and put my old engine in it since it was in better tune, and sold the old 'spare' parts. So now I had a cute and powerful, well set up CB400F. In fact it wasn't until Yamaha came out with the second generation of RD350LC's that anything of a comparable capacity could even attempt to keep up with it. I still own this bike, somewhere in the UK it sits sulking in the original-owner friends garage.
In the meantime, I moved on to a second degree and actually got the frame finished enough to run. SuperBike magazine was involved by this time, and they paid to try it out at Brands Hatch race track. Amazingly enough it actually worked quite well, though the engine tune was laughably out of whack. I had grand plans for the rest of the work, but of course real life got in the way. Important lesson learned -- don't change plans in mid stream unless you really have to. Costs way too much time and ends up with the project never finishing. Particularly to be remembered by software development mangers.
Soon after, I got a real job with IBM's UK Scientific Centre in Winchester, and found a colleague (see second pic of Heart of Gold above) who had a big inheritance burning a hole in his pocket and a big wish for an excuse for a workshop and tools burning a hole in his heart. So he spent a bundle on a milling machine, lathe, welding gear etc and we started building a new bike based on the FeetFirst principles so strongly espoused by Malcolm Newell and demonstrated with his seminal Quasar design. After several years, we came up with the Heart Of Gold (see here) and it was pretty damn good.
Then I moved to the USA and concluded that building bikes is a pretty silly way to spend all ones time. I had spent almost all my spare time for 12 years on it and danged if the production bikes hadn't caught up with my ideas and wishes in the mean time. Foo.
So then, in California, I got a 95 Honda VFR750, which was very, very RED and quite amazingly wonderful. It was almost everything I tried to achieve when I used to scratch build bikes before I got sensible. Oh yeah - it replaced a black 92 model which got written off when some dork knocked me off it in August 94 and broke my ankle. Still, the compensation took a little of the sting out, but the ankle reminds me every day of the unpleasant event. I'm currently applying for a Darwin License, to allow me to carry ground-to-ground missiles on the bike in order to do my part in cleaning out the gene pool. Since the much-vaunted second amendment doesn't mention anything about limitations on the arms one is allowed to bear, I have high hopes.
And now, as of July 98, I have a Honda VTR1000FW (the one pictured at the top of the page actually, a star of Staintune Exhaust advertisments and more pics here), which is even more wonderful. I thought the VFR had plenty of torque, but the VTR totally outdoes it. It has no more peak power, but delivers it in an amazingly grunty manner. Keeping the front wheel on the ground requires constant attention to careful use of the throttle. One of the attractions was the range of aftermarket bits on offer - you can see that my intention to avoid building my own bikes has started slipping...
So far I have succumbed to
Oh good grief, I'm building bike bits again. Help Me!
email me at tim@sumeru.stanford.edu
