barse's shovel, love this bike, class, i made the swastika points cover out of checker-plate, [look closely], the kick-start bites you, i like the early spring rides, watching barse strip off his layers of clothing as he keeps kicking he's swearing at it, kick, kick, kick, bastard, spppplutterr, starts, bike starts moving, dancing on it's sidestand, helmet on, sweatshirt on, jacket on, gloves on, jump on, stalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll, bastard, kick, kick, kick, spppluttter, bike starts, shovel doing the funky chicken, helmet on, sweatshirt on, jacket on, gloves on, sssstalll, bastttttttarddddd......

hasil adkins, pure punk rock, proper.

the sporty project lurches forward like me when i'm drunk, trying to catch my centre of gravity, chris w. works his electro-weld majik on the frame and makes a lovely job chasing the shit factory welds under the single downtube and fills the huge cavity where i cut out the steering lock, me?, i spent a few happy hours in the shed fettling the top and bottom yokes after cutting off the lugs and brackets that are redundant, the box containing all the cut-off's grows heavier and i really need to get myself a life instead of waking up thinking about motorcycles.

 if you go down to the wood's today, you're in for a big surprise........., alway's get that funny feeling when i go into the wood's, perhaps i watched too many horror movies as a kid, me and the dog's, first snowfall of winter, they are wired, deep into the tree's and i see a small red door with a number three on it, what the fuck?.........

 'paid' stamp on back of the hand, upright bass, broken upright bass, me and barse, converse and flyers, u.s bombs [average] and support ,the grit, [brilliant], chris s, emily, barse, jessica and me, loads of beer, thursday night, start of the weekend, fuck it, woke up this morning.......

the sportster headlight mounts off a 'peak' which is bolted to the top yoke, i want a different look to the bike so i'm going with either no headlight and a carbon 'number board' same as on the racer, [daytime mot], or a couple of tiny projection scooter lights mounted one above the other [like a treble-nine ducati], whichever way i decide the mounting lugs are redundant so off they come.

bottom yoke on the sporty get's hit by the miller, this is the obsolete padlock casting disappearing, if we don't need it then it get's chopped off, every ounce of unwanted weight must go, these are the un-noticed details that make the difference to the finished bike, the standard yoke's are quite nice, they just need a little 'massaging'. 

just missed out on these beautiful mz enamelled tank badges on e-bay, could really kick myself, they would have looked great on the racer, bummer.

my new e-bay purchase turned up today, cagiva mito evo rear caliper and master cylinder for fifteen quid,quality bit of brembo tackle, new pads, some stainless hardware and de-anodising and we will be good to go, it's the same set up that i use on the racer so i know it work's, it's either spending very little money and a bit of time tidying this up or going to the local harley davidson [t.m], lifestyle, [t.m] boutique and parting with several hundred pounds for a shiny piece of tat off the accesorised  [t.m] display, i love my sporty, it's a good bike, i like riding it hard but i'm not blind to it's shortcomings, it still has that raw edge to it that has been ironed out on the jap superbikes, don't get me wrong, i like riding them, the lad's at work have them and i get to ride most of them, they are technically brilliant, but, somehow too clinical, harley's on the otherhand are probably the most over-rated motorcycle in the world, don't believe the hype, they are heavy, slow and overpriced for an air-cooled, pushrod twin, if you buy one chop it up, fuck the resale value, mix and match parts to make it your own and don't get sucked in to the whole lifestyle thing, remember, shop shirt's, goaties, chap's and village people moustache's might look good on dog the bounty hunter but if you wear them in england you are going to end up looking a cock, your rocker c ain't ever going to look as cool as an ironhead sporty or a shovelhead so, my advice would be, throw that novelty german helmet in the bin and spend your money on a decent set of spanners, sucker........................

 the dangerous ducati has gone, sold today to a happy e-bayer who collected the bike this afternoon, dangerous was gutted, for about four second's, then he started making plan's to pick up the triumph project he has in his sights, it's in bloody wales, great, sounds like i'm driving the van next weekend then, ey up des, get the kettle on..........

i've always been into martial art's from the first time i saw bruce lee as a schoolboy in the '70's, me and my mate dave broadbent used to go to the abc cinema and watch all the kung-fu film's goggle-eyed, i studied shukakai for ten years  and sankukai karate for four, got my shodan, [black belt] in both, i taught karate for both clubs, one in an affluent village where parent's used us as some sort of babysitting service so they could go to the pub and another in a run-down asian community in nottingham where the elders called the kid's to pray half way through a lesson, loved my time, trained hard and fought harder but in the back of my mind was the doubt that i could achieve more by studying the art by myself, so, i walked away, broke my heart but i realised i didn't need the politics of the karate club world, [last club i was in was the cub's], real martial art's is a dirty, nasty business, you can't show kid's throat strikes that damage the trachaea, eye gouges that can kill or leave an opponent blind or striking techniques that can permanantly disable, i didn't want to go through the motions dancing around in my pyjama's, [gi], but get back to basic's, stuff that work's, i train 4 night's a week, bagwork is important, hand techniques, kick's, elbow's, knees, head's, forget mma bollock's grappling, just enough jitsu throwing techniques thank's, but, at the end of the day ballistic techniques work, fifteen minutes with 14oz gloves and ten with cotton bag gloves, J.H.H. - just. hit. here.

'another girl, another planet......', radio six blasting out and harry the hacksaw chop's into another victim, this time the steering lock, the padlock loop underneath soon joins the collection of metal, grind, grind, grind, lot's of finishing to do but i take great pleasure from the discarded metal pile on the bench.

two-strokes, so simple, only three moving parts, crank, rod and piston but a total black art, two strokes can hurt you big time, like sitting on a hand grenade but, when they are running right, yeah baby........

nnnoise + smell = violence x 2.

bbbrrrrrinnngahhhh, brinnggghaaaaah, brinnggggaaaaaaahhhhh, briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnghaaaaa, bbbbbbbbbrrrriiiiiinggggggaaaaaahhhha, brinnnnnnnnnnggghhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,

got the frame on the workmate and gave it a good gunking to get rid of nine years worth of grease, out with the trusty hacksaw and first to bite the dust are the rear frame rails, they were already shortened back to fit the seat unit but i never got around to finishing them off properly, chopped off the rail back to the top shock mounting and then hit it with the grinder and flap wheel to finish it off, still needs some work with some wet and dry, next to go was the silencer mounting on the bottom frame rail, don't need it because of the high level supertrapps so might as well lose some weight here too, what really struck me as i was working on the frame was the quality of the welds compared to earlier sporties, loads of weld splatter, nowhere as good as the earlier models i've worked on, weight is a major concern if you are going for performance and standard sporties weigh a ton, anywhere you can lose weight you should, the component parts need lightening as much as possible, no wonder the triumph's ran rings round the overweight harleys back in the day, i'm on a mission to see how much i can get off this thing.....

i have a vision in my old swede about how the sporty project will look and one thing for sure is that i'm not running the 1 inch bars and shit lego switch gear that the motor factory fit to their bikes, i have a set of aluminium 'renthal' bars, [bolt on brace chucked in bin, it's not a fucking bandit], this lets me have my pick of japper seven-eighth's clutch perch's and front brake master cylinder's from the local breaker's, i love bike breakers almost as much as scrapyards, rooting about amongst the damaged, cast off detritus of once loved motorcycles, the breaker i use is a treasure chest of parts, crammed three floor's high and a yard full of bikes in various states of decay, i get a real buzz searching through the wreckers, crashed, burnt out, stolen recovered and neglected machinery, i try and take in all the details of trick parts when i occasionally visit dealers showrooms but get distracted by the shiny newness of the bikes, breakers are different, the bikes are raw and rough, exposed to the elements and parts ready to be picked from them like a magpie after shiny things, today i was a magpie, searching amongst the dead leaves and the dirty ground, i scored a yamaha thundercat clutch perch and lever and a kawasaki master cylinder with lever and reservoir for twenty quid a throw, ripped off the reservoir and chucked it in my parts stash, get a brembo mini reservoir off rob at racing lines for a fiver, break out the nitromors and wire brush and a couple of hours work and i should have a nice set of controls.

'get your freak on, get your freak on, get your freak on, how low', [missy elliot]