TassieTiger wrote:I’ll tell everyone who has ridden for many years but taken time away...do it again once to see if “that” feeling returns.
We so, so, so forget. I spent an hour on the bike this morning and immediately wished I’d not taken so long to get back on. I’ll ice my wrist and bathe in the afterglow a while...
Thanks for prompting me E.
duncan61 wrote:Lost a friend at Wanneroo race track.He was into A7 BSA and he had 3 of them in good working order.He imported a Rocket 3 triple from Ireland that was a full blown track machine.Coming down the hill you mention Blade he went straight on.at about 150-160 mph.The rider behind was at the funeral and he stated that his brake light did not come on and he had possibly passed out.It was a hot summer day.Its known as Barbagello raceway now
duncan61 wrote:Lost a friend at Wanneroo race track.He was into A7 BSA and he had 3 of them in good working order.He imported a Rocket 3 triple from Ireland that was a full blown track machine.Coming down the hill you mention Blade he went straight on.at about 150-160 mph.The rider behind was at the funeral and he stated that his brake light did not come on and he had possibly passed out.It was a hot summer day.Its known as Barbagello raceway now
Wm.Traynor wrote:OMG, when I read about the experiences you blokes have had
By comparison, my time has been "relatively" carefree. Come to think of it, I have had many more prangs off horses and only broken my thumb I don't have any regrets either, remembering only the great fangs I have had and like to think that at one stage I had been to Mt. Glorious more than anyone Probably wrong about that but who cares.
Now, like some of you, my riding days are over. My bike blew a clutch 4 years ago and while I intended to repair it, stuff like arthritis intervened and weeding the garden has become painful. The thought of putting the bike back together does not fill me with joy and riding would be more painful than ever now.
Thanks for starting this thread, Ecobogan. Hope I haven't wandered off topic too much. When I started reading I couldn't resist Biking was my life once and I loved it.
Ecobogan wrote:Joisus daym Blade have you got some stories!
Do you keep a journal of sorts? You've probably led one of the most unboring lives I've heard of and you write well mate, put a book together I reckon.
Also your body damage list makes Barry Sheen look like about as daring as a librarian!
Cheers for the sharing the pics too. Good design, automotive and otherwise, holds up over time through changing trends and the Porsche 911 isn't a bad example in cars.
But Suzuki nailed it in my view with the J, K & L model GSXR750, in particular the L. That red n white model of yours there was a proper head turner and THE bike to have in 1990. Torquier than the K, slick and stable handling, fast and reliable and fantastic looking. There isn't much more a machine has to do and they sold like hot cakes.
From memory in another thread I think we worked out that we all stepped into the big bore world via the J/K/L 750 and my first big bike was the K model.
Bought it crashed in 1993 with 22k on the clock for $3500, complete with bent forks, smashed tank and damaged fairings. Bike was otherwise very tight and I was fully smitten.
The only bad road bike crash I've had was off my '90 model Pepsi RGV 250 where I lost the front end round a bumpy roundabout in Toowoomba and slid 30 odd metres into the gutter wearing board shorts and a singlet. I was 19 y/o and had my leather jacket in my backpack....d!ckhead. I was taken to the hospital sporting several tasty half pancake sized gravel rashes and all I could think about was that the RGV was trashed....but fixable.
The crash adrenaline wore off in the surgery and was not surprisingly traded for some memorable stinging and throbbing pain. Which was nout a pinch on what came directly afterwards in the form of a plastic chair, a cold shower and a very evil nail brush. The doctor 'had' to scrub the edges to about a inch in of my wounds to remove the embedded dirt and crap....I would've rather hy taken a hearty stroll through Auschwitz.
The cops turned up mid scrub with me near cross eyed and twitching and wrote out a fine for riding un shaperoned on my L plates.
Two days later a friend of a friend, who dealt in crashed road bikes, rang to say he'd found me a stacked but tidy GSXR750. I drove to Caloundra that day, turned up to check it out on crutches and needless to say bought it on the spot.
I bought some proper leathers off him and bled anyone I could dry on road bike handling knowledge and was totally hooked.
I'd ridden the RGV a fair bit through Mt Glorious, Toowoomba and the sunshine coast, rode every day prior to the crash and have no excuses for not wearing the right gear.....young d!ckhead.
I got an L model USD front end for the GSXR, a fixable tank, cheap fibreglass fairings, all bits needed to get it ridable. Moved away for work from the sh!thole that was Toowoomba to Tennant creek NT where there were no speed limits.
Put the GSXR together up there in the same year that the NT held the cannon ball run, saw the F40 Ferrari (along with 9 gazillion other mega fast cars) in Tennant two days before it killed 4 people...which of course shut down the race for good.
Everyday for nearly 2 years I had the Suzuki out and the closest call I had on it was with 3 roos coming back from Alice at dusk, it was 1994.
In seemingly sensible efforts to eat up the 500k ride back home I was sitting on about 170 kph when they all thought they'd see what I'd learned about countersteering.
Well, in many German swearwords and f#ck me, I was just at a point where reacting in the correct way was instinctive and gave the right bar a slight but quick push sending the bike hard right. The roos were crossing at speed with the first some several metres in front of the 2nd and 3rd who were side by side. The swerve JUST managed to get me behind the first one and shaving the snouts of the second two, man was it close and I'm certain that had I have reacted any other way there'd still be bits of my carcass up the Stuart highway.
You've got about 1600 of those stories Blade, keep them coming.
Mate, it means a lot to hear I've fired you up a little in getting the bike out of the shed too Tassie...was sure my intention!!
Great stuff fellas
Ecobogan wrote:https://youtu.be/Jh7ys7vUv4o
Here's one of the shakedown runs
Stix wrote:G'day EB...
I must have ESP...just last week i was wondering where you got to & if you'd be back...
I cant contribute to motorbike stories as ive never owned one...although i could tell a tale of being the passenger on the back of a mates Triumph a few years ago & hitting some unexpected undulations in the bitumen at nearly 180km/hr & fair dinkum thinking i was going to die... .
I could also bore you with the tale of some stupid young invincible primary boys who made their own BMX track, & because one of the stupid boys decided to go the wrong way around the track, two of them made the same evasive move, landing them both face first into not only each other at top speed, but also the trunk of a big gum tree, bruised battered scratched & with limbs intertwined inside each others bike frames...(it really was amazing the state of the tangle--there is no way we could have purposely placed ourselves in that position... ).....but i shant insult your big bike thread with such insubordinate weakling schoolboy talk...Ecobogan wrote:https://youtu.be/Jh7ys7vUv4o
Here's one of the shakedown runs
Anyway...watching this had me swaying back & forth on the seat & tensing up my legs for turns & braking...i seriously thought you were going to drive me into a tree again with another rider coming the other way... ...
Sorry for a stupid question..but...what is this--a motorised thingy...???
Cost...? Availability...?...looks cool...!!...i want one...!!
Wm.Traynor wrote:OMG, when I read about the experiences you blokes have had
By comparison, my time has been "relatively" carefree. Come to think of it, I have had many more prangs off horses and only broken my thumb I don't have any regrets either, remembering only the great fangs I have had and like to think that at one stage I had been to Mt. Glorious more than anyone Probably wrong about that but who cares.
Now, like some of you, my riding days are over. My bike blew a clutch 4 years ago and while I intended to repair it, stuff like arthritis intervened and weeding the garden has become painful. The thought of putting the bike back together does not fill me with joy and riding would be more painful than ever now.
Thanks for starting this thread, Ecobogan. Hope I haven't wandered off topic too much. When I started reading I couldn't resist Biking was my life once and I loved it.
bladeracer wrote:Ecobogan wrote:Joisus daym Blade have you got some stories!
Do you keep a journal of sorts? You've probably led one of the most unboring lives I've heard of and you write well mate, put a book together I reckon.
Also your body damage list makes Barry Sheen look like about as daring as a librarian!
Cheers for the sharing the pics too. Good design, automotive and otherwise, holds up over time through changing trends and the Porsche 911 isn't a bad example in cars.
But Suzuki nailed it in my view with the J, K & L model GSXR750, in particular the L. That red n white model of yours there was a proper head turner and THE bike to have in 1990. Torquier than the K, slick and stable handling, fast and reliable and fantastic looking. There isn't much more a machine has to do and they sold like hot cakes.
From memory in another thread I think we worked out that we all stepped into the big bore world via the J/K/L 750 and my first big bike was the K model.
Bought it crashed in 1993 with 22k on the clock for $3500, complete with bent forks, smashed tank and damaged fairings. Bike was otherwise very tight and I was fully smitten.
The only bad road bike crash I've had was off my '90 model Pepsi RGV 250 where I lost the front end round a bumpy roundabout in Toowoomba and slid 30 odd metres into the gutter wearing board shorts and a singlet. I was 19 y/o and had my leather jacket in my backpack....d!ckhead. I was taken to the hospital sporting several tasty half pancake sized gravel rashes and all I could think about was that the RGV was trashed....but fixable.
The crash adrenaline wore off in the surgery and was not surprisingly traded for some memorable stinging and throbbing pain. Which was nout a pinch on what came directly afterwards in the form of a plastic chair, a cold shower and a very evil nail brush. The doctor 'had' to scrub the edges to about a inch in of my wounds to remove the embedded dirt and crap....I would've rather hy taken a hearty stroll through Auschwitz.
The cops turned up mid scrub with me near cross eyed and twitching and wrote out a fine for riding un shaperoned on my L plates.
Two days later a friend of a friend, who dealt in crashed road bikes, rang to say he'd found me a stacked but tidy GSXR750. I drove to Caloundra that day, turned up to check it out on crutches and needless to say bought it on the spot.
I bought some proper leathers off him and bled anyone I could dry on road bike handling knowledge and was totally hooked.
I'd ridden the RGV a fair bit through Mt Glorious, Toowoomba and the sunshine coast, rode every day prior to the crash and have no excuses for not wearing the right gear.....young d!ckhead.
I got an L model USD front end for the GSXR, a fixable tank, cheap fibreglass fairings, all bits needed to get it ridable. Moved away for work from the sh!thole that was Toowoomba to Tennant creek NT where there were no speed limits.
Put the GSXR together up there in the same year that the NT held the cannon ball run, saw the F40 Ferrari (along with 9 gazillion other mega fast cars) in Tennant two days before it killed 4 people...which of course shut down the race for good.
Everyday for nearly 2 years I had the Suzuki out and the closest call I had on it was with 3 roos coming back from Alice at dusk, it was 1994.
In seemingly sensible efforts to eat up the 500k ride back home I was sitting on about 170 kph when they all thought they'd see what I'd learned about countersteering.
Well, in many German swearwords and f#ck me, I was just at a point where reacting in the correct way was instinctive and gave the right bar a slight but quick push sending the bike hard right. The roos were crossing at speed with the first some several metres in front of the 2nd and 3rd who were side by side. The swerve JUST managed to get me behind the first one and shaving the snouts of the second two, man was it close and I'm certain that had I have reacted any other way there'd still be bits of my carcass up the Stuart highway.
You've got about 1600 of those stories Blade, keep them coming.
Mate, it means a lot to hear I've fired you up a little in getting the bike out of the shed too Tassie...was sure my intention!!
Great stuff fellas
I bought my GSXR750L the day my daughter was born, December 8th, 1989, $9200 on the road, the 40th one built, and very ĺikely the first one on the road in Australia, before any race teams had them. They didn't really need them though, the '89 GSXR750RRK single-seater was the K model with pre-production L model engine and some other bits, the J/K model was getting killed on the track and they desperately needed to homologate something better. There was a bit of a shortage very early on as some dealers were getting the L models and stripping them, as the trick bits (engine, carbs, wheels, oil cooler, forks) were in big demand - Suzuki put a stop to that pretty quickly though.
I was already wanting to race so I test rode many dozens of 250's, virtually every one I could find in Perth, dealers and private. The most fun was the GPZ250R, forerunner to the amazingly successful GPX250R. I especially loved the tiny RG250's, but early on realised I was too big a bloke to be able to race them. I fitted the KR250 much more comfortably and was leaning that way when I got the CB1100F, and discovered my size didn't matter when there was more than 100hp on tap, so Superbikes it was to be.
For my first big bike I drooled desperateĺy over the '85 GSXR750F but it was $5500 and beyond my reach, so I picked up an '81 CB1100F Bol'Dor for $3300 (my dealer's personal bike). I test-rode dozens of big bikes before settling on that one though. First bike I rode over 200kph was an '84 GSX750EFE, and I remember watching the fuel gauge winding down while at full noise
I picked up a very low mileage '88 GSXR750J for $5000 in late '88, but bounced it off a car before it saw the track, so I put the insurance payout (her insurance, I wasn't insured) and sale of the bike (which the buyer streetfightered) straight into pre-ordering the new L model. I did eventually get myself an '85 GSXR750F in '04, picking it up from Melbourne while I was over there doing track days on my '98 GSXR750W at Phillip Island and Mallala.
Wm.Traynor wrote:Horses
You tried blade and found you weren't quite up to it. That is sometimes the only way to find out about something you admire and wish you could do. It looks so thrilling and exciting, doesn't it but I found out that you/i had to be born in the saddle.
Bikes
I knew a bloke who could exit a ute backwards, land on the rear wheel, spin round and ride away. Reckon he musta bin born to it, too
TassieTiger wrote:EB. You have a lot to answer for...and my wife wants words.
In the space of a week, I’ve taken out the ktm for the first time in x months, I’ve stripped the Gixxer down for a service and booked a Baskerville day and I literally just bought a 200cc diet kart after seeing your bloody electric set up. The 200cc engine can piss right off - I might dose it with n20 and see how much she can take captain...
It’s this..
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/200CC-6-5HP ... SwgW9ciDxS
Deadest - I’m sure is Taswegians suffer from winter depression due to low levels of light. You’ve fired me up man!
If your not opposed to throwing some advice, I might lean on you for some info on elec conversion...for the kids...of course
Ecobogan wrote:Stix wrote:G'day EB...
I must have ESP...just last week i was wondering where you got to & if you'd be back...
I cant contribute to motorbike stories as ive never owned one...although i could tell a tale of being the passenger on the back of a mates Triumph a few years ago & hitting some unexpected undulations in the bitumen at nearly 180km/hr & fair dinkum thinking i was going to die... .
I could also bore you with the tale of some stupid young invincible primary boys who made their own BMX track, & because one of the stupid boys decided to go the wrong way around the track, two of them made the same evasive move, landing them both face first into not only each other at top speed, but also the trunk of a big gum tree, bruised battered scratched & with limbs intertwined inside each others bike frames...(it really was amazing the state of the tangle--there is no way we could have purposely placed ourselves in that position... ).....but i shant insult your big bike thread with such insubordinate weakling schoolboy talk...Ecobogan wrote:https://youtu.be/Jh7ys7vUv4o
Here's one of the shakedown runs
Anyway...watching this had me swaying back & forth on the seat & tensing up my legs for turns & braking...i seriously thought you were going to drive me into a tree again with another rider coming the other way... ...
Sorry for a stupid question..but...what is this--a motorised thingy...???
Cost...? Availability...?...looks cool...!!...i want one...!!
Hey Stix!!
Yeah good to be back for sure and mate you make me laugh. Nowhere near bored by the BMX recounts....those unco, pre macho,like-off-the-cartoons gutsa's the old BMX's used to dish out was the prequel to all these stories here.
I can sure picture it. Usually the first time your balls got smashed by a bit of steel, first time airborne on 2 wheels, first high speed stack, wheelies and bad cracks at impressing chicks. The trusty nasty BMX was usually behind it.
My cousin Dominic had freestyle pegs on his axles front and back. He swore black n blue they were on tight and sturdy as and if I didn't sit on the bars and go ripping down our street with him riding then I was a pedigree punce.
So off we went and this bad idea got properly worse. At 'too fast to pedal speeds' he had the bright idea of getting some air over a driveway gutter jump. We nosedived wildly, hit the ground front wheel first, the front axle pegs that I was standing on both disappeared and I face and bodily planted the gravel footpath to be then run hard up the clacker by the bike!
Big stack and I was skun at a royal level. Dominic's mum, my Aunt, acted responsibly and abused both of us to the core then tipped iodine all over my carnage whilst holding me down. The '80's were good for things like that.
That electric downhill bike was an idea I had a few years ago. To make a fastish off roader that could be ridden places where an MX bike would have you shot.
There are variations of that concept on the market but they're not cheap ($5k+) as elec power is still kind of exotic, I'll dig up some links. That one cost me $3500 in parts and is far from properly sorted but well worth the effort.
There might be some ESP getting around mate coz late last week myself I had a recall chuckle about your 'anyone seen this handyman thread?' comment on Tassie's shipping container, very funny stuff.
What have you been up to of late? All well in SA land?
Blr243 wrote:My bike is not running at the moment due to electrical damage sustained while a thief attempted to steal it. So it just sits there sad. A couple of weeks ago there was sirens , police ambo, fire brigade , a big crowd and bits all over the intersection. all that just down the corner. Every arvo I go through that intersection as I take my mongrel dog to the dog park a pranged up black motorcycle sits on the nature strip with POLICE AWARE tape across it. So someone is probably sitting in hospital while his bones mend and not really in a position to collect his machine for the moment. That’s enough for me I think. I will just sell mine as is .....bitumen is much coarser than sandpaper. stay safe on the roads fellow hunters
Wm.Traynor wrote:Speaking of the end of riding Blr243, my basket case did not sell so I am giving it to the wife's son.
Confession
Maybe he will let me ride it a bit, one day