Month: December 2010

Reader Ride! GSX 1100 From Croatia!

Ivan from Croatia writes in:


Hi,
I like to read your blog, it’s one of the first things I do each morning. Today I was surprised I
couldn’t open it, but later it was accessible. It’s great and you have a lot of great pics!
I’m sending you a photo of my work, so that you can see what we are doing through the winter, here
in Croatia.

Thank you Ivan!  Great bike!  I like the all the upgrades. 
We’re all good now folks.  Looks like just a google glitch although from what I’ve read a lot of bloggers got it MUCH worse.

Back to or regularly scheduled programming…

I suppose I need to find ways to backup my entire blog (YEARS worth).  I don’t see  way to get all the images I have stored on Picassa backed up in total and in order so I’m going to have to trust to the gods on that one.

It this blog does in fact disappear I WILL RETURN in some capacity (and likely with a slightly altered name) but it will likely be on another blog host like wordpress or tumbler etc.. but for now I’ll ride this pony as far as it’ll go.

It must be a curse.  I was actually bragging to a friend about the reliability of blogger/google yesterday.  Go figure.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I blame Google. Continuous Update!

Well according to my site meter it started at 5 am and ended this morning when I logged in.  

2nd update:  Apparently I’m one of the lucky ones.  According to this some folks have lost their blogs completely and since they are legitimate businesses they have lost significant revenue for the holidays!  Poor bastards.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=5161eccac29c1be8&fid=5161eccac29c1be8000497502b39ff6e&hl=en

Update:  Well apparently it’s not anything major. After doing some searching I’ve found a few references to this and it’s not all that uncommon for google to pull this on people.  LOTS of speculation as to why but nothing concrete.

Here’s a link to another fellow who had a similar (but not identical) thing happen.  Damm frustrating and very freaking scary!  Now I get to go change all my passwords everywhere.  Oh Joy!  Thanks a lot google.

http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-account-disabled-temporarily/13775/

To those of you who have checked to see my page missing I don’t know what happened  I came in this morning and my G-mail account was disabled and I needed to re-verify all my passwords with a text message verification number.  I’m going to get after google to see what’s going on but for now if you get any e-mails form my address

superduckz@gmail.com

please let me now if it was malicious.  I haven’t sent anything out to anyone since yesterday evening (12-22)

The Bonhams 1938 Brough Superior 982cc SS100

Thought I’d pass along a recent e-mail I received to those of you who might be curious about the state of the high end vintage motorcycle market (and those of you who don’t follow the Vintegent 🙂 ).  I was fortunate enough to get on the Bonhams Auction House mailing list  recently and just received this message (below) that touches on that very subject. In a nutshell business appears to be booming.  It looks like investors are putting their money into more “tangible” works of art these days and the high end automotive world is getting it’s share. 

They were also kind enough to send me a beautiful and extremely high resolution jpeg of a 1938 Brough Superior SS100.   Enjoy!  And Thank you to Katherine Boyle for the information and photo:

Bonhams Motorcycle Department produced truly spectacular results for 2010 with a total of £5.6 ($8.7) million and selling in excess of 1200 machines to achieve this result, all with an unprecedented and industry leading percentage sold of 87% by lot and value.
As an illustration of how solid the market is for vintage motorcycles in these financially uncertain times, there were six new entries in to the Department top 20 results, the most since the division was founded with the exception of 2008, when two World records were set in consecutive months.
Brough Superior made up half of these new additions with a record for a 680 OHV being produced at our Oxford sale room in June, selling for £98,300, closely followed by another example at the Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show in October, which went for £93,900. The best result of the year came, unsurprisingly, from the post-vintage 1938 Brough Superior SS100 which was offered at the April Stafford sale, and eventually sold for £157,700. The combined total for Broughs sold in 2010 was £393,200.
Another very special marque always keenly sought by the enthusiast and collector is the Vincent-HRD. And all 19 examples offered in 2010 sold for a total of £498,200.
In stark contrast to these ‘Rolls-Royce of Motorcycles’ and ‘superbikes of the 50s’, other superb results for year included the two Fath-URS engined machines. The ex-Helmut Fath, Horst Owesle, 1968 and 1971 World Championship-winning 1966 URS 498cc Racing Sidecar Outfit produced the second best result of the year when it sold for £102,700, and the ex-John Blanchard, Tony Jefferies, works 1967 Seeley-URS 500cc Racing Motorcycle raised £76,300.
The final high flyer of the year was one of the most historically significant motorcycles that has ever been offered by Bonhams, the first series production machine to be referred to as a ‘motorcycle’ (motorrad in German), the c.1894 Hildebrand & Wolfmüller, which, after a furious bidding battle, eventually went for £86,200, well in excess of £40,000-60,000 estimate. Not content with offering just one of these historically important motorcycles, the Department will be offering a second H&W, within the space of 12 months, at its inaugural Las Vegas sale on January 6th 2011.
This is the first in another superb line up of auctions for next year, with a huge variety of exciting and important machines already consigned for these future dates, ensuring 2011 will build on this year’s successes.

(Please find attached a) high resolution jpeg of a georgous Brough Superior.

thank you to the folks at Bhonams.

The TAFFYMOTO built "Black Pearl" CRF450R Supermoto.

I don’t post a lot of Supermoto’s on here. That’s not a prejudice on my par cause I absolutely love them and am in the process of converting my DR650 over. But this bike is so freaking nice that I can’t pass it by. It fairly legendary in the SM world. It’s know as the “Black Pearl”. If you’re interested in more about the bike there’s a good thread on it over on Supermotojunkie.com  This is an insanely nice build.

Here’s the build thread if you’re interested:

The Black Pearl

mtr tuned head
j+s high comp piston
stage three hotcam
boysen waterpump kit
stm slipper clutch
hinson billet clutch casing
powdercoated rocker cover (gloss black)
samco hoses (urban cammo)
five 10 engine plugs (black)
compflow oil filter and billet cover (black)
hammerhead designs rear brake lever (black)
hammerhead designs gear lever (black)
hammerhead designs case saver (black)
k+n filter setup with samco hose (urban cammo)
powdercoated kickstart (satin black)
troy corser oversize race radiators (gold)


powdercoated mainframe (satin black)
powdercoated swingarm (satin black)
powdercoated engine mounts (satin black)
tag triple clamps incorporating honda steering damper (black)
tag oversize handlebars (gold)
protaper bar pad
joker tornado 2 billet throttle (black)
fly racing billet engine kill switch (black)
cycra crm probend handguards/black low profile sheilds
bar mounted hotstart removed and replaced with carb pull switch
ohlins ttx rear shock
ohlins replica forks/revalved re-sprung


beringer bro 10 master cylinder (black)
beringer aerotec six pot calliper (black)
beringer cast front disk (black)
beringer clutch lever (black)


marchesini 17″ forged aluminium supermoto wheels (black)
goldspeed ultra tyres
devil sprinter exhaust with dual carbon fibre cans and titanium header pipes


pro carbon lower fork guards
pro carbon fuel cap/gold vent cap
pro carbon fuel tank cover
pro carbon chain guide
pro carbon rear disk guard
lightspeed carbon fibre engine guards
lightspeed carbon fibre ignition cover
lightspeed carbon fibre frame guards
lightspeed carbon fibre sump guard
lightspeed carbon fibre front sprocket cover
sc racing carbon fibre rear shock guard


prairie city supermoto chain stay
t m designs slide+glide chain runner
gold front and rear axle sliders and crash bobbins
ufo footpeg sliders
talon sprockets
did chain
sdg step seat
one off custom graphics