unusual

Now that’s an understanding wife! Davis may sends in a sweet Yamaha enduro hybrid and a REALLY cool wedding cake!

Davis May sends these in..

Here is my 1973 Yamaha DT3/250. This is my first and only motorcycle. I bought it off Ebay three or four years ago now. I learned to ride on this machine. Its kinda of a mutt. I was not sure if I wanted an enduro or a flat tracker so I kinda did both.
Things I have done-
RD350 Triple Tree
Honda Front Wheel and Hub (went from a 21″ to 18″)
Fiberglass tail section that was built for a Triumph
Webco High Compression head
Expansion chamber(sorry no photos of it)
Relocated ignition switch
Relocated Speedometer (no tach)
Hand Made wiring harness

I have to give my friend Bill credit for the paint. He did all the hard stuff. I just buffed.


The cake is my wedding cake. My wife had to know what she was getting into.

I hope that you enjoy

That’s a great bike and an even better wife! Nicely done sir!

Mini Ice racers and other cool rides from Portugal to Canada!

Armando Barqueiro sent in some cool bikes with some interesting backgrounds.

He wrote in:

Jose Esteves is a Portuguese born Canadian immigrant (like myself) and an absolute motorcycle loon. He loves both 2 and 4 strokes of all kinds but his favorites are 2-stroke cafe or road racers. He road-raced in Angola and South Africa when he was young and continued when he immigrated to Canada. I met him when he stopped beside me while I was riding my cafe RD400 in ’79 and he was on a Honda 750F done up to the max (I later owned that Honda). We started talking and found out that we were both Portuguese and both loved bikes. We both raced here in Quebec, he on an ex Alan Labrosse TZ250 and I on my 77 RD400 and later my ’81 RD350LC.
About a decade later a bunch of us decided to ride on the ice and Jose built a bunch of mini ice bikes for that purpose. Two of those are the yellow mini bikes. The front one is a Kawasaki 65 chassis with a stroked XL125 Honda engine (154cc). I later bought that bike from Jose. The rear one is an XL500 Honda that he minimized by replacing the wheels with 10″ CT70 wheels and a Z50 gas tank as well as a bunch of other changes.
The RD400 was his first race bike in Canada and it then saw a bunch of conversions as he kept modifying it over the years. This picture was its final version.
He had raced a Kawasaki S3 in South Africa and liked it a lot so he bought two H2’s in sad shape here in Montreal and rebuilt them both, one in stock condition and the other as the cafe in the picture. It has cast wheels from a KZ650, Toomey pipes and a bunch of other stuff I don’t even remember. I rode it once and it was very fast. He’s given me permission to post these photos.

Manny ’82 GS1100L/California Sidecar, ’02 GSXR1000, ’86 Fazer, ’92 DR650, ’92 FZR600, ’00 DR400Z, ’00 TTR225

I have an H1 similar to that H2 with the KZ wheels. and that RD is take WAY out there. But those minim ice racers must be a total blast! Thanks for the pics Armando!

 

 

 

Some Really Cool Motorcycle Art/Sculpture and a Sweet XS650 tracker.

Thanks to Ted Brecheisen for these really interesting shots.

Hey Steve,

I went to Sheridan, IN last weekend to a very cool place that is like a museum but is also a shop. The XS 650 Yamaha was a stock bike he found in the weeds a couple of blocks from his house. It’s on the way to a great looking flat tracker.

Don Christy makes “cycle art” from junk parts and bicycle frames. Everything is miss-matched. On one piece the v-twin’s cylinders are made from plastic drain pipe. The crankcases on many are made from cake pans. Very creative. More pics are at www.flickr.com/photos/boanerges-indy

Thanks for a great blog,

Wow! That’s my kind of art! Talk about shopcraft as soulcraft! And a great way to make a living too! I really like that style and that XS is sweet! Thanks Much Ted!

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A really interesting concept bike and engine system.

I’ve read quite a bit about the compressed air technology in cars lately and I just sort of figured it would be impractical in motorcycles.  And then I saw this (pulled this out of the Spam filter again grrr..) from an alert reader.  Really cool concept ESPECIALLY for short distance closed course racing.  I have a hunch that those are the areas where the alternate energy bikes and cars might get a realistic toehold.  I’ve even seen some wicked fast all electric Cart racing that a hard core cart racing friend of mine is looking into.

Anyway, thanks to Zach Stambaugh who sent this to me back on Dec 11 while we were in a bit of an alt energy phase on here.

I’ve been enjoying your blog for at least a year now. After the poll about electrics, I wondered what you thought of this: http://o2pursuitdeanbenstead.wordpress.com/

In my opinion it goes down to whether the bike looks interesting. Is it original or fun? does it innovate a cool idea? If so put it up.

I think it meets the qualification of interesting.

Thanks Zach and be sure to check out the link to their site for more!  And yeas, that started out as a standard SCUBA tank.  I love it!  And if you don’t mind sitting through a 30 second ad there’s a really informative video on the design HERE I like the points they make about no end of life issues (like with batteries) and I imagine you could piggyback compressed air refill stations right next to a gas station without too much fuss. The only scary part is what would happen in a rupture in an accident. I’m sure smarte people than me have solutions to that though. I’ve always thought that electric is doomed by it’s own costs and physics but the simplicity of this CA tech seems really promising..

The Dirt Fazer!

Manny had made a few comments about his old Dirt Fazer in the FZ! Adventure Bike thread and he was kind ehough to send in some pics of it.  Cool Stuff but a sad ending..
Manny Wrote in:

Hope some of these are OK. Don’t forget most of this stuff is from the film era and it wasn’t so easy to take pictures back then. I owned this bike for 13 years and had a blast with it. One day I was riding it home from work and the countershaft sprocket came off the shaft and the chain wrapped around and locked my rear wheel in the fast lane of a major Montreal highway. I slid to a stop on the inside service lane and took the plate, tools and mirrors, crossed the highway, called my wife to pick me up and abandoned the bike. I had never plated it and ran it on the street with the plate from my other Fazer so it couldn’t be traced to me. That’s the last time I saw it.