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Wonderful! Well done! My little Ginger is my shadow

Great story Pedro! Sage is quite literally my "Best Friend"......especially since Jana passed last August. She's been through so much with me. I'd be an absolute TrainWreck without her.....

Its not cheap keeping horses! The best i can do is feed this thing!

That as well. ?

Au contraire mon ami, I see your Bisley and raise you a Mrs Paws Mrs Paws is a stray who appeared at our back door about 10 years ago. My wife would bollock me for letting her in and wasn't keen at all, nowadays you'd have to prise that cat from her dead body before she'd let go ? This is our son Paolo trying to coax her to eat back in 2010 and hear she is today, she doesn't seem to get any older, unlike me ?

I don't suppose you remember, but on July 2012 I posted a report in which, riding the XR in the woods, I found an abandoned puppy and took him home. He was barely one month old, very sick and had a serious case of scabies, left to die in a heatwave. This is him after a couple of weeks at home: And this is him now, spoiled and 8 years old, having survived serious liver surgery last year: He's the man! ?

Hello everyone!! Thanks for having me! My friend Pedro Rocha pointed me in your direction because he knows how much I love the UK and the UK bike scene and how much I miss it. From 2001 to 2009 I lived in the UK, it was where I got my first bike, and all the others afterwards actually!! Currently I live in Portugal and try to go out as much as possible, although haven't done a lot recently because I started my own small animal vet practice and have concentrated on that. I am also going to run a moto tours business, which is something I really love to do. Being a total numpty when it comes to off road ridding and half a numpty on the road , I am hoping to learn a lot of things here!! Again, thanks for having me!!

He will be off his nut on pot today.

What we need (especially with what's going on at the moment) is a conspiracy theorist, bring back Zzzzzzzzzzzack ?

That' s some serious street cred in the GS community at ADV rider!

Some of these names look familiar ? Good to see em again!

Tried that, no joy ? Edit: went for a walk down the park, come back and working again now ? ? ?

Hey old riding partner..... good to see you're still alive & kicking....

Already shared it with mates etc so hopefully some will be along to create mayhem. ?

I gave them the best 3 posts of my life ya know.

You know... probably the same damn thing ? Things are good actually... family and I are healthy so cannot complain. Cheers!

Wassup!

I’m still without Moto... having sold the TransAlp bikes and Africa Twin RD03. Still miserable with my old Series Land Rover rigs!?

Cheers! It’s been awhile. ?

Good to see my fellow adaptive Rider......? ? your T7 buddy-- ?

one of life's simple pleasures was taking a motorcycle turd and polishing it to my liking, and it's been a while since I had the bug in a big way. Mostly because we moved and bought a house that has been an ongoing project since we moved in and is still demanding some work, but here in the lesser 48 the project bike market is much larger than in Alaska and it's finally game on! Picked up this ummmm, BSA as it is recorded on the title, with several tubs of various bike parts, mostly from a Honda CM400 it appears. The motor is the same as the CM400 I rescued many years ago and that we still have, it's now pretty the spare bike. I've always had a desire to build a chopper, and here is the start!

Hi, A friend sent me a link to this site. I've been riding on and off since 1973. For most of that time it was sports bikes. I've done some racing too, mostly drag racing. In 2017 I moved from the US to Spain. When I left the US most of my time and money was going into my light aircraft but with a retiree's budget flying isn't likely to be a thing for me here, though I do want to see about flying a sailplane. So after a while the urge for another motorcycle set in. Spanish law does not provide a mechanism for me to exchange my US driver's license so I had to go through the whole process again, starting from scratch. Once I had my automobile license I started looking at getting a bike license. Turns out that I am limited to 47 horsepower for the first two years, though I can restrict a bike with up to twice that amount. There's enough dirt roads here that I thought it would be good to get a bike that I can ride on them. My wife never wanted to ride on my sports bikes so I decided to try to buy something that is comfortable two up on the highways. Also, one thing that I'd become sick of doing is cleaning and lubing chains every 600 miles. So after doing some research I decided to get an old BMW R1150 GS. It's affordable, has a good reputation and can be restricted. So that's what I did. Oh, yeah. Getting an A2 motorcycle license here was expensive and it was a pain. Everything is in Spanish, which is a language that I don't speak well. But I had the money, I had the time and I had the determination. So I've got the A2 license and in less than a year I can exchange it for an A license. The GS is kind of a strange beast compared to what I'm used to. However after putting some kilometers on it and tweaking it to my satisfaction (basic mechanical work, premium shocks, premium seats, GPS) it's not a bad bike for just riding. It handles better than it has a right to on the road. My biggest complaint is that it sits high and it's a little tough to touch the ground at stops. But I've found that the bike grows on one after a while. But of course she's been sitting in the garage with a battery maintainer attached for about a month and a half now. Funny thing is that we've had crap weather for about the same amount of time. I wonder if the fact that there's a lot less road traffic has had some sort of effect on the weather. Anyhow, here's a pic of my Beemer. I generally leave the panniers off when I'm just out riding.

I've been meaning to strip the rear end off this bike since i bought it in 2010 but only now getting around to it. No play at all in the linkage but not long after i bought the bike i noticed the rear end creaking when getting on and off the bike then it stopped and i forgot about it. As i suspected one of the bearings is seized along with the bolt and another badly corroded bearing. As usual its the most difficult bolt to get at that has seized. Had to strip the swing arm off to get at it and the centre stand has to come off to take the bolt out if it hadn't seized which is a bit of a problem as that's whats holding the bike up but since i'm cutting the bolt it can stay on for now First job is to drill the head off the bolt luckily i had some long cobalt drill bits i bought for a different job a few years ago and long they need to be I started with a small bit and worked my way up to 10mm as that is what diameter the bolt is Didn't take long and the head is off, i had to put a maul grip on the thread the other end to stop the bolt from turning once the head came off so i could drill a bit deeper on the bolt shaft Next was to cut the thread off this would have been a real problem if it wasn't for this little air powered reciprocating saw fitted with a cut down cobalt hacksaw blade, i bought it years ago to cut the swing arm spindle off a scrap XR400 i bought for spares. It took a while but it went through OK Once all cut i used a tyre lever to pry the linkage out And shes out I was quite surprised how good the condition of the rest of the bolts were for a 26 year old bike So the bike was left like this while waiting for parts to arrive

Decided to lake the back end off the bike to tidy it up looking quite rusty under there. When taking the indicators off i had to undo a load of insulation tape around the wires. When investigating why the tape was on there i found for some bizarre reason a previous owner had cut the wires off the indicators and soldered them onto the the opposite one using orange cable to extend them and couldn't even get that right, they had the live going to earth the reason the fuse didn't blow is because the brackets the indicators bolt onto are rubber mounted and are isolated from the frame anyhow i swapped them back the way they were supposed to be minus all the slack that was there I also made this exhaust deflector plate, i got the scott oiler touring kit and noticed when taking things apart it was being melted by the hot exhaust gasses you can see the bow in the number plate where it was catching the exhaust gasses and deflecting them behind the number plate getting everything hot there. This wouldn't happen with the standard exhaust but the venom exhaust is a lot shorter than the standard one This is the back end painted up its not in the best condition hopefully this will preserve it until i strip the whole bike and get it all done properly That was my bank holiday and last weeks evenings taken care of next week is the front end, oil and filter change and i'm going to flush the cooling system no time to get bored here ?

The rest of the suspension parts were waiting for me when i got home from work last Wednesday thought i'd get it all together that night but forgot i need a new chain slider for the swing arm ordered a genuine one from rugged roads so waiting for that before i put the swing arm on The new bolt i got to replace the one i cut off is a bit awkward to put in as you need to take off the centre stand and to get that off you need to take off the exhaust but i managed to do it by removing the one sleeve on the side the bolt goes in from. Which was a pain to put back in with the springs attached but really didn't want to take the exhaust off or the centre stand springs While waiting for the parts to arrive i made this bracket to stiffen up the back end as it bounces about with the weight of the scottoiler touring reservoir on there. The threaded holes were already in the frame not sure what they were for but were perfect to mount this

The bearing and seal insertion tool i made worked great Bearings pushed in equally each side And now for the seal Everything has now been painted waiting for it to dry and once the collars and bolt arrive from Honda i can reassemble everything

So to kill some more time i made a tool to press the new bearings and seal back in when they arrive,made from a large bolt. I screwed the nut half way up the bolt and welded in place then cut the head off the bolt, I should have taken the photo before i started All finished the right side is to push the bearing in, the step in the larger diameter is to make sure the bearing is pushed in the correct depth to allow the space for the seal to fit, the left side is to push the seal in flush after the bearing, well that's the theory anyway lol