A work in progress

Nearly two weeks ago the old Monster was lying in the road after just being twatted by a BMW. At the time I thought it was the end of the Ducati. No more will she be singing to the locals in her own unique rattle, clack clack way. The oldest Monster in the land dead, expired an ex Monster.

Thanks to a quick and relatively easy insurance claim and payout within a week, a big thanks to Moto Rapido who had all the parts sent up to the secret workshop with in a couple of days and also a big thanks to my mates who came round and rescued the old Monster and myself.

Apart from a couple of small battle scars, the old Monster is still alive and everything seems to be in one piece still. Project cleans first stage has been completed and it's now the weekend and time to give her a quick road test before Horsham next Friday.



There are a couple of small dents on the tank, easy to spot really.

Tonight I cleaned up the carbon fibre side panels, the chain and T-Cut'd the tank and seat cowl. A quick buff and polish, re-attached the small pile of carbon fibre bits back onto the bike and she is almost ready to roll. It's just a matter of checking the tyre pressures and topping up the oil now.





All back together and waiting for the call from the open road!

I think it is time for a well earned beer and some relaxation!

All good things come to an end....

I just have no idea when this will finish. Will this be like painting the Forth Bridge? Oh no, that can last 25 years now between painting!



Before the clean up operation started. Rusty pipes and dirty bits!

After a bit of thinking today, I've decided to take the option of making the Monster look clean, but still keep some of the 18 year old character. Or in other words, get rid of the rust and other brown stuff off bits and pieces, but don't go too OTT and make it look brand new, because she isn't!

This afternoon was spent finishing off the spaghetti pipes. Lots of sandpaper used and I also found out the T-cut metal polish is a damn sight better than Autoglym metal polish!! After I finished off the large section of the spaghetti pipes I decided to do the rear cylinder section. Well, that was a stupid mistake!! The rear cylinder pipe is a pain to get off! My ratchet would not reach, no matter which extensions I used on it! The spanner didn't have enough room to move without having to strip the side covers, air box and fuel tank off! So, after getting the fuel tank, side covers and unplug the brake light sensor, I could final get about an inch of movement on the spanner!

Bruised knuckles later, and the pipe fell to the floor with a satisfying clang! God it looked awful. I thought the front down pipe was horrible, the rear was covered in rust. Luckily it is only small, and after a couple of hours of sanding and polishing, the pipe was back to a rather nice champagne colour, which I've found out now is actually the proper colour the pipes should be, not silver!! (opps)



Getting there slowly



Pipework put back together.







And finally all back on the old beast!

The only problem I have now found is that the list for the 'Winter' project is getting longer. Wheels need powder coating (or polishing), rear shock needs powder coating, replace brake reservoir, and paint or polish the footrest hangers.... WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Yes ok, it is childish, but noisy fun!

Why not do it. It's fun, it keeps the neighbours awake and if you are lucky, you may get an ASBO as well!

If I could edit the clutch out, well just hide the pictures and the dry clutch noise, I could be listening to a very sick American V8.....

I've started so I'll have to finish

It's Monster time......



As summer is now here, well it will probably be over by the time I finish typing this, in my usual sanity I have decided to strip down the M900! Good plan as the weather has turned out superb, I have two bike shows to go to, maybe three if I can get motivated for the Ace Cafe Italian day!

At least the cleaning keeps me occupied! Phase one has been started. As the insurance runs out this weekend on the old Monster, I've hidden her away in her secret West London workshop for some essential cleaning and TLC. Fine, she will not win any best in show awards, apart from probably a Ducati Rat Bike award maybe, but I would like to have semi decent looking bike, even if she has been in two accidents in the last month!

So, back to phase one. 18 years of dirt, crap and oil burnt onto the downpipes. May as well start with something easy. After undoing the front clamp nuts with relative ease, the rear bolt was a pain! 18 years of road salt, cooked on oil and chain lube, probably some petrol and more oil had taken its toll on the poor allen bolt. It was seized fast and the allen head had rounded off, no doubt during last years engine rebuild, but the garage decided to ignore that bolt (as well as the two on the suspension brace, another story all together!).

After some jiggery pokery, the full exhaust system was off, but still with a clamp in place. A couple of lunch hours used up a couple of tubes of Autosol, lots of cloths and some wet & dry sandpaper. From a crusty, rusty brown mess a little glimmer of stainless steel shine was beginning to shine through.





Another day of polishing should get the exhaust nice and shiny again. Then I'll find another cleaning project to keep me occupied.

Back, and I promise to keep this upto date a bit more.... Honest

I'll forgot the promise in the title, I usually do!

What is on my mind today, well not much really. A lot has happened since my last musing on this 'ere blog thing. My Monster blew up on the A30, my dad quit his job and started annoying me more at work. He then decided to go on a big spend up, upset most of the family, get diagnosed with cancer and pass away one day after his 76th birthday.

I think that covers the shortened version of the last few months of excitment in my little world.

Back to the present. Yes I did put up there my dad passed away, and no it wasn't really a shock. More of a shock was the fact he got diagnosed with cancer, but after seeing the way the disease took hold of him, I was glad he passed away peaceful and not in (too much) pain. If he had the strength to battle on, I don't think it would have been fair on him or my mum or the rest of the family. After the sorting out of the funeral and cremation, that was the end of the chapter. Fair well dad, I miss you loads and everytime I think of a stupid idea, you pop into my head!

So back at work. Not really a lot of change. Gibraltar is still ordering stuff, we are still shipping it out there. This global recession has hit us, but we are keeping our heads above the water, just!

And finally, my dear old Monster. It has been about 14 months since two of the four rear cylinder head studs snapped and the bike shop has had the bike since September. With cock ups like "Ducati haven't sent the parts", "we received a box of 600cc Monster parts", "I have two right hand side gasket sets and no left ones"... It has just been a complete nightmare trying to get the old beast back on the road. Fingers crossed she will be back before the summer finishes. At least I still have the little 5er to try and keep me sane.

Well, as Zebedee would say... Boing...........

2008, an interesting year

2008 is nearly over. Lots of things have happened this year in the world of Loon, but mainly towards the end.

The beginning was the usual mix of non exciting stuff, work, drinking, MNIPN, TNIPN and alike. Some high points and some very low points. Good friends and good times outweighed the bad points, which is the best way.

From September everything started falling apart. First of all the Alfa GTV died in a pool of steam and decided to leak all of it's electricity into the atmosphere. Then Her Holyness decided to eat her clutch slave cylinder, and (as of now) she is sitting in my garage awaiting the arrival of the new year and the new workshop. Which brings me nicely to work (that's the new workshop).

November 6th 2008, thats a date to remember for the Gibraltar export trade. What was looking like a quiet day in the office, one trailer outside, puppy running around the office. Then Customs & Revenue appeared, stripped the office of all the computers and the company of the General Manager.. Two days later, I was confirmed as the new General Manager. Now at the end of December, I have a company van, no fuel bills, a full warehouse, a large Christmas bonus and awaiting the confirmation for having the office redecorated and refurbished!

I also have been looking after a mad 2 year old cocker spaniel by the name of Sadie. God she is mad!! Loveable and well behaved (90% of the time). She has just left today, after I felt guilty about keeping her in a two bedroom flat, a long way from a garden that she has been used to for the past 18 months.

After nearly four years of waiting..... A week after getting my new job, the phone call came;

"Hi, this is the Appalause Store here, I see you have been on the waiting list for Top Gear for a while now, and we would like to offer you some tickets for the next filming."

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! So after picking myself off of the floor, and a phone call to Bella (I usually keep my promises), we went off to the secret studio of Top Gear (Dunsfold Aerodrome, next door to Cranleigh Freight Services). A great four hours spent with Clarkson, Capt Slow and Hamster! God Hammond is tiny. And after seeing the filming from the stuido, and being glued to the TV on the Sunday following, did I see myself.... NO! But I saw Bella! Happy Loon!

Not forgetting Madness! What a concert. Malc and myself disappeared off on an adventure to the O2 to rekindle my Christmas parties of the late 90's of Baggy Trousers and One Step Beyond. Apart from becoming (forever) known as "Pizza Crack Man", a full two hours of dancing and enjoyment, as well as a few beers and lots of Doc Martyns! I'm still listening to Madness on full blast (+12 on my NAD amp) as well as the Stereo MCs (support act... excellent!!). BOUNCE BOUNCE!!!

As for Christmas, well it's been quiet and enjoyable (mainly because I have been taking Sadie for walks to get out of the way for most of the day!). My sister made Sadie ill (well I'm blaming her) and I spent last night sitting up with the poorly puppy... Poor puppy. I think she got drunk (Sadie not my sister).

So to finish, I've enjoyed this year. Good on Malc for finally settling down (a few times), hopefully some good news for puppy when she finds a loving caring home with a big garden to bury all her evidence of evilness in, and to Bella, I miss you lots..

To everyone out in Blog land, I hope you have had a good festive season and happy new year.

Three weeks on...

Three weeks ago yesterday I was put in charge of a UK company, thanks to Customs & Revenue and the Metropolitan police. Actually, the police didn't do much but stand around and try and occupy the puppy, whilst the three of us left just sat in the warehouse wondering what was happening. Gibraltars quiet little corner of Hayes was raided by 6 Customs officers and after 30 minutes the boss was gone and so were all of the PCs and the fax machine (minus the phone, they left that on the filing cabinet!).

The owner of the company flew to the UK on the Monday, and some sanity was restored. By the end of the first week, my office (well I was now confirmed as the UK General Manager for the firm) was starting to function, albeit in a dysfunctional way. Slowly the systems started to come back online, the old customs entry system installed onto the new PCs, the fax being run from my 6 year old laptop, Windows Bu sines Vista crashing every time someone decided to breathe.. Nothing unusual then!

This week has now passed. I had a half day on Wednesday to be in the audience of Top Gear (four years on the waiting list and I wasn't going to miss that!) and all hell broke loose again....

I'm not happy about what happened at work on Wednesday afternoon, and it's an issue I need to get on top of. The ex boss turned up to collect his things, and as I wasn't in, decided to pick holes in the staff and start throwing files around the office.... Time for drastic measures. He appeared back on Thursday, and I was the only one left in the building. Now I know my job, and I know what to do (90% of the time), and after a quick and polite chat, things were sorted out. Fine, he hasn't been charged with anything by the authorities, but it's not his job anymore, it's MINE!!!

And finally today. Some normality has restored to the office. Friday being the worst day, and things started to fall into place. The accounting is starting to look easier. The trailers are getting loaded nice and easy, the new member of staff doesn't really know what he is doing but that will be addressed as soon as I can have a quiet 20 minutes to myself and work out where to start training him (apart from the usual "this is a phone, this is a pen, this a piece of paper, write what the person on the phone says down on the piece of paper")....

Gone are the days of finishing at 4:30pm for me. I can't remember the last early finish now (apart from Wednesday). Working weekends, working till 7 or 8 at night, but I know once everything is in place, the work will be easy and back to the old routine, but with me in charge!

Time for me to become a tough, unfriendly, company manager.... Time to show the others that the new boss is in the office, and get things done my way!

New toys and some pondering

After the nasty recession has hit, I decided to go out and spend some of my hard earned cash on some new toys. After purchasing some new Wharfedales, NAD L53 and cables, the next purchases on the cards were to upgrade my PC and laptop.

After a visit to Offtek and play.com, I've now received a nice new Maxtor 500g One Touch external hard drive and 2gb of ram for my laptop. Sorted!! All my files have been transferred, leaving a nice (fairly) empty hard drive on my desktop and the new RAM on the laptop has speeded it up a bit, well after deleting some files off of it at least!

As for the pondering side, I'm not too sure. After a night out in the Noble Vine with Gary (or Barry as he has now been christened), some chatting about the finer points of life (broken motorcycles, the film Convoy and Thelma and Louise), I get home and try to cheer up bella. I think it worked, but now I'm sitting here pondering about bella... Hmmmmmmm

I think I just miss her, actually I don't think, I know I miss her!

I think I'll take my pondering head up the steps to bed! Good plan.

Let the work commence

This is it. The nights are drawing in quick! It was dark before 6pm tonight up here in cloud towers! This calls for desperate measures. Well the last week has been rather intersting. The old Alfa trying my patience, until now. I've decided the GTV is going to be sold, and replaced by a nice MX-5 or some description. The Monster, well Her Holyness was nearly next on the list to go, but after an evening of trawling through the internet and finding some places to do the work, it's looking like 'Winter Project 2' is going to be underway this weekend.

First job will be to strip out the clutch pressure plate (start nice and easy) and the clutch slave cylinder. Whilst doing that, I'll be having a glance round to see if there are any other jobs to keep me occupied, well I know one, sorting out the rev counter!

Then during the next three to four months, the work will start. The '93 original Monster will be stripped down, cleaned, fettled, cleaned, lubed and put back together, hopefully pass it's MOT and back on the road intime for the 'summer'. I'll keep the world (well my little world anyway) upto date with the progress of this project, but bearing in mind Project Number 1 is still sitting in my garage and untouched for the past 3 years!

Maybe I could two at once......

Views from my desk....

Not much in the way of excitment today. Two trailers sent off to Gibraltar with lots of goodies on. The heater in my car packed up again, but a swift bit of brute force via a 19mm spanner and the heater switch was all that was required to get it working again! A nice drive home tonight, as I decided to miss out the boring queue of traffic waiting to get across the Bridge of Doom! A dart round the back roads and onto some twisty roads before getting back to the queue at the Bridge of Doom!

Todays view from my desk, well there are a couple today!





A new office manager, with a new hair cut! Better not make her angry!