Honda Tools

"When you buy any year model CRF450R, CRF250R, CRF150R, CRF150RB; CRF250X, CRF450X, TRX700XX, TRX450ER, TRX400EX or TRX250EX, Honda will throw in a high-quality black tool box kit valued at $799. The kit includes a nine-drawer tool box, T-Bar set and rack, aluminium ramp*, tie wire pliers, tyre levers, double sided exhaust bung and an Allen key set."

Well, that fills you full of confidence, doesn't it?

Tune in next month, when Triumph are giving away free drip trays and Suzuki give you a personality.

Turd Polishing - The Yamaha SR500

Released to the world in 1978, The Yamaha SR500 was a road-going version of the actually popular XT and TT500 models. It remained on sale for only a few years in the west before being pulled. This was hardly a successful showing, but fans will be quick to point out that the retro-themed SR remained on sale for 30 years in Japan. It's also worthwhile noting that this is the same country that has a strong second-hand underpants vending machine industry and has brothels set up like subway cars where you cram in amongst hundreds of other "commuters" and grope working girls.

The bike itself is straightforward - it's a 500 or 400cc single with a single overhead cam, one carb, dry sump, oil in frame, air-cooled and with simple suspension and with mag wheels uglier than Sarah Jessica-Parker's vagina. It is slow, doesn't stop and doesn't handle. Rather than view them as a pretty depressingly boring, mediocre bike on their own, many misguided souls seize upon these beaten-up rusted shitheaps and vainly try to polish a turd.

Items get bought and hoarded by the new owners, and the list of aftermarket crap that can be bolted onto these bikes would make a Harley owner crap his chaps. There are steering dampers, dozens of tank shapes, seats, mufflers, mudguards, twin-spark heads, smaller mags, headlights, bikini and full fairings, steering dampers, fork braces, heavier flywheels - the list is inexhaustible. My personal favourite modifications are those tarted up as British bikes, complete with BSA, Norton or Ariel stickers; these have the same effect as putting a "Lada" badge on a Mitsubishi.

And after a dizzying amount time and money spent on all that crap - usually bolt-on parts that gets pitched as "Custom" - an amazingly transformed bike gets wheeled out of the garage.
But it seems that in the sourcing and applying of these parts, the men get separated from the boys. Mostly people just try and tart the thing into something it's not, or something it shouldn't be.

Some inner-city graphic artist cockheads spend $10k to build a bike that looks like an old crap bit of British iron that you could purchase for less. Others who like to actually ride their bike would be quick to put on new shocks and soup-up the engine, but it'll still feel like a badly jetted DRZ400 with seized steering head bearings. Others break out the auto-sol and try to recapture the lost beauty of what was a dog-ugly bike to begin with.

But after sinking lots of money and lots of time and effort into the SR all of the guys above are going to end up with something that has bugger-all resale value and is still a shit Japanese bike in wolf’s clothing. It'll be slower and lack the marquee of a Thruxton, the handling of a Ducati sport and the practicality of a Kawasaki W650.

But I suppose one of the primary goals of building up a customised SR is to have something different, a goal which the owners usually manage to achieve. Whether it’s the café racer, tuned to perfection, a street tracker that turns on a dime or the untouched simplicity of a bog-stocker - In each of their own way, they are all truly crap.

Deus' Pushbikes

Shit pushbikes for faggots who can't afford shit motorbikes.

Norton is back! No... wait... Norton is back!

When pictures of the new Norton were released a few years ago I have to confess I got a little hard. It was a bloody good looking design - a modern interpretation of a classic, to coin a marketing phrase. It wasn’t a Triumph-style revamp of a shitty old design with crap suspension and a sluggish engine. The Norton had a solid eight-valve powerplant that looked set to honk along at a decent rate of knots, and had Ohlins front and back; Hell, this thing looked like it was actually set up to go around corners! Cosmetically it was in proportion and stylistically a logical step from the old 850. Beautiful.

I’d even heard that several dealerships in Australia had been approached about stocking the brand. All set for action... until Norton went broke. Again. All that money pumped into R&D and they didn't factor in it passing Euro 3 emission restrictions. What a clever bunch of buggers. Upon hearing the news, bike fans shrugged their shoulders and went off to get excited about clean-burning two-strokes, a cheap Chinese Z1 copy or whatever other rumour was due to pop up next in the cycle.

Regardless, people shouldn't have gotten excited about the new Norton in the first place. The company, well, the name really, was handed around for a number of years since it fell flat on its face with the rest of Britain in the 80s. At one point there was a gigantic V twin in the works, then a T-shirt company and now this.

But, news just in - Norton is back! Again. And on track to release a rotary-powered sportsbike this year. Again. And the gorgeous looking Commando is only two years away! Again. The new owner, Stuart Garner, states that this "isn't optimistic". I wonder if he does parties as well as hilarious press releases. No matter what he says, I have a sneaking suspicion that the chance of this happening is somewhere between slim and fuck all.

I'll grant him this though - he does sound pretty determined. He's purchased the trademark in most countries in the world, has a clear plan of what he is hoping to do, with which power-plant and in what time frame - and all with the money to back it up. The Commando won't be going head to head with the new Triumphs - it'll be a marquee bike. With engines, wheels and bits and pieces sourced from all over England. It's going to happen, Stuart says.

So I'll have to save up my cash and get ready for 2010 when Mr Garner assures us his new reliable Norton will be available at a reasonable price, with spare parts and a good dealer network to support it. It'll look great next to the clean-burning two-stroke and my robotic triple-titted girlfriend.

For those interested, for whatever reason, in checking out the website it can be viewed at: http://nortonmotorcycles.com/news/view.php?id=17

Rust is the New Black

There's nothing wrong with the whole "Kustom Kulture" scene. Besides the bad spelling, that is. The movement produces some fabulously understated builds, made out of genuine hand and rare parts that are sanded, ground and hammered to fit. They are often matte black or left raw and they wear oil grease and bloodstains upon their sidecovers as badges of honour, rather than something to be wiped off. I like this - the chopper scene is a cruel parody of it's former self and produces the same old shit day in day out, but I can see this Custom Culture (Couldn't help it) scene heading down the same path.

Now I've always thought there's something a bit homosexual about riding someone else's custom, someone else's work of art. The whole appeal in this scene is in building it, finding the odd bits and pieces off the net or swap meets and keeping it running despite it's nuances. And it's good to see the people writing in Dice, TCB, and Chopped magazines promoting the rougher side of custom jobs. But something about these doesn't sit right with me.

Its not the bikes themselves. Hell, there's nothing more awesome in my book than an XT550 engine put in a BSA hardtail frame. And it's not the artwork and the imagery that usually accompanies the Kustom Kulture types wherever they go. I can even, at a stretch, deal with the "Coop" tshirts. But...

...It's the owners of these bikes that put me off. Rather than the obese, landscape-company-owning wannabe outlaw club members who lust after choppers, the Dice crowd are usually scrawny, glassed, malnourished inner-city faggots who buy these old rusty shitboxes and pay somebody far less cool, far fatter, and far more skilled to maintain their mismatched pieces of shit until they can rattle their way to the nearest TCB photoshoot and scowl in an graffiti-covered alleyway for half an hour before rattling off home.

The owner will love any opportunity to tell you it has a '37 ford headlight. The muffler was off some old piece of shit that he found. He's never cleaned it. It leaks oil, blows smoke but still purrs like a kitten.

Sounds pretty cool and casual. But wait! The wheels were assembled at a specialist, the engine was given a makeover by a very uncool Scotsman with a beard and a facial tic and it was painted by some Lebanese guy who smells of kebab. The skinny little inner-city bike prick quickly comes out of the whole experience looking more like the aforementioned fat landscaper.

But worse - there's a level of self-awareness here which pushes it quickly into the realms of superior wankerdom.

While rust is the new black (which used to be the new chrome), all you bearded, pot-bellied baby boomers should roll out your rusted old shitbox Triumphs, BSAs and Sunbeams and push them down to their nearest inner city hangout. Find the sickest looking guy in the tightest pants and offer to sell it to him for $10,000. Who knows, you might get lucky.