Scram Afrika with Fuel Bespoke Motorcycles

Karles from Fuel Bespoke Motorcycles send a clip around of their planned Scram Africa trip. They did a check of the route and made video clip:

Untitled from Fuel Bespoke Motorcycles on Vimeo.

It's a trip through Marocco on clasic bikes. Adventure + classic bikes, what more can you want? I sure as hell wish I could join them, but I really can't.

If you have a scrambler and the means, there is just no way you can miss this!!!

BMW scrambler part II

Janus' BMW Scrambler

Janus just finished his BMW Scrambler project and wanted some photo's. Conditions were far from ideal, but you'll get a good impression of his bike.

I like it!

Finally: We started on the SR500

We found some time to start on the SR500, finally. When we bought it, the guy told us that the woner before him had reconditioned the engine, but it was laying smoke screens that would make the US army jealous, so we knew it either wasn't reconditioned, or we should not be happy that it was....

So the first priority: Get the engine out and find out what's wrong. Here we go!

It's all in pretty bad shape, but hey, we payed for a bike in bad shape.

It's been collecting more than just dust...

Finally, the engine is out, now let's see what the insides look like

They don't look good. The inlet part of the camshaft is 'square', we need to replace the shaft.

It looks like something has gone through the engine. Maybe one of the valves broke? They look new and it might be the reason why the engine was reconditioned.

The exhaust bolt thread isn't looking pretty either

What to say about this? There seem to be honing traces in the cylinder, but they are only visible on the photo, I did not see them in real life... The cylinder looks far more scratched then it is, but I'm pretty sure this is the reason for the extreme oil consumption.

As you can see: It's not in a great shape. We don't mind about the rolling part, anything that's not good on it was planned to be thrown away anyway, we do mind about the engine. I think the oil burning is caused by honing/drilling out the cylinder without replacing the piston. We'll have to measure it and see. The very least we're looking at is honing the cylinder again and finding a new piston and camshaft.

A bit weird but cool

I don't like reblogging, but I have to make an exception for this.

Found it on Endless Wrench and it's just too cool not to share. The text says:

Lot´s of pics but I couldn´t decide which pic was best or worst...
XT 500 frame and engine. XS 650 swing arm. Modified Hercules Tank and 18" rims.
New rear frame and much other selfmade goodies!!!

High on the wish list

Nope, not going to sell the BMW and not going to sell the CB, so this will remain day dreaming: Photo's like this one really make me want to build a scrambler.

via motor-forum

Yes please!

If only I had the money...

Ton's Kawa/Amsterdam trip: KZ 750 street tracker

Last night I took the BMW to go to Amsterdam for some photo's. In Amsterdam I met up with Michal (fotoduda), a friend of his (he promised she would have long legs and believe me, they were long!) and Ton. Ton has build a very, very nice Kawa you might have seen on this site before. He'll readily admit that it is a bit of a Wrenchmonkeys copy, but that doesn't make the bike any less beautiful. Even though we got kicked out of the building we were taking the photo's in after 20 minutes already, we still had a great time. Hopefully we'll do this again soon with more bikes!

First internatianal chopperstyle bling bling (but not so much....) bike show

It was a HUGHE success in my eyes. Chopperstyle is a closed Dutch low budget bike builders forum and we had a forum meeting yesterday. Most people I had already seen a few times before, but it was great too see some more faces behind the nicknames. And it was even better to see their creations in real live. Some creations made you wonder if the Dutch weed smoking laws might be a bit too soft ;). In short: People were great, bikes were great. Stayed a hell of a lot longer than I had planned to.

Anyway, here are some photo's. I will post some more in the coming days, but I'll have to spread it out over the comming days/weeks a bit or my photobucket account will max out again way before the end of the month.

The day ended with a spectacular thunderstorm:

More later.

Last pictures of the caferacerday in Achterveld.

This is it. For the full album: click here.