Some Irving Vincent Action...

SSSssssssssEXY!

Some damm fine Norton Action...

Moto Guzzi V7 Sport...

From the "Fave Favorites" list. Damm that's nice!

Too good not to post!

Wow!  Speaks for itself!  I'm out of town and just checking in and this is too good to pass up. 


Ola,again from Montreal 
I thought you might get a kick out of an old winter project of mine;A buddy dropped off an XL250 (that I quickly took the motor out of & gave away the rest). I happened to have an extra frame from a Z50 hanging around. The motor has a performance cam (because you can't go wrong with too much power, most of the time). I used triple trees from a Yamaha TT500 that  were gathering dust in my,tiny, workshop ( the head pipe came from the TT too. Hey, it fit right on !).. The rear sprocket was a McGyver 'special'. Footpegs are the old buddy pegs from my CBR900RR.Seat is the passenger saddle from the 900 too.Fuel cell is a modded propane cylinder ( don't try this at home kids !).I think the Supertrapp is off of the XL250 if memory serves.
Performance is....terrifying. Owing to the lack of suspension ( the forks are a joke ), you cannot hold the throttle open. Though when you try, the front wheel comes up...in EVERY gear! Great fun because it looks like a regular Z50 from the front (except for the TT500 clamps & bars) so folks don't appreciate what's about to catch & pass them.

Simple and spectacular!!  Thanks Again!!

Not a typo... A KLR 650 Cafe Racer...

There's a sentence I never thought I'd write... but you know it's not bad.

Here's one more.  It's all l've got

Excellent RZ/RD350 YPVS Conversion

LOTS of tasty upgrades on this beauty..

Ducati Time!

Update: Another in a long line of Virago Cafe Pics..

Lots of updates in the comments section. Be sure to check em out.

From the comments. You guys rock! Thanks for the link to the builder / owner with lots more info!

http://johnryland.posterous.com/reciprocity-xv750-under-the-lights

I stumbled across this on a message board. Not sure who's logo that is on the photo. Great Stuff though

1973 900 Z1. An Astounding Restoration!

I'm lifting this post straight out of The ADV rider thread I saw it in.  Too good to let it pass.  Thanks 1upand4down.


In 1973 my dad bought this 900 Z1 new. I was 16 years old and he would let
me ride it. He had other Kaw's he would let me ride like a 69 and 71 500 H1's.
But there was nothing like the Super four 900. He sold the Z1 in 1975 to a friend of mine brother-in-law and he sold to his son's friend a few years later.
I bought the Z1 back in 2005 and did a complete restro. Took about 3 years to
complete but was worth every minute and dollar. My dad got to ride it some that year and he really enjoyed it. He's 79 now and I'm not sure if he
will get to ride it any more but maybe. It's suppose to be in the next issue of Moto Retro Illustrated magazine. 

Merry Christmas to Everyone!!! ... in all the languages I could find :)

AFRIKAANS	geseënde Kersfees
ALBANIAN	gëzuar Krishtlindja
ALSATIAN	gleckika Wïanachta
ARABIC	ميلاد مجيد (miilaad majiid)
ARMENIAN	Shnorhavor Surb tsnund
AZERI	Noel bayraminiz mubarak
BASQUE	Eguberri on
BELARUSIAN	З Божым нараджэннем (Z Bozym naradzenniem)
BENGALI	subho baradin
BOSNIAN	sretan Božić
BRETON	Nedeleg laouen
BULGARIAN	весела коледа (vesela koleda)
BURMESE	Christmas nay hma mue pyaw pa
CATALAN	bon Nadal
CHEROKEE	ulihelisdi danisdayohihvi
CHINESE	圣诞快乐 (shèng dàn kuài lè)
CORNISH	Nadelek lowen
CORSICAN	bon Natale
CROATIAN	sretan Božić
CZECH	veselé Vánoce
DANISH	glædelig jul
DUTCH	vrolijk Kerstfeest
ENGLISH	merry Christmas
ESPERANTO	gojan Kristnaskon
ESTONIAN	häid jõule
FAROESE	gleðilig jól
FINNISH	hyvää joulua
FRENCH	joyeux Noël
FRISIAN	noflike Krystdagen
FRIULAN	bon nadâl
GALICIAN	bo Nadal
GEORGIAN	Gilotsavt Shobas
GERMAN	frohe Weihnachten / fröhliche Weihnachten
GREEK	kala christougenna / kala xristougenna
HAITIAN CREOLE	jwaye Nowel
HAWAIIAN	mele Kalikimaka
HEBREW	חג מולד שמח (hag molad saméa'h)
HINDI	Krismas ki subhkamna
HUNGARIAN	boldog karácsonyt
ICELANDIC	gleðileg jól
IGBO	annuri Ekeresimesi
ILOCANO	naragsak a paskua
INDONESIAN	selamat Natal
IRISH GAELIC	Nollaig shona
ITALIAN	buon Natale / gioioso Natale
JAVANESE	sugeng Natal
JAPANESE	merii kurisumasu
KABYLIAN	assegass amegass
KINYARWANDA	Noheli nziza
KIRUNDI	Noheli nziza
KOREAN	seun-tan chu-ka-hae-yo
KURDISH	Noela we pîroz be
LAO	souksan van Christmas
LATIN	felix dies Nativitatis
LATVIAN	priecīgus Ziemassvētkus
LIGURIAN	bun Denâ / bun Natâle
LITHUANIAN	su Kalėdomis / linksmų Kalėdų
LOW SAXON	vrolik Kersfees
LUXEMBOURGEOIS	schéi Chrëschtdeeg
MACEDONIAN	среќен Божиќ (srećen Božić)
MALAGASY	tratry ny Krismasy / arahabaina tratry ny Krismasy / arahaba tratry ny Krismasy
MALAY	selamat hari natal
MALAYALAM	Christmas ashamshagal
MALTESE	il-milied it-tajjeb / milied hieni
MANX	Nollick ghennal
MAORI	meri Kirihimete
MONÉGASQUE	bon Natale
NORWEGIAN	god jul
OCCITAN	bon Nadal
PERSIAN	krissmas khojaste / krissmas farkhonde
POLISH	Wesołych Świąt
PORTUGUESE	feliz Natal
ROMANI	baxtalo Krečuno
ROMANIAN	un Crăciun fericit
RUKIGA	Noheiri nungi / webale Noheiri
RUSSIAN	С Рождеством Хрисовым (S Rojdesvom Khristovym)
SAMOAN	ia manuia le Kerisimasi
SARDINIAN	bona pasca’e Nadale (logudorese) / bona paschixedda (campidanese)
SCOTTISH GAELIC	Nollaig chridheil
SERBIAN	Срећан Божић (srecan bozic)
SHONA	krisimas yakanaka
SINDHI	Chrismas joon wadhayoon
SINHALESE	suba nattalak wewa
SLOVAK	vesele vianoce
SLOVENIAN	vesel božič / vesele božične praznike
SOBOTA	dobro dedek
SPANISH	feliz Navidad
SWAHILI	heri la Krismasi
SWEDISH	god jul
TAGALOG	maligayang pasko
TAHITIAN	'ia 'oa'oa e teie Noera
TAMIL	Nathaar thina vaalthukal
THAI	สุขสันต์วันคริสตร์มาส (souksaan wan Christmas)
TURKISH	Noeliniz kutlu olsun
UDMURT	Shuldyr Ymuśton
UKRAINIAN	З Різдвом Христовим Z Rizdvom Khrystovym
VIETNAMESE	Mừng Chúa Giáng Sinh
WALOON ("betchfessîs" spelling)	djoyeus Noyé
WELSH	Nadolig llawen
WEST INDIAN CREOLE	jénwèl
YIDDISH	אַ גוטע ניטל (a gute nitl)

A Friend of Mine Built Himself A Really Fun Little Honda Cafe from Spare Parts.

Nice Job Butch!

Reader Ride! GSX 1100 From Croatia!

Ivan from Croatia writes in:

Hi,
I like to read your blog, it's one of the first things I do each morning. Today I was surprised I
couldn't open it, but later it was accessible. It's great and you have a lot of great pics!
I'm sending you a photo of my work, so that you can see what we are doing through the winter, here
in Croatia.

Thank you Ivan!  Great bike!  I like the all the upgrades. 
We're all good now folks.  Looks like just a google glitch although from what I've read a lot of bloggers got it MUCH worse.

Back to or regularly scheduled programming...

I suppose I need to find ways to backup my entire blog (YEARS worth).  I don't see  way to get all the images I have stored on Picassa backed up in total and in order so I'm going to have to trust to the gods on that one.

It this blog does in fact disappear I WILL RETURN in some capacity (and likely with a slightly altered name) but it will likely be on another blog host like wordpress or tumbler etc.. but for now I'll ride this pony as far as it'll go.

It must be a curse.  I was actually bragging to a friend about the reliability of blogger/google yesterday.  Go figure.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I blame Google. Continuous Update!

Well according to my site meter it started at 5 am and ended this morning when I logged in.  

2nd update:  Apparently I'm one of the lucky ones.  According to this some folks have lost their blogs completely and since they are legitimate businesses they have lost significant revenue for the holidays!  Poor bastards.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=5161eccac29c1be8&fid=5161eccac29c1be8000497502b39ff6e&hl=en



Update:  Well apparently it's not anything major. After doing some searching I've found a few references to this and it's not all that uncommon for google to pull this on people.  LOTS of speculation as to why but nothing concrete.

Here's a link to another fellow who had a similar (but not identical) thing happen.  Damm frustrating and very freaking scary!  Now I get to go change all my passwords everywhere.  Oh Joy!  Thanks a lot google.

http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-account-disabled-temporarily/13775/


To those of you who have checked to see my page missing I don't know what happened  I came in this morning and my G-mail account was disabled and I needed to re-verify all my passwords with a text message verification number.  I'm going to get after google to see what's going on but for now if you get any e-mails form my address

superduckz@gmail.com

please let me now if it was malicious.  I haven't sent anything out to anyone since yesterday evening (12-22)

Trail 90 Wanderlust! What A Cool Picture.

Adventure riding on a trail 90. Loaded up and rolling through the hills. What a great day this must have been. From over on ADV Rider.

The Bonhams 1938 Brough Superior 982cc SS100

Thought I'd pass along a recent e-mail I received to those of you who might be curious about the state of the high end vintage motorcycle market (and those of you who don't follow the Vintegent :-) ).  I was fortunate enough to get on the Bonhams Auction House mailing list  recently and just received this message (below) that touches on that very subject. In a nutshell business appears to be booming.  It looks like investors are putting their money into more "tangible" works of art these days and the high end automotive world is getting it's share. 

They were also kind enough to send me a beautiful and extremely high resolution jpeg of a 1938 Brough Superior SS100.   Enjoy!  And Thank you to Katherine Boyle for the information and photo:

Bonhams Motorcycle Department produced truly spectacular results for 2010 with a total of £5.6 ($8.7) million and selling in excess of 1200 machines to achieve this result, all with an unprecedented and industry leading percentage sold of 87% by lot and value.

As an illustration of how solid the market is for vintage motorcycles in these financially uncertain times, there were six new entries in to the Department top 20 results, the most since the division was founded with the exception of 2008, when two World records were set in consecutive months.

Brough Superior made up half of these new additions with a record for a 680 OHV being produced at our Oxford sale room in June, selling for £98,300, closely followed by another example at the Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show in October, which went for £93,900. The best result of the year came, unsurprisingly, from the post-vintage 1938 Brough Superior SS100 which was offered at the April Stafford sale, and eventually sold for £157,700. The combined total for Broughs sold in 2010 was £393,200.

Another very special marque always keenly sought by the enthusiast and collector is the Vincent-HRD. And all 19 examples offered in 2010 sold for a total of £498,200.

In stark contrast to these ‘Rolls-Royce of Motorcycles’ and ‘superbikes of the 50s’, other superb results for year included the two Fath-URS engined machines. The ex-Helmut Fath, Horst Owesle, 1968 and 1971 World Championship-winning 1966 URS 498cc Racing Sidecar Outfit produced the second best result of the year when it sold for £102,700, and the ex-John Blanchard, Tony Jefferies, works 1967 Seeley-URS 500cc Racing Motorcycle raised £76,300.

The final high flyer of the year was one of the most historically significant motorcycles that has ever been offered by Bonhams, the first series production machine to be referred to as a ‘motorcycle’ (motorrad in German), the c.1894 Hildebrand & Wolfmüller, which, after a furious bidding battle, eventually went for £86,200, well in excess of £40,000-60,000 estimate. Not content with offering just one of these historically important motorcycles, the Department will be offering a second H&W, within the space of 12 months, at its inaugural Las Vegas sale on January 6th 2011.

This is the first in another superb line up of auctions for next year, with a huge variety of exciting and important machines already consigned for these future dates, ensuring 2011 will build on this year’s successes.

(Please find attached a) high resolution jpeg of a georgous Brough Superior.

thank you to the folks at Bhonams.

The TAFFYMOTO built "Black Pearl" CRF450R Supermoto.

I don't post a lot of Supermoto's on here. That's not a prejudice on my par cause I absolutely love them and am in the process of converting my DR650 over. But this bike is so freaking nice that I can't pass it by. It fairly legendary in the SM world. It's know as the "Black Pearl". If you're interested in more about the bike there's a good thread on it over on Supermotojunkie.com  This is an insanely nice build.

Here's the build thread if you're interested:

The Black Pearl

mtr tuned head
j+s high comp piston
stage three hotcam
boysen waterpump kit
stm slipper clutch
hinson billet clutch casing
powdercoated rocker cover (gloss black)
samco hoses (urban cammo)
five 10 engine plugs (black)
compflow oil filter and billet cover (black)
hammerhead designs rear brake lever (black)
hammerhead designs gear lever (black)
hammerhead designs case saver (black)
k+n filter setup with samco hose (urban cammo)
powdercoated kickstart (satin black)
troy corser oversize race radiators (gold)


powdercoated mainframe (satin black)
powdercoated swingarm (satin black)
powdercoated engine mounts (satin black)
tag triple clamps incorporating honda steering damper (black)
tag oversize handlebars (gold)
protaper bar pad
joker tornado 2 billet throttle (black)
fly racing billet engine kill switch (black)
cycra crm probend handguards/black low profile sheilds
bar mounted hotstart removed and replaced with carb pull switch
ohlins ttx rear shock
ohlins replica forks/revalved re-sprung


beringer bro 10 master cylinder (black)
beringer aerotec six pot calliper (black)
beringer cast front disk (black)
beringer clutch lever (black)


marchesini 17" forged aluminium supermoto wheels (black)
goldspeed ultra tyres
devil sprinter exhaust with dual carbon fibre cans and titanium header pipes


pro carbon lower fork guards
pro carbon fuel cap/gold vent cap
pro carbon fuel tank cover
pro carbon chain guide
pro carbon rear disk guard
lightspeed carbon fibre engine guards
lightspeed carbon fibre ignition cover
lightspeed carbon fibre frame guards
lightspeed carbon fibre sump guard
lightspeed carbon fibre front sprocket cover
sc racing carbon fibre rear shock guard


prairie city supermoto chain stay
t m designs slide+glide chain runner
gold front and rear axle sliders and crash bobbins
ufo footpeg sliders
talon sprockets
did chain
sdg step seat
one off custom graphics

Reader ride! Another Cafe BMW from Jay.

I really like the scrapes on the knee pucks AND especially the valve cover. Nice job! You've been putting her to work!

Reader Ride. Jay Sends In Another Fantastic Custom BMW .... This One's A Scrambler!

Damm That Is Sweet!  And stay tuned for another nice Cafe...

Built by Gene and Ron Atherton.

It is a 83 Honda VT500 Ascot. It was our ice bike, before that Gene tried to dirt track it but it didn't work out. We built it during the winter of 09. Gets road most ever day in the summer.

Thanks
Ron

UPDATE: A few more. Reader Ride. Outstanding BMW Cafe Racer.

Jay sends in this excellent R100S

Your site is my morning coffee. Here is one of the few café I built.
 

Updates: An odd bike. A Swedish Hedlund V-twin, Cafe Racer.

 For those of you looking for more info on this engine, here's a link to the "Hedlund Story"
And From the comments. Flickr link to more pics.  Thanks Jezza.

I really don't know a lot about these bikes/engines so anything the readers can help out with will be much appreciated,

Holy Shh.. A well attended to Vincent.

Just stumbled acoss this and had to post it. From Jehu on ADV Rider..

Vintage Art on Wheels by BMW

I'mw not a "BMW-o-phile" but this definitely speaks to me as they say...

Ducati Dirtbike Video... OUCH!

The former owner commentd on this beauty from an earlier post HERE and included this somewhat painful video. Great Stuff!


Death Valley on a Ducati from Joe Finn on Vimeo.

Ha! Don't drink and post.. Triu... err Norton Tracker!

Stunner! From over on ADV Rider.

Reader Ride. Cool Ducati and Cool Story.

It's like the bike found the right buyer at just the right time!  sometime you find a bike and sometimes a bike finds you.
Brian Writes in:

Howdy,
First off I wanted to say I love your site. The bike porn you feature
always gives me inspiration. So much in fact that I finally get to
submit my ride and story!
I looked for a vintage Ducati for years here locally in Seattle. Last
year one finally turned up, a 75 860 GT. The price was REALLY right and
local so I immediately wrote the guy thinking either the bike was gone
or something as it was simply too good to be true. The ad stated a box
of parts and all documentation going back to the 70s came with it. I
went out to see it, and indeed it was all true. Bought it right then and
there. Took it home and started doing some research. It was cafed pretty
early on in it's life. I saw in a DIOC newsletter index the story of a
cafed 860, turned to the page, and saw my bike! Looking exactly as it
looked then, except for a few new additions.
I am actually taking it back to stock now but thought it would be a neat
story to post up on your site. How it got from California to Seattle is
a mystery. Fantastic bike to ride and sounds like a terror with the
authentic Conti pipes!
Cheers,
Bryan
 
Outstanding!  Thanks Bryan!

Yo! it's Vinny! A few Vincents I've Come Across From Over The Years.

Vincent!

Wanderlust from Down Under.

Thanks to Davorallyfan on the ADV Board.

Ex Barry sheen Racer 1980 Yamaha Yamaha TZ 500 on E-bay. If I had $60,000 I'd buy this bike.

Ex Barry Sheen Racebike now on E-bay.  And I believe the subject of the very first post on this very blog.