Tamiya RC166

After going to the Axis exhibition of the handmade bike models I felt ashamed of my own neglected RC166 Tamiya model. It's been standing on my worktable for about 6 months without any progress...

 

It's good fun, but oh so frustrating, some of the parts are hardly possible to grip with tweezers. But I have good inspiration from my coffee cup and figured out how to see what I'm doing when I'm spray painting stuff on the balcony at night, double sided tape kicks ass! I also realized that it helps to do things in the right order, not just start with the bits that looks like the most fun to do, weird.

And btw, while I was working on the model the old Asimo decided to take Freddie Spencers NS500 for a spin and don't you think he managed to crash it and brake the left grip... What a twat. 

Bikenstein 2

Moa-ha ha ha haaaa! Fuck yeah, these bikensteins are fun! I put this one together last night and I think it would kick ass! Low positioned coolers that'd be filled with sand before even rolling out to the starting line of the Dakar, open dry clutch which wouldn't last for 10km in rally conditions and the Ducati 1198cc twin which in this Vyrus 987 trim delivers 211hp! KTM's 450 Rally front and the tail from the Freeride concept, beefy Akrapovic mufflers and good-for-nothing tank volume since I removed the rear tank and also cut the bottom of the front ones. My god, it'd be so useless that you'd better just stuff it in the back of one of those awesome Kamaz trucks if you want it to go anywhere at all, not to mention that it anyway wouldn't fit in any of the classes of the Dakar... But screw all that, it looks killer in my opinion!

Piers, good on you for posting the street tracker bikenstein, it got me going on this one!

Exhibition at Axis Symposia

I missed the name of the maker of these bikes, but he builds them from scratch, scale 1/9, only buying prefabs like screws and cables -everything else is made from zero, even tires! Also, if I understood it right he doesn't start from drawings but rather builds them based on pictures and a careful eyeing of proportions and details. I think that's why some stuff look slightly off, but in my opinion it just adds character, someone said he built 40 models in 20 years (or vice versa?). I took a day off from work to catch the last day of the exhibition but ran in to my boss at the venue... damn, can't a guy have some privacy! The boxes are also nice btw.

No racing at Motegi today...

...but have a look at this Honda-thingie, it's the u3-x, a one-wheel-drive personal transportation... thingie. Honda is making demos at the Honda Collection Hall at Motegi and besides being slow like a snail it's pretty amazing, in the clip it might not be so fantastic, but seeing it in reality is quite weird because it somewhat messes with your mind in terms of what is possible to do. It should just fall over right, but it's standing there balancing itself on one wheel and then someone sits on it and it just goes 'hey, no worries, iv'e got this!'. I'm looking forward to see this tech making it's way into other applications.

Nut-butter, Hellmart and Antiques cafe

Nut-butter

Hellmart

Antiques-cafe

Lately I've been at some very nice and very japanese bike/geek/ottaku shops in Tokyo area. Today I went with Antonio to Hellmart which was really amazing, packed with old helmets which the owner kind of restores or rather refreshes on the inside and then sell to ridiculous prices. I ended up buying one of course... :/

The cool thing is that they are always so welcoming and friendly and curious about where you come from, what you ride etc, it's something that I often miss back in europe, this genuine service-mindedness. The last pics are from Antiques cafe, which was so nice that me and my friend Nicholas ended up spending 3-4 hours talking about bikes and chatting with the owner and eating excellent food  before we finally left for home. Good time.