Strange times...

Very very strange and scary times right now, after the quake 2 weeks ago (which scared the living shit out of me) I went back home to Sweden to take a bit of 'holiday', feels wrong to be here but equally wrong to stay in Japan. Been trying to keep my mind busy by spending some time in the basement at Olas place, working on our bikes. The CB has taken a rather different turn after we tried to put a Triumph Thruxton tank on it, just to have a laugh actually, which we then really liked the look of. But only after I spent a few days sanding down and painting the Dunstall tank we had from the beginning... to then put it on the shelf... together with the rubbish seat we had made by a guy that completely ignored my foam-mockup seat...

This is how it looked before, kind of a 'broken' feeling where the tank meets the seat. That's the rubbish seat that cost us 350 euro to have made...

The Beemer is coming along nicely aswell, we've shortened the seat and mounted the rear light and stuff and also cut and mounted the carburetor funnels. Tires are ordered and we've decided to go for a dirtbike-scrambler look. Took it for a testride last week, bloody cold but great fun!

It's so weird being here and follow the news about the Fukushima plant and hearing about the devastation along the north-east cost of Japan, I wonder how it will feel to go back to Tokyo. I wonder if I still have a job after being away so long...

Arthur Fulmer AF50

Went for the this years first little ride today and picked up my new helmet from Hellmart. Masaki-san made a great job padding up the inside for a slightly tighter fit, thanks Masaki-san! My Ducati was acting up a little bit due to just riding in the city with lots of stop and go's, but all in all a nice ride. Tomorrow is supposed to be around 18º celsius and sunny, but I'm sure it's nice with the snow back in Sweden as well...

Olas Thruxton...

I spent all day with Photoshop at work today, but nope, that was not enough according to Ola, so I was ordered to make a pic showing how his bike could look with his new Kellerman blinkers mounted. And it had to be done tonight. He's a hard boss. And not very fair. 

So I did a little bit more than he asked for (japanese style you know...), and now he has to get new mufflers and paint his rims and move to Brooklyn. Ha!

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.