Oops! That page can’t be found.

It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try one of the links below or a search?

Charlie is new. Charlie is incomplete. Charlie is Charlotte, named after the pirate Charlotte De Berry - she had to be a pirate 'cos her number plate ends 'YAR!'. Well, perhaps there's no exclamation mark. Charlie is to be built from the remains of Claire (the evil), and Charlie, and a couple of other bikes along the way depending on what breaks. The future is good, the future's pirates...

Claire was and is the most evil and potentially the most unlucky of bikes. A J Reg ETZ 251, she was sold to my ex as a spares bike. She'd sat unloved in a garden for 3 years and siezed solid. She gave her to me when she bought an ER-5, for which an ETZ 251 was not terribly good at providing spares. By a careful process of tipping plusgas down the bore and rocking her back and forth she was unsized, the few stolen parts replaced and she took an MOT which she...failed. Then she attempted to dump me off on a corner. She passed the next MOT though, although she sounded 'a bit rough'. The tyres were changed for non-rock-solid-Turkish ones, and I rode her about 12,000 miles. By this time, 3rd which had been absent at the beginning was feared permanently deceased; the engine sounded like it was filled with spanners, and 4th gear had started wandering off. Here's an action shot...

Uh hu. Broken down. This is the way she spent most of her life. Electrics failed. Gearbox failed. Carb fell off. The alternator expired. She went off to have her engine rebuilt. The newly rebuilt engine siezed... on the motorway... in the rain. She was recovered, the engine was rebuilt again. The clutch came off the taper. I put the clutch back on the taper. The bottom of the frame rusted out and the footpegs fell off. Third gear'd wandered off somewhere dark and cool again, so the engine went off to be rebuilt and I got Charlie (in bits) to rebuild one *good* bike from two duff'un's. Anyway, this is what Claire looks like now...

Cherry's the newest addition. Rebecca mog was beginning to show the rather painful signs of being hideously abused (she'd racked up some incredible number of miles as I was bikeless). So, when I was offered a rattly-top-ended, 51k kms, Kanuni ETZ 251 for 45 quid, well... How could I say no? She's been used up until a few months ago, she does sound ratterlier than I thought when I looked at her. But, she's pretty darn close to MOTable. She just needs a new speedo drive, a new fork seal, a new speedo cable and new mirrors. Hopefully then she'll clatter through her MOT and the next few kms until I get a chance to rebuild that top end.

Oops! That page can’t be found.

It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try one of the links below or a search?