550 Four

Ladies and gentelman, I give you.....the Honda CB550. In all it's leaky, ill running, glory. The picture is not great art and the bike has changed slightly since. I've owned lots of different makes and models of bikes. A few years ago I had to sell my nice bike. It was a Yamaha SRX-6. It ran great, was pretty, did all the things I want a bike to do. It had to go to pay some bills, but I would not be bike-less. (Only bike people understand this.) I started deciding on what to buy before the SRX was sold. Someone reccomended the CB550. I considered many things; twin cyclinders, single cylinder, european, asian. I picked up the local sale paper and there it was. 77 CB550. Did'nt run, no title, $200.00. Sweet. A fool and his money etc.... This was the day before someone came to buy the SRX. I called about the Honda and we arranged a meeting just across the Indiana border where the Honda lived in a shipping container behind a construction shed.
The next day someone came by my house and bought the SRX. For the first time in many years, I had no motorcycle. I got in the truck and drove out and looked at the Honda. Long story short, I only was without a bike for a matter of hours. So after sitting for awhile at the folks house I started working on my first inline four cylinder Japanese bike. The carbs were dangling off the side, it had a diamond pattern brown Corbin king and queen seat, no sidecovers, and huge holes in the stock exhaust. I've since sourced a seat, sidecovers, exhaust, and title among other things. Each of those items could be a post in itself. I actually held a valid Maine title and plate for a while. I've never been to Maine, by the way, but I had a bike registered there. I put new shocks, tires, bars, mirror, clutch plates, cable and rebuilt the carbs. So, now the $200.00 bike is a dribbling, ill running, ugly bike that cost me well more than I should have ever paid.
Special thanks to Joe Dirt for helping me get her dialed in so she runs now.
The front wheel looks like someone tried to change the tire with an eight pound sledgehammer.
It provides a very nice shaking sensation at anything over about 5mph. I replaced all the top end gaskets to get rid of the oil spray that was hosing down my right knee. Now whenever I park it leaves an eight inch puddle of oil inder it. Very classy. The centerstand rubs the chain as a result of the aftermarket exhaust. The stock pipes had a stop to keep the stand from swinging up too far. Now that that pesky stop is out of the way my bike is trying to saw itself in half.
All of this doesnt really bother me, though. The little thing is quite endearing and with only 8,000 miles there's not much wear on the mechanicals. I know all about the CB550's and I just scored a front wheel on ebay so there's hope......

Steady by jerks

I made a little progress on the garagemobile this weekend. It took me better than a week to install a garage door. In the instructions it says allow 12-14 hours to do it. A professional installer can do it in an hour or so. I probably have about 8 hours in it. A bit of disparity there I believe. I got my backfill in as well. Big ol' pile of dirt. That's all I have to say about that. Not very interesting but I'm just an apron and an inspection away from moving all my crap in.
Since there is no real visual change, I'll leave you with a picture of the world's largest traffic jam. Think about this when you're bitchin about the commute tomorrow. That Katrina is one unhappy blow hard. 200mph gusts. Whoa.

A quick one while he's away

Random thing found on a blog. "Yes, I'm working, now f**k off please."

Car Hole? I think not....and garage progress

The ubiquitous Moe Syzlak once condemned Homer Simpson for using the word garage. Moe found term "car hole" a bit more to his blue-collar liking. During the planning of my garage, I have been trying to figure out how I can get a car to fit in there with all the tools, parts, and most importantly, motorcycles. I currently own three and two can be started and driven without much trouble. The other is a just basket away from a basket case. Barn fresh we like to call 'em. This puts me at a 2:3 ratio. Pretty good for a Mengel. The only one with a better ratio is my cousin and he only has one bike. He's just not trying. Anyhow, people keep saying to me how nice it will be to have a place to park the car in the winter. I just smile and say "Yeah, ...the car". I like the term car-hole but it won't exactly be a place for a car, unless it's hailing. As far as names go, I'll stick to garagemobile for now.
There are myriad projects spining around in my head for what I can do in the garage. Mostly I am resisting temtation to rip apart my 550 Honda. I have the urge to turn it into a cafe racer. My bike is very close to completely original, and it runs pretty good so I should just leave it alone. Of course it's ugly and needs a few things, but....no, just leave it alone.
The cool green bike here is also a 550 Honda built by a guy named Danger. Seriously. Check out the CB750cafe link over there for more of those and the story of that one. There are plenty of bikes around to turn into cafe racers. Actually, I would love to pick up a CB350 four and build a little cafe racer. Let me know if you have one for sale that runs with a title. ;)
I made some substantiall progress on the garage in the last few days. The walls are, more or less, square and I will have a new over head door installed by the end of the week. Lots of new lumber, pretty concrete, I cut myself with a razor knife, jabbed a staple into my finger, and ran a splinter under my thumbnail. Good times.

Portland Oregon

Lately things seem to keep pointing to Portland, Oregon for me. I've never been to Portland but I think maybe something is calling me there. Seems strange I know, but I found something today that seemed to seal the deal. Let me start at the beginning, I'm always looking for the job that's right for me. The job that when I get up in the morning I can't wait to get to. Something interesting to me, not just a place to go that generates cash so I can pay the mortgage. I could go on about this but the point here is Portland. Awhile back I was reading about Kenny Dreer and his revival of the Norton marque. "Hmmm", I thought, "That would be an interesting job, I wonder where old Kenny's shop is located?" Gladstone, Oregon it turns out. Gladstone, it would seem, is about 10 miles from downtown Portland. Moving on, I like to read. Even more than reading I enjoy the procurement of books. I was looking online for a book of bedtime stories for my lovely wife to replace her childhood copy that is a bit the worse for wear. I ran across Powell's books. Big old bookstore in Portland, Oregon. I signed up for thier email list and I quite like the content. I bought a few books. Powell's and I get along swimmingly. Hmmm, Portland connection number two. So, I get the new CycleWorld a few months ago and there on the cover is the C1. The C1 is a very innovative american made racing motorcycle that, thank god, has nothing to do with Harley Davidson. "Hmmm," I thought, "That would be an interesting job, I wonder where they are builidng that thing?" Yep, you guessed it. Portland, Oregon. I love bicycles. Especially hand made, lugged steel bicycles. I found this guy on the web named Sacha White (Sacha is a man's name) who builds these just gorgeous frames. His company is Vanilla Bicycles. I check out the site once in a while to see what's new and drool at Sacha's work. Boy if I could afford to buy a handmade bicycle I'd swing by Sacha's place and.....say where is Vanilla Bicycles located, anyway? Portland, Oregon. O.k., o.k., I give up, so I look into the city of Portland, Oregon. Check out the official city website, look at travel sites etc.... Looks like a nice enough place. Rains alot. Now, I'm a big Simpsons fan, I dont get crazy about it but I watch the show religiously. The shows creator is Matt Groening. Today I was looking at the Portland Tribune site and I see a little icon at the bottom of the page drawn in Matt's unique style and it says Matt Groening's Portland. It seems Mr. Groening's home town is.......wait for it.........wait for it...........Portland, Oregon. Alright, this is all just coincidence but Portland does seem like it's calling me, does it not? Oh and they have a hockey team called the WinterHawks. Complete clone of the Chicago Blackhawks but they are in the Western Hockey League. Another reason to go visit. So, I'm not pulling up stakes or anything but if I take a vacation to Portland at least I know there are plenty of things there that interest me.

A picture of nectar

The whole reason to own a garage is to have a place to work on, gawk at, and talk about motorcycles. I've been doing lot's of garage stuff but it occurred to me that I have no motorcycle photos. So I figured the best one to start with is one of the prettiest. The 1958 (ish) Ducati 200 Elite. Enjoy.

Just a quick note

To both of you who look at this site, you can now simply go to surlycamera.com and it will come right here to the ol bloggity blog. The blog address did not change so don't freak out-it's just that my domain name forwards to here because there is nothing there. It keeps getting easier and easier to be a nerd.

Positively Positive

O.K. no more of those crappy bitch posts. Well, for now, anyway. If you want negativity cruise on over to one of the relatives blogs. Here, or here. As you can see I changed the look of the old blog here. Looks better, no? I'll keep a postin on the H.M.S. garagemobile until she's done. I replaced the header above the garage door on Sat. The old one had seen better days. I went to Menard's to get a new door that was on sale but they were out of stock. I got a rain check which was apropos because when I got home it rained all freakin day. No biggie, I got to work inside because I have a garage now! The front of the building is kind of out of square so I have to pull it back into shape like I did with the side. I didnt want to do that with the sixty year old crappy lumber that was there. I can put in the new door with piece of mind that it (the door and the wall) won't come crashing down on me. That would be bad. Oh, I bought a book on turning a plain old car hole into the ultimate garage. It's called, oddly enough, The Ultimate Garage Handbook. It goes along nicely with the other book I have; How To Set Up Your Motorcycle Workshop. The Ultimate Garage fills in the gaps that the Motorcycle Workshop book left out and is definitely aimed at car guys. If anyone is reading this and has more airfilters than dress clothes, check out the books. You will find something of use in there. I finished off the last of the birthday cake from the weekend so I'm gonna go bust ass now. That sounded rude. What I meant is go outside and work hard on the garage project.

I can't keep quiet any longer

There is alot of talk about blogs lately. Mostly about people who use their blog to express thier political beliefs. My blog wont be like that. It's none of your fucking buisness what I believe. Left wing, right wing......I'll take a big ass plate of both, covered in Frank's. Dont get me wrong, if someone wants to say they are this or that or compain about the Pres. or Extoll the virtues of the Pres., well that's fine, really. This is a free country so rock on. There is too much division in this country and it stems from everyone wanting to be this or that. They are all fucking sheep. A bunch of lemmings who are driving us all off the cliff. Think for yourselves, morons. When the Pres. does something you dont like, it's o.k to not like it. You can type it into your blog. It doesnt make you a Democrat. If you own a gun, it doesn't make you a Republican. Screaming "I'm a hard core (democrat/republican)!" makes you a sheep. I'm going to leave this topic right here. If you see a link to something on here and it's political take it or leave it. Make up your own mind.

For some reason, after I loaded the picture of Slayer helping me out in the garage, I couldn't add anymore pictures. Try as I might, it just wouldn't work. So here are the pics of the chain pulling the garage back into shape. Read the last post for all the poop. Rock on.

Parallelograge

My last post was written the day we moved the garagemobile. I was exhausted when I wrote that so the post wasn't exactly witty or entertaining. Well no guarantees with this one but I'll do my best. I just came in from fixing the out of square problem. The front of the garage was leaning out quite a bit. The short version is I pulled it back square with a comalong and a chain.
The long version consists of multiple tries, broken boards, bent screws, lots of sweat and Slayer.
Now, it's not like Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman came by with some advice on used garage repair but I was listening to the extremely cheesy Slayer Live: Decade of Agression. Not a bad album but.....I digress. I fabbed up some things to attach the chain hooks to the building with earlier this week. I started by bolting these to the sill plate on one side and the top plate on the other. Slap the chain on em, comalong in the middle, start pulling. I just about pulled the front wall in. The side wall's still crooked. O.K. try again. At this point I decide to switch from crappy classic rock on the radio to the Slayer. I move the chain closer to the corners and put a board on the outside to keep from pulling the wall down. Sounds easy, but took a lot of work pulling the siding boards down, cutting a slot in the board, putting the board up......Slap the chain on em, comalong in the middle, start pulling. I rip the bolts out of the pulling thingy that's bolted to the sill plate. O.K. I need a board on the outside on BOTH ends. Grab another board, lay it out, drill, saw, pull some more siding, screw the board in, slap the chain on em, comalong in the middle, start pulling. Again. This time it works. I pull a little, let it sit, pull a little, let it sit, lather rinse repeat. By this time I'm wringing with sweat tired and I think I have some fiberglass in my eye. Oh, and sick of Slayer. HA! but the garage is pretty damn square now. Almost as good as a Danley. I screwed some fresh corner braces in and took the tension off the chain.

Wow. We did it.

The garage is on it's foundation. We got up bright and shiny early I met the NIPSCO guy who dropped the power line for us. We jacked her up and pushed it up on the slab, piece of cake. Lining up the bolts and setting it down, well that took about 4 hours. It was lots of work but I had lots of help, Thanks again guys! There is still a ton of work to do, after all the garage is 60 years old. The garage has a little lean that I have to fix, it's dirty, there's a bunch of bracing I have to remove, I have to put the doors back on and make them open and shut, and I still have to pour a concrete apron and back fill some more. Oh yeah, it could use a new roof too.
I have a garage! Yay.
On the other side of the fence, Bill got the walls up and it looks superb. He's gonna have one nice car hole. Sounds dirty.