Friday afternoon safety meeting.

[Cipher]

If they had, they would have included the 20mm cannon.

Speaking of the Bofors and Oerlikons and Fokkers and such. Many many years ago a genial smiling old man would come to my liquor store cash to purchase two 12 bottle cases of beer. I forget the brands but one was for him and the other for his friend who could no longer physically make it into town.
Upu really take note of the decent folks in that sort of environment as the bulk are sullen snot nosed underage punks or drunken yappy arseholes.
Overtime with the scant few seconds you get to know people.

One day he explained why he carried the cases up one at a time. Holy crap its mid 90s and he was a convoy truck driver in the war and was strafed and hit by cannon fire in the opening days of the Normandy Invasion.
It was mind blowing. Was if a FW190 or a ME109? I dared not ask him. SO strange to meet a living remnant of such a horror who could smile and be polite in spite of living with permanent damage from a near death run in with explosives.

The messerschmitt little car like the BMW in the pic appears in the movie Brazil.

[Rob S.]

4th photo...dog is winking, but thinking, "you show this pic and I'll bite your leg off!"

[trevor]

A couple of weeks ago we had a rather interesting safety meeting...my buddy Andy with the Isetta brought over a couple of new guys to the meeting....Phil and Steve....older gents with a passion for bikes...Steve in his 70s was very interested in my bikes, especially my Cooley. He told me he has a 78 Z1000 amongst many other bikes including a early 70s Kawasaki 750 triple he just bought and was being sent to him from Toronto...he paid $20k for it. But it's mint!
Anyway turns out he was born in the usa bought he quit high school because of the Vietnam draft and "dodged" over to Canada where he stayed. He said he started several businesses and most of them failed....but one he started in 1979 stuck called "Dollar Financial Group"...which have birth to a little business called Money Mart....lol....he sold out his shares a few years ago for "Hundreds of millions..."....really super nice chill guy that really enjoyed hanging out with other gear heads in my garage.
The other guy was named Phil....retired from owning a auto mechanics garage. His hands were shaking as he has Parkinson's He is a drag racer.
But not just any kind of drag racer....lol...old school dragster....3500hp! 0-100mph in one second!
He raced in Bakersville Ca just a couple of weeks prior to him being in my garage....here is his car.

[Hayabuser]

I've always been surprised that the driver's massive balls can actually fit inside the cockpit of a slingshot dragster.

[trevor]

Another good turnout yesterday....and a buddy gave me a new amp for the garage....A nice Harmon Kardon AVR435....he got other components he's going to give me as well....he's also going to set it up for me...should sound awesome!


Love this pic of Kevin...member here....the dog's eyes...lol

[Suzukian]

Great thread. Looks like an awesome group of people. Nancy, Wow!! What a bike she has. That Hyabusa is fantastic!

[Grimly]

AV amps make good garage amps, I find. Loads of cheap power that sounds ok.

[trevor]

AV amps make good garage amps, I find. Loads of cheap power that sounds ok.

Cool....I don't know much about audio brands etc... so I'm looking forward to having my buddy's help....I'm willing to spend some money if I have to...I spend a lot of time in my garage and do lots of "entertainig"...lol...so it's worth it

[Suzukian]

Harmon/Kardon amps have a lot of protection circuity. I used to fix amps a long time ago. Get the schematic for that amp, and unless your friend knows a real lot about electronics, don't let anyone touch it. I've found these amps, with a Leak Detector, and an in circuit capacitor checking meter (hard to find know), a lot of times it's a Germanium Diode blows out, making appear that something major is going on. The Harmon/Kardon schematics have a page that points to all the protection components, and there are a lot of them. You can easily burn out a channel in that amp if it isn't done by a professional. These days you have to send them out. I have a Carver Cube that some of the components can no longer be found, but a guy out west has figured a work around. This amp ran my electrostatic speakers right off the back of the amp, no special circuity for the capacitive feedback. He will not touch any amp that has been worked on or opened. I am not an electronics engineer, so if the components aren't available, and you can't cross match one, doing a work around is above my pay grade.

You have to check what these amps are going for to see if it's worth it. I collect only tube amps, and have a nice collection of vintage speakers, including a pair of Wharfdale Speakers. It could be worth fixing, but it might not be. I couldn't read the model number on back, so I couldn't look it up.

[trevor]

Harmon/Kardon amps have a lot of protection circuity. I used to fix amps a long time ago. Get the schematic for that amp, and unless your friend knows a real lot about electronics, don't let anyone touch it. I've found these amps, with a Leak Detector, and an in circuit capacitor checking meter (hard to find know), a lot of times it's a Germanium Diode blows out, making appear that something major is going on. The Harmon/Kardon schematics have a page that points to all the protection components, and there are a lot of them. You can easily burn out a channel in that amp if it isn't done by a professional. These days you have to send them out. I have a Carver Cube that some of the components can no longer be found, but a guy out west has figured a work around. This amp ran my electrostatic speakers right off the back of the amp, no special circuity for the capacitive feedback. He will not touch any amp that has been worked on or opened. I am not an electronics engineer, so if the components aren't available, and you can't cross match one, doing a work around is above my pay grade.

You have to check what these amps are going for to see if it's worth it. I collect only tube amps, and have a nice collection of vintage speakers, including a pair of Wharfdale Speakers. It could be worth fixing, but it might not be. I couldn't read the model number on back, so I couldn't look it up.

Thanks for the info! My buddy says the amp works great. He's pretty knowledgeable about electronics.....he started and built a successful comercial and residential security alarm company...that he sold when he retired. I will keep you posted with the progress of setting up the system.
Thanks again

[Suzukian]

Great!! That's quite an A/V receiver. So many inputs and outputs. That isn't done so much these days.

[trevor]

Hey guys, thought I would tell you a little about my new friend Bill Peck. We are in the same motorcycle group on facebook and he has a few classic Japanese bikes...79 CBX and two Honda 400F's and I new he was into Ducati's. As I have posted here I invited him to my Friday afternoon safety meetings and he's been a few times now. He mentioned that Brooke Henry of VeeTwo https://www.veetwo.com/ was coming from Australia to his house to put a motor in one of his Ducati's....hmmm...lol...and that he was going to have a meet and greet at out local Airport Museum.
On Wed of this week Bill invited me over to his place to meet Brooke and witness him installing the engine. Wow...what a treat that was. I also got to see a few of his other bikes....this guy is in a whole different league than I'm used to being around.
Brooke was also on an episode of Jay Leno's garage a few years back.


The master at work

[trevor]

And some of Bill's bikes

1978


Zero miles on this MV


And this 1993 NR...never thought I would see one in the flesh. Only 300 were produced.

The NR showed the world what a superbike could, and should, be. Its vast range of technological advances included:

• An aluminum twin tubular frame with cast sections; taken from the RC30 race bike.
• A single-sided swingarm with chain-drive, which allowed quicker wheel-changes in endurance races; also from the RC30.
• The exhaust system was an 8 into 4 into 2 which finished “shotgun style” under the seat unit; the first on a production bike.
• A slipper clutch, taken from the original NR500; another first for a production bike
• Showa upside-down forks with custom brake callipers
• Carbon fibre/fibreglass mix bodywork
• Magnesium alloy wheels
• A fully mapped multi-point Electronic Fuel Injection
• A titanium coated non-reflective windscreen
• A “floating” carbon fibre-surrounded LCD with reflective “infinity” display

Oh and he opened up this crate to show me a spare NR Crate engine....lol


And the next night me and some buddies went to the meet and greet and heard Brooke Henry's amazing story....and we heard that Eric Bana the Australian actor is making a Mike Hailwood movie and Brooke will be supplying a couple of replicas....Brooke has made 10 with permission from the Hailwood family to sell. The bike that Mike made his stunning victory on at the TT 1978 after 12 years in retirement.
https://www.veetwo.com/Info/the-hail...-now-available

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducati_Supermono

The Ducati Supermono is a lightweight, single-cylinder racing motorcycle made by Ducati and named after the Supermono racing class. 65 Supermonos were built by Ducati between 1993 and 1995.

So of course my new friend Bill has one of theses....wow! This was on display that night.

[Suzukian]

Motorcycle pornography, at it's best!

[trevor]

Motorcycle pornography, at it's best!

Lol …it sure is!!