Armoured Cat Thursday

Armored Cruiser Thursday

while not strictly speaking an armored cruiser the French la Gloire was armored and was the first ocean going armored ship in the world. commissioned into the French Navy in 1860 la Gloire beat the Royal Navy's HMS Warrior and HMS Black Prince into service. la Gloire was a wooden hulled vessel plated with 4.7" iron over most of her hull. as designed by famous maritime designer Dupuy de Lome she was 255'6" long and had a 2cyl horizontal return connecting rod steam engine. this enabled the ship to reach speeds of 12.5kts. for armament la Gloire carried 36 Rifled Muzzle Loading Guns of 6.3" bore.

Value of Motorcycles

It is Summer( in Northern hemisphere). You will see many riders on the road. It is natural that used bike price goes up when the weather is nice and sunny. Those riders on the roads are free advertisement for motorcycle industries. In other words, you get better deal buying bikes when it is cold, wet and miserable. It is true. Old bikes are hard to start up when it is cold and less likely to be able to provide test rides which makes it hard to sell.

Looking through ebay and Craig's List, chance of encountering a good or even a decent deal gets slim during the Summer time, but some people list those bikes extremely high price like buyers are supposed to be dumb and bound to get ripped off. I am glad that those guys are proud of what they got but some listing is often down right ignorant or even insulting. Custom bikes that hastily put together with half-ass finishing job is not considered chopper or bobber.
Yeah, I understand that you spend so much time and money on the bike, adding often completely unnecessary after market parts and flaming paint or get ripped off by local motorcycle repair shops, wasting more money on the bike but that doesn't mean you are increasing the value of it. I see some pretty embarrassing, esthetically sad looking "AWESOME CUSTOM" bike asking for too much money.

Most of the time, motorcycle is not considered as a good investment. You are likely to lose money on that. Unless you are ethically challenged fuck head who buys crap bikes for dirt cheap and list the bike with at least 20% mark up while you don't do anything to it. You might also go back to the seller's garage where you have been once before when you picked up the bike and steal what the seller's got.

There are a few sites that tell you what is( a guide line) value of your bike such as Kelley Blue Book, which lists both trade-in and suggested retail value. I also find NADA guides very useful since it gives different pricing depending on the shape of the bike. It also lists detailed information on what shapes of bikes are considered as in "Excellent" , "Very Good", "Good", and "Fair". I see a lot of sellers putting their bike's price more than "Very Good"price, but should be in somewhere between "Good" and "Fair". No one likes to be ripped off. You should not rip off others. It is not a good experience to deal with low balling baboons or greed.

I would like to be always fair and even.

Happy Birthday Cockeye!!

Party?

Today is also Amanda Donohoe, Fred Grandy, Richard Lewis, Gary Busey, Robert Evans, and Slim Pikens' birthday.

Running Stripes

Good ATie

Spark Plugs

just noticed i had no A.C. ads in my previous post. here are 3 nice ones.

Spark Plugs

no doubt in our internal combustion filled lives we've all had to deal with one or more of these. Spark Plugs. can't live without them. the first spark plug was invented{supposedly, i can find no definite proof}in 1839 by one Edmond Berger. most early plugs as well as most early internal combustion engines were made in France. Albert Champion whose name most will recognize was a Frenchman who moved to the US in the early part of the twentieth century and started the Champion Ignition Company in 1904. after being run off by his investors, who kept the Champion name he started A.C. which was backed by the Buick Automobile Co. in 1908. Buick of course was later taken over by General Motors and after the death of Albert Champion in 1927 GM became the sole owner of A.C. Autolite didn't come along until 1935 when Royce G. Martin president of Electric Autolite Co. had a lab built for the development of an Autolite Sparkplug. of course there are many other brands of sparkplugs such as Lodge, NGK, Bosch and etc.

2010 Cookstown

Cookstown 100 is an annual Irish road races that ususally held in April . For full info and report on this year's races: 2010 Cookstown 100. Or visit Their official site: Cookstown 100.com

Trike for Wheelchair

You might have seen wheelchair bikes going by time to time. Those look like regular motorcycles with side cars but you don't see a rider on the saddle- kinda freaky if you don't know what you are looking at... Anyway much cooler and easier for disabled was created by Conquest wheelchair Motorcycle. It has debuted on June 4- the National Veteran’s Wheelchair Games in Denver, the largest wheelchair sports competition in the world. The trike is powered by a Beemer motor with six forward gears and reverse. Featuring 0 -60 MPH in 7.6 seconds, the top speed at 105 mph. The wheelchair trike is made easy via an automatic rearward ramp and the driver remains in his/her own wheelchair.

Of course, the trike is fully road tested and meets the US safety standards.

Possibly the Coolest Met Ever

Motorcycles Helmets Plus Chalkboard Paint by Carl Burgess and Tom Darracott

I might actually make my own soon...

Mega Fridge

It is nice to hide or disguise your fridge if you often have rude guests that like to raid your fridge, leaving almost empty juice container or finish off the last beer you had and all. This massive, all-in-one fridge poses as a highly crafted ship cabinet. Sadly, cost you roughly 10K.... Well, if I hit a jackpot...wait, I probably donate the money to clean up the ocean before I buy this...Anyhow, it was available from an Italian company Meneghini. You can custom order something similar if you need to satisfy your greed.

How Triumph Rocket 3 is made

This is bit old, but pretty good footage. The braking test made my nuts shrank...

?????

even though this is an internal combustion powered trike i feel it must go under the "strange machines" category.

man held up by victorian machines 1883

the machine in front is definitly searching for the poor man's wallet. the machine behind is holding some sort of deadly object up to the man's spine to make him stay absolutely still.

War of the Pacific{the Battle of Iquique}

this is a picture of the Peruvian armored turret ship Huascar sinking the Chilean corvette Esmeralda,May 21,1879. Miguel Grau the Peruvian commander asked Capitan Arturo Prat of the Esmeralda to surrender. Prat refused even though his wooden ship could do very little harm to the armored Huascar. thus the Esmeralda was destroyed with heavy loss of life while the Huascar had one person killed. Huascar is quite a famous ship she was built in England and sailed across the Atlantic and around Cape Horn to Peru. she fought a battle against the HMS Shah in which a torpedo was first launched at a warship. it failed as the ship could outrun the torpedo. the Huascar was eventually captured by the Chilean Navy after a huge battle at sea and still exists as a museum ship in the harbor at Talcahuano, Chile.

Lego Helmet

A work of

Sebastian Errazuriz

He is an artist designer who works with an experimental style that provokes thought and humor
in everyday objects.

The Best Client Letter

don't forget the b00b show tonite!

Ducati Hypermotard

Armoured Cruiser Thursday

HMS Defence the last armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy. she was commissioned in Feb. of 1909. 519ft long with 2 4cyl triple expansion engines she made 27,000hp, good for 22.9kts. main battery of 9.2" guns and secondary of 7.5" guns. as flagship of the 1st cruiser squadron under rear admiral Robert Arbuthnot HMS Defence went up in a ball of flame after being hit with a salvo of 12" shells from the German battlecruisers. 903 perished in this tragic occurance.

bOObs on bikes

every year in New Zealand they have what started out as the bOObs on bikes parade. looks like by now it is the bOObs on bikes, cars and armoured vehicles parade. whatever it is Wichita could use one. it would draw tourists our glorious leaders and city council would love it. maybe it could start on Commerce Street.

THE B@@B SHOW

GOAWAYGARAGEGALLERY
508 S. Commerce
Wichita, Ks
PRESENTS

A RATED R ( ADULTS ONLY SHOW)

“THE B@@B SHOW”
A GROUP ART SHOW

JUNE 25TH, 2010 FINAL FRIDAY OPENING 7-10p.m.


Exhibit runs through JULY 2,

with a closing Reception from 7-10p.m.

MUSIC FIRST FRIDAY JULY 2 8:30 to 10:00
FEATURING MUSIC & VIDEO BY

FROM DENVER
http://www.cramer.org/art/

& MSWALK-GUITAR-VIDEO PERFORMANCE

Regular Hours: Appointment only; Monday - Friday 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Contact: Mitch Willis
263-9455
Web: Go Away Garage Gallery

Deer Hunter

Oh Deer....

If you are busy just watch from 1:25 mark. Your welcome.

one more steam clock

this clock which is much like the one in Gastown in Vancouver, B.C. is in the port city of Otaru in Japan. the reason it is so similar is because it was built by the same person although this one is newer and somewhat larger.

IOM TT 1907

these are basically the only pictures i've found so far of Charlie Collier the overall winner of the first IOM TT in 1907. Charlie had the fastest speed of all classes 38.2 mph thus winning the race. he also won the single cylinder class. Rem Fowler on Norton won the multi-cylinder class. Charlie and his brother Harry both entered the race but due to engine seizure Harry had to drop out before the finish. they both worked with their father Henry as the originators and builders of the famous Matchless brand of motorcyle. the first was produced in 1902. not hard to guess then that Charlie and Harry both were mounted on Matchless. Charlie's winning motorcycle was 31/2hp and 421cc with belt drive and pedal assist.