OH GOOD, she said. A 175-mile-an-hour wheelie machine on the front walk.
Yes, but it’s temporary. And I am aware, yes, with a tip of the hat to Cosmo Castorini, that “Everything is temporary, that don’t excuse nothing.”
The bike lives up the street. Its former owner is deceased, the family would like to sell. It hadn’t been started in a few years. I brought it down here to look it over, make a list of what it needs, then our neighbors can either have the work done or disclose the maintenance and repair issues to potential buyers.
It’s a 2003 GSX-R1000, the K3 liter gixxer. Named Bike of the Year for 18 years running by the International Society of Transplant Surgeons. Okay, I made that up. But young men, inexperienced riders, do get on these bikes and all of a sudden think they have the talent to race the Isle of Man TT.
I removed the fairing to see what’s what, loaded her onto the ’49 truck because she’s not fit to ride as-is.
One evening this week I’ll run it up to Burrillville, to a sport-bike racer I know. Will ask him to advise the owner on what the bike is worth.
I put the piglet’s battery in it, drained the old gas, changed oil and filter, took it for a blast around the neighborhood just to hear it shift. The tires are badly used up and there are no rear brakes, the master cylinder does nothing.
The reservoir on the front master cylinder is broken off the handlebars, likely on a tip over. It’s held on just by the hose. Still holds fluid, so she’s got front brakes anyway.
The motor sounds fine to me. Has 28k on the clock.
There’s no evidence the bike has been down at speed, as so many of the breed have been. It’s been dropped in parking lots and driveways. Dropped on both sides. Dings and cracks in the fairing, a little low-speed rash on the stator cover.
It’s an 18-year-old bike, you expect a little history.
Note my belt holding the 2 year old onto her push trike because she scared the hell out of me Friday on Pontiac Avenue. It can be a busy road at certain hours of the day. It’s not unusual to see drivers doing twice the posted speed limit while looking at their phones.
Opportunities to cross are infrequent, and brief. When one comes, I give the trike a push and realize it’s too light for her to be on it—she had gotten off her bike while I was watching traffic!
I find her standing right next to me, but that instant of not knowing where she was took time off my future and very nearly induced whiplash.
So we finished our walk with my belt around her.
I’ve been her daycare provider for nine months now. When Pam retires from the bank in two weeks we’ll have four steely eyes on the little escape artist.
Whenever we cross Pontiac on our twice-a-day walks, we often end up on the quiet side streets of a sprawling apartment complex on the Pocasset River. There we’ve passed this old Rover many times.
It’s a 1960 Series 2A.
I put a note with my email address on the windshield, asked the owner’s permission to publish a few photos. He said it was all right, and that he’s thinking of selling the Rover because he doesn’t drive it much anymore.
It’ll bring a handsome price, I would think.
Not that I know anything about Rovers… Only that you don’t see these old ones every day.
About the porch project…
It’s been a wet and windy spring, we’re just starting to get organized.
I put the footing forms, tubes and rebar in the ground yesterday. It took me 11 hours to level the forms in the pits I’d dug and shovel all the dirt back in.
About 8 cubic yards of dirt.
I knew at the time I was getting too much sun. Broke for lunch at 2, barfed it up in the backyard at 3.
Felt fine then. Kept the water going in. Still had 5 hours of shoveling ahead before I finished up for the day around 8:30 in the evening.
Next up, Jonny’s guys will do the concrete pour.
On Wednesday I’ll do quarterly blood labs at Miriam Hospital, then see Dr. Barth the oncologist on Thursday. A checklist visit, really. Nothing to see here.
Tony DePaul, May 16, 2021, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
I have a cousin who is a Rover buff. I’ll send him a link to this article and see what he thinks of this golden oldie.
Here’s what my cousin Edwin Junior had to say “”Wow! That’s a series ll, not easily found here, however it uses the same drivetrain as most of our old tow trucks you see on roundabouts. Those who know what it is will pay a good penny for it.”
Aha! Good to know. I’ll pass Edwin’s message on to the owner, Vincent. Thank you both.
Donorcycles. We still have plenty of takers up here. I sold my 1981 Honda CB900F back in 93 and then headed over to the dealership. I took a Honda ST1100 out for a spin on 95. Fastest bike I was ever on — and I haven’t been on one since. Good hearing from you!
Hey, man! Will hope to see you and Diane on our next trip north.
That’s a great bike, the ST1100. A favorite of the Iron Butt crowd.
Those IIA Land Rovers start at about $16-20K over here – going into six figures if they’ve been restored better than when they were new. That one looks like it’s been ridden hard and put away wet, but such a great platform.
Miss you & yours Tony!
Love from Lake Cushman xx
Aha, good to know. I’ll pass on the word to the owner, Hugo. Love to Mari & family. Pam and I hope to barge in on you all out at the lake and then be hard to get rid of.
Alas, probably not this year, but there’s talk of the kids taking their new travel van out to Arizona, leaving it with family there, and us ferrying it up to Seattle at some point to leave it with the Nelsons. Another version says the kids will fly back to Arizona and drive the Pacific Coast Highway up to Jan & Connie’s, then Pam and I will fly in to Seattle to ferry the van somewhere else, so…
I’ll be informed of what’s going on on the morning of departure to… somewhere.
Thanks for the update. 8 yards of dirt? That is, I believe, equivalent to a metric shit-ton of dirt. If you sunk 4 of those Sonotubes into the ground you’ve basically done what the sergeant told the new recruit during basic training – “Son, move that hole over there….. to over here.” I wonder if, when they fill those with cement, they have to put a breather tube down to the bottom to prevent a big bubble of air getting trapped? Or maybe they just pump it in the tube with a 2″ hose they can run to the bottom. That Land Rover is sweet. Worth a good bit, I’d say.
PS, toured the Sonotube factory once in my early engineering days. IIRC it smelled pretty bad from the cardboard making chemicals. It was up in New England somewhere, I forget. Carry on and look forward to progress photos on the work.
Hey, Chris. Only an engineer would think about air displacement. Which they did! The plastic footing forms have a bunch of small vents that allow the wet concrete to displace air into the surrounding soil.
I’ve definitely done enough digging for a while. I made sure the Sonotube logo was right-side-up every time, didn’t want to make that mistake. Put a tube in upside down, shit, then you need to sink another hole, tunnel in from the side and shove the concrete UP the tube, what a lot of extra work that would have been.
Tony,
Good to read about what’s going on. One can only hope that fast bike finds a “qualified” owner. Too many needless accidents out there lately.
As a kid I loved fast cars, but somehow always wanted to just putt along when on two wheels.
Going up to Burrilville? We’ve been called “Rhode Island’s Alaska” more than a few times.
The old Land Rover looks cool. One part of me likes them with all that character and the other part of me wants to start restoring.
You’re right, every scare your kids give you takes time off your life.
Good luck with the quarterly blood work.
Dennis
So true, Dennis. I do like speed, it’s a thrill every time, but riding the slab in triple digits just to go nowhere, that’s… likely to end badly at some point. And it’s not like you have to hit a deer, any rodent you can think of will do the job if you squish it on a curve at 100 & up.
People say our Harley hogs are underpowered and stupid heavy, and they’re right, but there’s nothing like rumbling along the blue routes on a Harley, taking your time, chatting up the people you meet, find out what they know. Iron piggy just goes & goes & goes. And the more weight you load on her the better she goes.
Great to hear from you again Tony, things are looking good at your place.
I was visiting Shane, the guy we rode to McBride with. I saw a picture on his kitchen wall of you, Clayton and I sitting on the Baily bridge crossing the Beaver River on the old road going to McBride. Brought back memories of our ride.
We did the same ride yesterday………Have fun……Bob
That was a great time, Bob. I hope we can do it again. I can see the view from the top of McBride in my memory now.
If I remember right, McBride was the first of three or four times that I dumped the piglet on the Arctic thing two years ago, but man that bike was hard to ride in stock configuration, and so heavily loaded. She’s fully equipped now, has all the required upgrades: bars, pegs, suspension, pumper carb for low-rev control, no more whiskey throttle through the water crossings with ass-over-tin-cup results, haha! Aw, what fun…
Fully equipped and hasn’t turned Mile 1 yet, geez… Well, the lymphoma thing, pandemic right behind it, before you know it two years are gone.
Hi to Janey, and ride safe out there, my friend.
Tony, happy you are recovering and keeping busy. We are moving back to the city of Summerside. Drove back to the island in a Class C motor home and at a KO park until our new duplex is ready. Really enjoy reading your posts. Congrats to your bride on her retirement. Love retirement winter in Florida and summers in Prince Edward Island.
Hey! It’s always a pleasure to hear from you, Linda & Ron. You really do have a good thing going with your seasonal migration up and down the Atlantic coast. I’d like to see the motorhome setup. Will ask Pam if you’ve uploaded pics to FB.
I need to ride with you. I just purchased, and sadly traded in the GSA, an S1000XR. Not your machine, but it moves. Glad you are up and about.
Whoa! Inline-fours all around. Well I’ll be interested to hear what you think of the XR after you’ve ridden it a while, Duncan. I have no idea what the big brains at Beemer were thinking with that bike. Is it an exercise in crossover style? Selling a hint of the romantic, adventure-y GS look in a bike made for older sport bike riders? The thought crossed my mind, given that BMW seems (seems to me) so overly into marketing. They hit the jackpot with the big GS look, despite that most never leave the tarmac at all let alone leaving it as much as yours did.
My $.02 from the spectator stands, admittedly uninformed. I’ll be interested to hear how you see the bike with real miles invested.
On the GSXR front, I’m optimistic about the owner getting a decent price on the bike as-is, with bad tires, no battery and a few brake issues. I have a number in mind and would like to hear the racer guy quote something like it.
Under a thousand bucks in parts would put the bike on the road, and the buyer would have the whole season still ahead of him or her. The fundamentals on the bike are good, and, unlike the rough old iron piggy, it’s never seen salt!
Thanks for reading, Duncan. Ride safe out there.
Please convey my congrats to Pam on her retirement. What great timing, good weather, a new porch and most of all, more time with her little one.
You’re such a good neighbor, Tony, doing all that research on the bike, saving someone a ton of time and I’m sure, money, too.
I’m looking forward to seeing pix of the porch. My sister Kate and I are working on our porch too. We had it power-washed, got rid of the old furniture, and now, we’re having it painted and repaired. Nowhere near what you’re doing, not even close, we’re mostly making phone calls and looking at other people doing the work, but it’s still a lot of work for us.
Hi, Ellie. There’s always something to do when you own a house, isn’t there? The to-do list here is going to keep me busy all year.
I was just thinking of running out to Lowe’s before it closes in two hours but I think I’m done for the weekend. Yesterday’s catching up with me. Was thinking of picking up some lumber to build a form for a 42″ X 42″ concrete slab to support an AC compressor. I don’t want to be lugging the window rattlers up and down the hill twice a year into my old age. We had a guy come by the house a few weeks ago to put a price on a central system.
I’ve seen those sonotube footing forms before . Saves pouring the footings separately I guess. Cool.
It really does make a nice installation.
It would be a lot less work leveling the forms in a trench instead of a hole. All of them, the whole works — form, tube, rebar cage — went in the ground and out and back in and out again… It would be so much easier to be down there in the pit with the form to get it placed exactly where you want it.
Reid has Jorge’s old 99 GS 1150 all running right again, following an engine swap and nose to tail maintenance. Brakes are a bit quirky, so a little more work on that. We might do a Father-Son ride in the sun later today.
Nice! I enjoyed having the use of that bike on my extended stays at Chez Nelson. I have many fond memories of time spent there among you & yours, bud.
Looks like the kind of bike that should be at a 45 degrees angle flying around a track rather than dodging potholes on the streets of Lil Rhody.
I think so. It’s a track bike. All you can do is go fast on it. Can’t carry anything. Unless it’s a girl in short pants who doesn’t know any better.
And the passenger sits so high on these things, I would think that has to feel unstable.
That is a serious beast. Maybe someone will use the driveline for a Bonneville 4-wheeled machine? Speaking of beast, your work on the porch stanchions is impressive. I can barely get to my car these days.
I must admit, it would be fun to ride that bike flat out in a straight line. The best riders in the world lose control in the curves so I’m pleased to leave that kind of riding to them. Conor Cummins was probably doing 140mph or so when he lowsided on that first of four bends on the Veranda.
With the weather improving and the snow is gone, I’m seeing these donor bikes on the streets on a regular basis again, looking for a place to crash.
Holy moley but this one’s a rocket. Weighs half as much as the iron piggy and has 3X the horsepower. It wants to loft the front wheel if you get at all itchy on the throttle.