Nice moment today

[guest7]

Thanks to the incredible generosity of a fellow club member I now have a genuine saddle for my Harris ikuzawa.

The parcel arrived today and I have to say it was a really nice moment unpacking the (incredibly) rare item and then taking it off to the garage for a trial fit. It has unmistakeable 80s styling, but it's so good to be getting close to having the bike I first lusted after all those years ago.

I pulled down my copy of Alan Cathcart's Dream Bikes, turned to the Ikuzawa chapter and reminded myself of what a special bike it is. See picture HERE

GC

[SteveC#222]

I take it that the Ikcy is definitely NOT going to be in the Grand Carrick garage sale.... ...




.....lovely bike though...I hope to see it running one day, now that would be a crowd puller on the club stand at Stafford!!

[SteveC#222]

.....and it'll be a bu88er to fit the chair to that frame........

[guest7]

Despite my wife's repeated attempts to get me to sell it, no.

Every now and then I buy something else for the project, it's always nagging away at me, but life is far too busy at the moment and the garage is far too full. Once all the dross* has been sold then perhaps I can start bolting on all the bits and pieces I've acquired for it.

for a while I toyed with building it up on XBR forks and wheels, as per the budget version that Harris offered. This thought was prompted by the idea that it would be easier to pass it off as an XBR using the identity of one of my dead XBRs. However since then I've come around to the idea of registering it as what it is and sticking with the lovely uppydowny forks and RGV wheels.

Having said that I did go a fair way down the path to building up some spoked wheels for it, the rear having a dinky disk brake. Perhaps one day it will go back to being an 18" spoked wheel bike  

As for chair fitment, I suspect the neat little Reynolds tubed frame would snap almost instantly in an act of purist roadracing hari kuri.

GC

* For 'dross' read ' rare vintage XBR parts in very good condition'  

 

[SteveC#222]

Was youre's originally one of the 'kits' or the fullblown pukka whistles & bells jobbie? I seem to remember being told  (maybe by you ) that there are only 3 in the country. I've got the July '86 'Bike' and October Motorcycle International write up's and they are bloody gorgeous - shame they were so expensive at the time but I seem to remember a lot went over to Japan?

[guest7]

I'm not entirely sure, i think mine was a kit racer frame, not the road model.

My engine has some odd bits to it, compare the HRC crank and camshaft with the rather odd-looking points conversion. There's also some trickery gone on with the valves courtesy of Stan Stephens.

I do have the bike's race diary, I should really have another look through it to see what was done and when.

Alan Cathcart gave me a contact email for Tetsu Ikuzawa who told me that a fair number of bikes had gone over to Germany via the 'Team Metisse' operation. Tetsu himself has three or four bikes... and I'm guessing he's still got the fabled 1989 Le Mans bike, the last time a single tried to qualify for an international 24hr race. Apparently they missed out on qualifying for the race by a tiny amount, despite having a qualifying bike with an engine life of 45 minutes!

GC

[squirrelciv]

Hey GC, when you're talking of selling 'dross' don't forget to dig me out a half decent XBR tank

[guest7]

Might have stalled on that front old chap. I had a quick look and most of my tanks have dents in 'em 

I'll need to go up in the rafters in the back garage to check out one that's up there.

GC

[squirrelciv]

Why thankyouverymuch 

Minor dents shouldn't be too much hassle matey. Sorting them out will teach me some tricks and keep me out of mischief.