New Years Day

Went out for a test ride on ROMEO80 with a good mate Carl Abrams - he was on his Husky 900 which he uses for his voluntary role with SERV which transports Blood out of hours to wherever its needed.  He took this nice shot of our bikes in Ashdown Forest.

ROMEO80 - Almost There

Yes - its nearly Christmas and ROMEO80 will be ready in a very short time.  I should at this point add some thanks to all those who helped with the project.

• Chris McNamara  - it was his donor bike that was nicely restored, I bought on eBay
• Steve Taylor of Taylor Made Wheels for the amazing new 23" wheels, with the drive hub for the shaft drive.
• Dave Batchelar of P&D for all the sheet metal and frame.
• Keith Baker of Classic Cycle Works for the sublime paint job.
• Paul Leeson for the ROMEO80 logo
• Colour Coatings for Powder Coat.
• Andy from Hove for the metal polishing.
• ..and Richard Taylor for everything else!

In January on a nice day I will do a proper photo shoot  - probably down at the coast in Hastings, real film with my Leica.

a little bit more ROMEO80

.....getting there, just needs wiring - "just" is a complete understatement, dragging loads of wires through the frame to the brainbox and battery and back again.  We are keeping all the original BMW switchgear, but new Oberon indicators and a sweet little German speedo which is marked out to 220  - I will only be using the first 30% of that dial - I might even calibrate it for kph so I can watch it move more.  After its wired, rear tailpiece goes on and the seat - get an MOT and hit that road.  Here are some pics.

ROMEO 80 - Polishing

First stuff is coming back for ROMEO80 - its the polishing all done by an excellent craftsman in Hove Sussex - for £100.

Exhausts, triple trees, Z handlebars, headlamp bracket, number plate bracket, side stand, gear shift, rear brake and exhaust bezels.

ROMEO-80 - Supertrapp Race Mufflers

Following the success of the new 2-1 exhaust and Supertrapp Muffler I put on Macbeth Bobber recently, I have decided to fit a pair to the new ROMEO 80 Bike, and they look pretty good.

1982 BMW R80 Bike no. 8

Been way to busy these last six months on other stuff to spend anytime on this bike -which has been going very slowly for sometime now, but hey summer is coming and it needs to get on the road.  So it will be leaving P&D with all its metal work done at the end of this month. The tank is looking really good, its been cut down and slimmed but still looks BMW.  There will be a new combined tail piece and electrical box, and a mini front mudguard.  We are keeping the original exhausts, but double walling them to give them some bulk and finishing off with polished 10" Supertrapp Race Mufflers.

The bike then comes back to Kent where it will be put back together using as much of the old R80 controls and bits as possible to keep costs down and keep it real - hopefully this will be about 2 months max - then off to paint and on the road for early June.

Design - I am going to have it painted Red but a darker shade than the orignal and it will be named ROMEO80  - this covers my Shakespeare theme and is the phonetic word for R -I am getting a design done for this by my friend, fellow rider and design guy Paul Leeson - here are some early drafts.