Yep, Nosferatu - cos it wouldn't die.

In 1987 I bought a K100, I'd just passed my test and it was the biggest bike in the shop. Nuff said. I had to buy a bike magazine on the way home to find out exactly what I'd bought. I read the magazine and realised that I'd have to count the cylinders when I went to collect it, cos' it could be either a seven fifty or a thou. Fingers crossed on that one eh!
(That's completely truthful btw, I was pretty stupid back then)

Within a few weeks I'd pranged it. New forks (Forcelle Italia/Ceriani via Ultimate Source for those who remember them) plus other go-faster junk: rearsets, Motad exhaust, paint job, plus a Sprint fairing.

Roll forwards a few years and the bike spent a while looking after the paint cans, kids' toys and stuff in the laundry room.

In 1999 I threw most of the junk away, mainly because that was the cheapest way to get it back on the road and cash was tight back then as it is for most of us with young kids and a mortgage. I'd also improved my motorcycling knowledge by stratospheric amounts (for me, anyway) and realised that the K was a big heavy old beast, so lightening it was the way to go if I wanted to take on the GSXRs of the day (still a bit stupid eh?).

And this is what I had:


Oh it had still got the Cerianis, plus an eye-wateringly expensive Brembo four piston conversion (which was rubbish cos' it used the original discs) plus clip-ons and a Koni, all left over from my pre-mortgage and family days. The Motad had split at the bracket (normal, apparently ) so the item in the picture is actually a euphonium.
Okay, it's not really, but it's an early indication of my mechanical prowess - it sounded terrible and seemed to destroy every bit of power. No probs, cos' the brakes were still rubbish. The Raask rearsets were abandoned - literally, because they kept falling off, so the ones in the pic are DIY and proved to be just as rubbish as the Raask ones, early days.
This was 1999 so it wasn't a cafe racer then. It was just a rubbish bike 

And here's the proof:


Actually, this cataclysm was mainly down to an inattentive car driver, and me jumping off rather than face the inevitable. Truth is though, the bike exploded with such enthusiasm that I have to take some designer's responsibility for its almost suicidal reaction to a fairly minor crash. The car driver was lovely; she was called Claire and bred beagles. I thought at first that she was driving off from the scene but it turned out that she had such a panic attack that she had just let go of the controls and abandoned all of a driver's normal duty to interfere constructively with the car's forward motion. I was running after her (uninjured, always lucky) and throwing my gloves at her car as a means of stopping her driving off. Gloves eh? yep that'll work.

Anyway, this time I mended it with a new bike. I had realised that a fifteen year old brick was never going to meet my corner-carving ambitions and so a R1100s arrived, which was so lovely that I swore I'd never 'improve' it in the way that I had tortured my K (that's not exactly how things panned out with the 's', which I still own, but that's another long story)

So the K sat, cobwebby, still crashed and growing white fur in a forgotten shed for about 12 years. One day I rolled it out, photographed it for the last time and prepared to scrap it.

Except I didn't, I couldn't. By this time cafe racers had been invented and the thing just seemed to be asking me for another go. I get choked thinking about it. I was old by then and so was the bike. I kept going back and looking at it for a whole afternoon. No, we weren't finished just yet!

So it went back on the road circa 2013, pretty much like the first picture, but with bigger front discs and a real exhaust (not a brass band instrument!) Oh, and I finally managed to create a set of rearsets that didn't keep falling off, yay!

Of course, the stupidity struck again and this time I lobbed it into a tree, which won (they always do):


This time, I paid some attention to the reasons why I and the bike had this bad habit of parting company. The next rebuild had minor tweaks: radial tyres, even bigger front discs, forks with movement and damping, plus a rear shock that permitted some static sag - very useful. I also learned just how durable the Jetronic ECU is - note how the ECU in the picture, or at least it's circuit board, is still hanging on the connector, but the casing has been ripped off in the impact. Still works, that ECU.

So the final iteration of the world's most enduring K was ridden from 2014 until 2018 without incident (am I getting older, or better at building bikes?) It was, as it always had been from the outset, a user, a workhorse, I always commuted to work and back by bike. I parked it up in 2018 when I put the Madass on the road - some of you might have noticed it in the background looking a bit neglected next to those show-off K75s that came along.

So now it has its turn again - back on the road soon!






And yep, it's bug-ugly, just like its dad!

It's going to be green, yes?

If it gets you noticed then that is a good thing, you don't want some cager to knock you off.

The side photo with that headlight cowling reminds me of the R65LS of the early 80's

Nice job on the frontbrakes

... and determination can be a daunting thing Chris – at least to us mere mortals. 

Well determination is just nature's way of getting us to fulfill her purpose. Yep it's nice to be lazy and to lie down in the sun and eat the easy fruit, but each of us has some small role to play. That role isn't for our silly and short-lived benefit although we may think it is, it's for nature's purpose, which is far far beyond anything we are equipped to understand. All we can hope for is that, at the end of our lives we will have striven well to follow the impulses that nature has given us. If so, we can hope for a pat on the head, like a faithful dog that knows it's done well, but not why. Take the pat on the head and lie down happy without asking any questions; you wouldn't understand anyway.  

In other words, stay cool, hang loose, admit nothing.

...and keep on consuming the Guinness.

I would love to have a beer or two with you guys I