Saturday 12 March 2011

Rob Mac and his Fireblade

Streetfighters are becoming a global phenomenon. Most are a far cry from where the movement started in the 80's. Such is their popularity that most manufacturers have brought out production based fighters, or at least their take on a fighter.
But buying a fighter out of the showroom is not what its really about. A fighter should be a bike you've built, or rebuilt, yourself. It should perform better than the original, look and sound tougher, and basically be set up for some on road hooliganism. It should also be relatively cheap, since the donor bike is usually a crashed sportsbike, and the idea is to remove a lot of the non-essential parts. Stripped down and ready to rumble.
Honda's FireBlade is one of the most popular choices for fightering. The bike was phenomanlly succesful in the 90's, and they are typically a reliable and robust bike which has left a lot of cheap models on the market in the last few years. The perfect base for a fighter. 
The recipe is pretty simple: fit late model forks and radial brakes, change the tail section for something a bit more sporty, slide in a single sided swinging arm if you like, fit motocross bars, aftermarket clocks, race spec levers and a new paint job, and you're done. Green flames optional...

Paul Rigney and his Rickman Honda

Rickman Motorcycles was established by Don and Derek Rickman in 1959. The core of their business was making motorcycle frames for other manufacturers' engines. These frames (initially for off-road bikes) were sold as kits to which you would fit the engine, and electrics from a production bike and usually take it racing.
Rickman did for a while produce their own complete machines, but only when a manufacturer would acquiesce to selling the brothers some engines, which was not often. None of the British manufacturers would do so. Rickman's last factory special rolled out the door in 1975. The factory continued in its work, producing in later years frames for the Suzuki GS1000, Honda CB900 Bol d’Or and Kawasaki Z1 900.
This example, owned by Paul Rigney, was imported into Australia in 1977. The donor CB750 was also a 1977 model. It was optioned as a single seater, so came with the longer tank and shorter tail unit. Being a ’77 model it came with the Kawasaki cast wheels that incorporated a cush-drive.
Paul has performed an astonishing restoration on his CR750, and thanks good friend Geoff Martin for the engine rebuild and for all his help.