Monday, January 28, 2013

When I Was A Greasy Rockabilly Type.

About to leave on one of the early Rockers Reunion Runs to Brighton. This would of been right at the beginning of the 1990's. I'm riding my Matchless G12 CSR. Man, I wish I still had that bike. Although having said that it did have the worst designed oil pump in the world. The infamous 'video cassette' type, it was dubbed that because it looks like a small video cassette natch'. Leave it standing for a few days and it would wet sump so badly the pavement would be awash with a black oily mess. The CSR (Competition/Sprung/Roadster or Coffee Shop Racer as it was dubbed by the other factories, they thought it was a derogatory term) was AMC cashing in on the cafe racer craze using their rather boring G12 650 twin cylinder as the base model. This particular CSR came right out of the factory with Ace bars, rear sets, Siamese pipes, light weight ali mudguards with minimalist brackets, custom taillight, a lumpy cam and a high compression ratio of 8.5:1. Supposedly good for over a ton but I never did quite manage to get it up to those speeds no matter how hard I tried. The customising didn't extend to the brakes however, they are complete shit. An 8" twin leader would of been a good idea but I'm guessing the companies finances just didn't stretch that far.

5 comments:

  1. Haha! Touche. That Matchless was a beauty...

    ReplyDelete
  2. love you bruv. mod, rocker, straight up muther fucker. x

    ReplyDelete
  3. You're a fucking legend mate, great bike, hens teeth these days, even then . . . my business partner from the same time at Classic Bike Tune, Dave Blomfield, had/has a wicked, genuine, one of fuck-all left G45's, gave it a punt on the street in front of the shop a couple of times back then, open megas, bump start, will never forget it, love the Big M !!!

    ReplyDelete