Hot Metal

Jim Taylor

Description

Jim Taylor is an old school motorcycle rider and mechanic, an opportunist and adventurer: 'Hot Metal' is a helter-skelter ride of self-discovery, energised by the author's unquenchable passion for a life on the hard road. From bike club culture and camaraderie in the towns and villages of Britain to conflict and upheaval in a forgotten Asian war; the motorcycles are the driving force of this remarkably frank and hugely entertaining story.Prepare to be moved - in more ways than you ever thought possible - by this gripping and fascinating new book by the author of 'Wheels of Steel'.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: The Conrad Press
• Date de parution: 22 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839780486
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Hot Metal
a motorcycle adventure ride like no other
Jim Taylor


Hot Metal
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2020
Tel: [phone] www.theconradpress.com 
 [e-mail]
ISBN 978-1-839780-48-6
Copyright © Jim Taylor, 2020
The moral right of Jim Taylor to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
Cover image created with authors own images
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.


Also by Jim Taylor:
Wheels of Steel – a rollercoaster ride of adventures by road and by rail

Published by The Conrad Press .
ISBN 978-1-911546-60-3
£9.99 Also available as an eboo k


Introduction
H ot Metal is the first of my works: originally written as a biographical project with the title Years of the Horse , it was intended as a tribute to the thirty-six motorcycles I’ve owned and worked on during my lifetime.
Presented in three parts (or books) researched from diaries and journals I had written, over a thirty-year-period, each book aims to lead the reader through a progression of incidents and adventures ranging from the mundane to the insane.
It is about youth culture in the 1980s motorcycle scene, discovering the world on two wheels in the 1990s and putting it all into perspective post millennium.
As well as the fantastic, perhaps even lunatic, experiences I am sharing here, the many notable characters that made the early years as mad as they were, become as important to the story as the motorcycles themselves.
Jim Taylor March 2020


PREFACE
I t’s July 2018…
The XT 660 pulled out of the driveway, exhaust popping, and we were off. A few twists of the throttle and the farm was behind me, I’d made the 200 yards straight, and was breaking heavily for the blind junction that slips around the corner bank of the pub beer garden.
Downhill now, trees meeting overhead in a tunnel of green, as I lean it one side to the other; eyeballs trained on the emerging curve of tarmac – and there’s the straight, a hundred yards clear and open for the taking. Wrist back and neck forward for the sunshine ride.
The car is halfway out of that hidden driveway before the woman even looks and I know I’m going to hit it; there’s no time to think, stuff just happens.
My front wheel is through as the gap closes, and I touch the rear brake to whip the back around, skipping the tyre off the kerbstone and I’ve made it! Loose gravel, bollards and more kerbstones. I can’t brake, I can’t lean, and I’m heading for the ditch; nothing for it but to lay her down and hope for the best.
This book is dedicated to every young greaser who grew up in the 1970s and 80s, lived and breathed motorcycles, couldn’t afford the one they dreamed of, so went with whatever was out there and they could afford to keep on the road.
It’s for all those kids who started out with a screwdriver and a pair of mole grips, stripped every thread, snapped a few spark plugs and did their own spray jobs with a can they’d nicked from the local garage. But most of all it’s about a bunch of teenagers from a small village, getting around and having fun. It’s about rivalries and camaraderie, denim and leather.


BOOK ONE
Genesis
4 And the Serpent Said Unto the
Woman, Ye shall not Surely die.
5 For God doth know that in the day
ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall
be opened, and ye shall be as
gods, Knowing good and evil.
Chapter III verses 4-5


Chapter one
Milk and alcohol
M y earliest recollections and involvements with motorcycles include: my dad taking me up the main field of our little farm on the back of a Lambretta he had bought in the early seventies, when I was about seven years old. The scooter slid from under us and we hit the pasture. I remember we were wearing brand new Stadium open-faced crash helmets with peaks and chinstraps. I still have the original blue one.
Then there was Dad’s old BSA A10 sidecar rusting away amongst a pile of junk and stinging nettles in the back yard with just its tyre showing. Dad’s old mates turning up on different bikes over the years and Uncle Chris’ motorbike shop in Tontine street (just off Folkestone sea-front) with the smell of petrol, rubber tyres and oil changes.
For us in the day it was Evel Knievel, Eddy Kidd, Steve McQueen, Kickstart, the Fonz and CHIPS, and of course Marlon Brando in The Wild One.
I learned to ride on Sam Lillywhite’s bright red ex-post office Puch, which actually looked like a motorbike, as it had a proper petrol tank unlike the later Maxi step-through. It had pedals and a throttle cable that stuck, causing the engine to race, every time I tried to slow up on the slopes at the old Brabourne chalk quarry where we rode it as thirteen-year-olds. I had at least two terrifying crashes before I learned to keep calm and use the brakes rather than panic at the noise and lay it down amongst the brambles and scrap metal.
I was fifteen years old and the year was 1982. I had been working Saturday mornings for several months and saving up, so that when I was sixteen, I would be able to go out and buy a motorcycle. Dad had taken me to a small bike shop in Tontine street, which was the main drag for the seaside town of Folkestone in Kent. I had set my heart on a beautiful white Yamaha TY50 Enduro; that was my dream, but the price was beyond the scope of my savings and would still be out of reach until the following summer at best.
As it happened, I got the opportunity to buy, for twenty quid from a local nutter, a Suzuki B120, P reg. as I remember. It was badly neglected and not fit for the road. Dad was keen on the idea, as I would be able to get used to controlling a bike within the safety of our six-acre smallholding. This place included woods, ponds and fields, dotted with sheep and cows and discarded equipment amongst the stinging nettles like ploughs, rollers and disc harrows.
I thought I would have this motorbike all ready and brought back to road worthiness, so that once I was seventeen, I could take my test on it. It was a maroon colour with white side panels, looked and smelt like a real bike and it was mine.
The very next day I found I couldn’t start it due to a fuel problem. The day after that it did start and ran, until I stalled it, but then no amount of kicking would raise a splutter. I discovered that if I left it for four or five hours it would start again and run fine for a short time, then stop and refuse to start again. Dad did help me by opening and cleaning the carburettor and the suspicion was that it must be flooding due to wrong adjustments, or some other mystery reason.
The following day we cleaned the petrol tap filter and this confirmed that it had not been flooding but starving, as once the filter inside the tank became clogged again, with a decade of tank rust, the engine would stop, due to the petrol in the float chamber being used up and it would take hours for more to seep through and re-fill the chamber. This discovery had been made after we removed the sediment bowl from the petrol tap and found it to be absolutely full of silted rust particles. No matter what position the tap lever was in, no fuel would flow. We had emptied this sediment bowl out, but it would keep filling with sediment until we had the tank off and shook that out with gravel from our driveway.
I had been completely ignorant of the mechanisms of a petrol engine at age fifteen. My only experience having been draining the carburettor on my Dad’s Ferguson tractor prior to starting, to flush the tractor vaporising oil mix from the system until it filled back up with neat petrol. Then it would start and as long as we could get the engine warm enough before the small petrol tank ran dry, we could switch over to TVO, which was four parts central heating oil, to one part petrol, before getting down to business. We used to use an old trench coat draped across the front grill to deprive the radiator of cold air and bring the switching temperature up quicker.
I had bought the bike on Tuesday October 26th and spent three days sorting out the fuel system. Below are the subsequent diary entries I made verbatim, during the week following on.
Monday 1st November
I cleaned out the air filter and recharged the battery. Put two bolts in the seat, two in the petrol tank but one sheared. Put some air in front tyre and a dust cap on.
Tuesday 2nd November
Dad and I inspected the points and I bought a new oil cap to replace the plastic bag jammed in the hole and a screw for the points cover panel.
Wednesday 3rd November
I lost the screw I bought yesterday and broke the choke cable.
Thursday 4th November
I took the front mudguard off but sheared two nuts in the process. I polished up the points side cover and the clutch side cover.
Friday 5th November
I bought another screw (for points cover) and a choke cable.
To put things into comparison; Saturday 6 th ’s entry reads:
Found some burnt-out firework cylinders for re-filling with gunpowder, fell in the pond. Down in Cheriton, three girls wolf whistled at me and I waved.
I had lived quite a sheltered life up to about this time. I was quite shy and had not worked out how to chat up, or be chatted up by, the fairer sex. I did know lots about playing in the woods with guns, hunting rabbits with ferrets and making explosives though. I used to mix my own gunpowder in the loft of our decaying old bungalow; the space up there had become my bedroom. Saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur, a recipe given me by one of my dad’s old mates, a brilliant but casually unreliable back street mechanic c