Author Archives: Katanamangler

The real cycle you’re working in is a cycle called yourself.

A field guide to bike building personality types, shed psychology, and the subtle gravity of unfinished motorcycles.

The Beginning

In the early 2000s, for myself and many like me, something quite important happened.

Born in the 60s and 70s, we grew up with Wes Cooley’s AMA-winning GS1000, Barry Sheene’s Heron Suzuki RG500, and the Californian Highway Patrol, but we don’t talk about that. You could find a Ford Escort Mk1 RS parked in the street, and kids were still asking Jim to fix it for them.

Without realising it, our still developing brains were being bombarded and etched with images of endurance racer silhouettes and iconic muscle bikes.

As the millennium approached, the motorcycle industry moved on, and those icons became yesterday’s news. At this point, we realised that the motorcycles of our youth were no longer mythical.

They were very much attainable.

The once-poster icons, the Suzuki Katana, the GS1000, the angular Suzuki GSX1100EFE and the GSX-R1100 and GSX-R750, appeared in classifieds described with mechanical optimism:

“Just needs carbs cleaning.”
“Just needs some TLC.”
“Simple winter build.”

And so, our sheds filled up. Not because transport was scarce, but because our youth had unfinished business.

A legion of Generation X motorcyclists who had once used their mum’s best spoons to change push bike tyres began to convince themselves they had the technical ability to finish the work the Japanese motorcycle industry had started. We were going to take Japanese 80s and 90s motorcycle icons and re-engineer them in our sheds.

The Japanese motorcycle industry had long since moved on to fuel injection and fit-and-forget engineering principles. For our special group of plucky enthusiasts, there was unfinished business. Modern bikes became mere donors, to be sacrificed for the genetic engineering of these long-forgotten dinosaurs.

The Birth of a Tribe

Part mechanic, part genetic engineer, left to our own devices, we intrepid but crazed men of vision might have crashed and burned spectacularly at the first seized exhaust stud were it not for the birth of motorcycle forums.

These digital beacons of light and hope offered support, encouragement, technical knowledge, mass hallucination, and the collective fortitude to overcome even the most seemingly impossible technical hurdle.

And so, the tribe was formed.

Made in Japan.
Perfected in a damp shed somewhere in a suburban back garden.

We shared. We watched. We learned. Over time this new tribe established its norms.

What emerged first was the project arc itself.

Most of us had not figured any of this out yet, but we watched as others made it look easy and, through subconscious osmosis of ideas, we learned from one another.

The Seven Sacred Stages (In Theory)

In its purest form, the resto-mod arc runs like this.

Stage 1 – Buy the Donor
Hope usually exceeds actual condition.

Stage 2 – Strip and Form a Plan
Potential is intoxicating. Still in use, cereal boxes in the cupboard all have large sections of cardboard missing as the need for templates begins.

Stage 3 – Acquire or Fabricate Parts
Parcels multiply. You live on eBay. A welder, a lathe or a Bridgeport is considered a superpower. Yet more cereal boxes are needed.

Stage 4 – Dry Fit and Configure
The potential becomes visible. Snakes and ladders between Stage 3 and Stage 4 begin.

Stage 5 – Paint, Powder Coat and Polish
Money becomes irreversible. Falling back to Stage 4 is costly and embarrassing but it still happens.

Stage 6 – Assembly
For the forum, this is the most photogenic and satisfying stage of the project to watch. Your stainless steel fastener collection takes a pounding. Arguments on which assembly grease and whether stainless steel has the correct properties for brake calliper fixture erupt.

Stage 7 – Shake Down and Snag
First ride: transcendence.
Second ride: oil weep. Fuck!
Third ride: carburettor realism. Start yet another what size main jet thread.

While this list represents the full arc, the truth is not everyone completes it.

Some exit at Stage 3.
Some live permanently in Stage 4.
Some never really leave Stage 1.
Some complete it, but for very different reasons.

Which brings us to the types of resto-mod builder.

I have been watching people build bikes on build threads for over 20 years, and I have been building bikes myself for a good chunk of my adult life. I have observed lots of different approaches to the seven steps. What follows is a tongue-in-cheek take on the patterns I have observed in myself and in others.

The truth is we have all been most if not all of these at some point.

1. The Executor

The Executor respects structure.
He defines scope early and defends it. No mid-build identity crisis. No late turbo diversions.
He completes all seven stages, resolves the snags and rides it properly.
And then, to everyone’s dismay, he sells it.
Completion was the objective. Ownership is incidental.

Characterised by:
• A build brief that survives intact.
• Controlled parts acquisition.
• A properly sorted final machine.
• A classified advert titled “Project complete.”

He collects finished arcs.

2. The Keeper – The One-Bike Man

The Keeper may build like an Executor.
But at Stage 7 something different happens.
The first sorted ride does not trigger detachment.
It triggers belonging.
He keeps it.
Not because it appreciates. Not because it wins shows.
Because it feels complete.
Years pass. Quiet refinements occur. No restless accumulation.

Characterised by:
• One finished machine evolving subtly over years.
• Maintenance as ritual.
• Deep familiarity.
• No classifieds browsing.

He exits the cycle by staying put.

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3. The Minimalist – The Sufficiency Engineer

The Minimalist travels only as far as necessary.
He buys carefully, not rare, not catastrophic, just structurally sound.
He upgrades what materially improves the ride.
He ignores cosmetic escalation.
He finishes efficiently.
He reaches a functional Stage 7 and stops.
No marginal-gain obsession. No dramatic reinvention.

Characterised by:
• Sensible suspension improvements.
• Clean electrics.
• Rapid path to rideable condition.
• A motorcycle that gets used.

Enough is enough.

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4. The King of Cool

Sitting between the Executor and the Minimalist is a more instinctive creature.
The King of Cool understands proportion.
He knows exactly which forks, which wheels and which stance will harmonise. He balances factory lineage with contemporary sharpness. The engineering is solid, but the silhouette is everything.
The loom might not be invisible.
The underside might not be concours.
But the profile? Perfect.
It photographs effortlessly. It becomes cultural currency.

Characterised by:
• Strategic use of premium, visible components.
• A bike that “just sits right.”
• Strong aesthetic coherence.
• Social media traction exceeding mileage.

He builds icons, not just motorcycles.

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5. The Nearly Builder

The Nearly Builder thrives in Stages 1 to 3.
Stage 2 feels like genius.
Stage 3 feels like momentum.
Then divergence creeps in.
A better idea appears. Another direction suggests itself. The identity of the machine becomes fluid.
Stage 4 becomes hesitation. Stage 5 becomes overthinking. Stage 6 may or may not arrive.
He often exits before Stage 7.

Characterised by:
• Competing upgrade paths.
• Parts accumulation without integration.
• “Thinking of changing direction…”
• Workshops full of intention.

He does not fail.
He disperses.

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6. The Never-Ending Build

This is not indecision.
It is deliberate suspension.
The Never-Ending Builder lives in Stage 4, the dry build.
The machine is perpetually close. Close enough to imagine completion, not close enough to conclude.
He revisits geometry. Adjusts stance. Reconsiders finishes.
Completion would introduce finality.
Finality would introduce the question, what next?
So the build spans years, possibly a decade.
It may get finished.
It may not.
For him that does not matter.

Characterised by:
• A project permanently 85 percent complete.
• Repeated mock-ups.
• “Still dialing it in.”
• No urgency to reach Stage 7.

The build itself is home.

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7. The Hoarder – So Many Projects, So Little Time

The Hoarder masters Stage 1.
Acquisition is reward. Rare parts are security. Possibility is currency.
Stage 2 occasionally happens. Stage 3 sometimes. Beyond that urgency evaporates.
Frames rest in formation. Engines wait patiently. Shelving improves annually.
Completion is optional.

Characterised by:
• Multiple dormant donors.
• Rare components awaiting hypothetical builds.
• Storage expansion as a secondary hobby.
• Minimal forward momentum.

He collects beginnings, not endings.

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8. The Innovator – The Rosette Hunter

This builder operates on a different plane.
He does not just want to finish.
He wants to advance.
Every build is a technical statement. Factory design is a starting point, not a boundary. He redesigns everything, hides wiring not for neatness but for purity and machines bespoke components rather than compromise.
Innovation is the metric.
But beneath it lies something precise.
Validation.
He wants recognition from his peers as a true innovator.
Best Modified.
Front cover.
Judging panel acknowledgement.
Stage 7 is not the test ride.
It is the awards ceremony.
Unlike the King of Cool, he works quietly. Progress photos stop. Details are withheld. Originality is currency and currency invites imitation.
Industrial secrecy is discipline.

Characterised by:
• Obsessive finish standards.
• Money no object.
• Concealed builds prior to show debut.
• Tolerances exceeding factory specification.
• A launch timed to a show calendar.

He completes arcs, but for recognition.

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9. The Racer

The Racer exists in a different universe.

He is restricted by the regulations of his class.
Form follows function.
There is no luxury for frills.

Weight reduction is everything.

If a part does not contribute to speed, reliability or legality, it goes.

The suspension often costs more than the bike.
Tyres are consumables.
Bodywork is sacrificial.

He does not polish.
He measures.

He does not chase Instagram angles.
He chases lap time.

Characterised by:
• Compliance with class regulations above all else.
• Suspension investment that borders on obsession.
• Weight reduction as a philosophy.
• A bike that looks unfinished but is brutally purposeful.
• Lap times as the only metric that matters.

He burns possibility instead of storing it.

You’re every woman, it’s all in you.

The truth is we can each of us be all of these builders at different points in time.

There are times when we execute with discipline.
Times when we accumulate.
Times when we refine endlessly.
Times when we need applause.
Times when one bike is enough.

Sometimes our sheds simply reflect the stage of life we are in and the space our heads occupy.

So maybe the types are not identities, they are closer to weather systems.

Sometimes you need the focus of a clean build.
Sometimes you need the comfort of potential waiting patiently in the corner.
Sometimes you need the audacity of innovation.
Sometimes you need to prove something, even if it is only to yourself.

If you are happy in the process, that is what counts.

If the hours absorbed in geometry, wiring and seized fasteners give you calm, purpose or even just distraction, then the project has already done its job.

The weight we carry.

A final word of caution: you can’t take it with you. It’s not 1999, it’s 2026.

In 30 years, every donor, every rare headlight, every perfectly balanced stance will either belong to someone else or will be scrap. Possibly both, in sequence.

Stuff has its own emotional inertia. It gathers meaning simply by remaining in place. It convinces you that because it exists, it must eventually become something. Three projects feel heavier than one, not physically but psychologically. Potential becomes obligation.

That weight is subtle but significant.

Be aware of it.

Keep what energises you. Release what quietly anchors you.

Because the motorcycles were never really the point.

As Robert M Pirsig so succinctly put it, “The real cycle you’re working in is a cycle called yourself.”

And that is the only one that actually matters.

From the Throttle to the Hobble

Youth

In the 1980s, in my teens, I wanted nothing more than a Suzuki Katana, all angles and attitude. By twenty I had my first taste of the barely civilised excess of a Suzuki GSX-R750.

Back then I was convinced horsepower was a kind of secular grace, bestowed not on the meek but on the mechanically devout. If you understood it, if you respected it, it was meant for you. The rest of the world simply had not been initiated.

I did not just love horsepower. I thought it belonged to me, as if it had been waiting patiently for my worthiness.

And tied to that was the larger delusion, immortality.

It was not that we thought death was impossible. It just seemed unlikely and, more importantly, misdirected. It happened to the unlucky, or the careless, or someone who miscalculated in a way we never would. We believed in our reflexes the way believers trust scripture.

The immortality of youth was not bravery. It was ignorance layered over resilience. We healed quickly enough to mistake recovery for invulnerability. If we survived a particular corner or decision, we took it as confirmation of judgement rather than luck.

Many did not get that confirmation.

Some names exist only in old photographs. Some bikes were never rebuilt. The margin between those of us who grew older and those who did not was often measured in inches and timing, not virtue.

At fifty-eight, cold and damp weather runs an audit on my body. Old injuries, half remembered crashes, years of throwing myself at the countryside, surface in my knees, lower back and shoulders like quiet accountants. I hobble first thing in the morning when the temperature drops. There is an accumulated record now, a ledger of consequences that teenage me would have dismissed as hypothetical.

Back then pain was temporary and abstract. Now it is historical.

That is the shift age brings. Horsepower no longer feels like a divine gift bestowed on the righteous. It feels conditional. Borrowed. The machines still offer power, but my body negotiates the terms.

At seventeen I thought speed proved I was meant for it.
At fifty-eight I understand I was simply spared, often by luck, sometimes by instinct, rarely by wisdom.

The impetuousness of youth made us feel eternal. The damp in my joints tells a different story. Somewhere between the throttle and the hobble is a more honest account of what it means to have survived.

Grown Up Things

By the mid-1990s I had my first mortgage. By the end of the decade I was a father and a husband.

The bike went into storage. It became impractical, a word that enters a man’s vocabulary sometime between his second child and his first term life insurance policy. I had acquired responsibilities more important than me. I developed opinions about mortgage rates. The most dangerous thing in my life was a petrol driven lawnmower.

When I became a father, and more to the point when I became the man the bank and the family both depended on, I understood the expectation. There is that line, “When I became a man, I put away childish things,” from the First Epistle to the Corinthians. It suggests a clean break, a moral upgrade, as though maturity is simply deletion.

From the outside that is probably what it looked like. The bikes went. The risk narrowed. Sensible car. Sensible hours. If you had inspected my life, you would have found no visible trace of the old compulsion.

But the truth was closer to addiction than reform.

An addict can appear clean. He can function, pay bills, raise children, show up early. No tremor in the hands. No residue in the bloodstream. The behaviour stops, but the appetite does not evaporate. It waits.

That was what it was like with motorcycles, with speed, with that teenage conviction that horsepower meant something metaphysical. I did not stop wanting it. I quarantined it.

Internally there was never any doubt. Not once did I believe I was over it. I was simply not using at that time. You do not become an ex-addict. You become an addict who has reasons not to use.

Fatherhood gave me those reasons. Provision gave me those reasons. Responsibility built a perimeter fence around the old appetite. I stayed inside it as long as I could.

But beneath the discipline was absolute certainty. Not hope. Not fantasy. Certainty.

One day I was going to use again. That knowledge did not make me reckless. It made me patient.

From the outside I had put away childish things. Inside I had preserved them at low heat, like coals banked overnight.

It was not long before the internet and broadband arrived and I discovered motorcycle forums.

They were brilliantly narrow. Entire arguments about oil viscosity. Four-page debates about carb jet sizes. Men from across the world posting grainy photographs of motorcycle parts as if they were medical scans. There was little performance of personality, just solid information and occasional dry sarcasm. In retrospect it was group therapy combined with serious technical knowledge.

It was my gateway drug, a way back in. A forum full of fellow addicts, most of whom were openly using again and dressing it up as a legitimate hobby.

At night, once the house was quiet, I would go out to the workshop I had built in the garage. Not far, just twenty paces from the kitchen. I was not vanishing, I was checking something. Out there sat whatever unloved 1980s relic I had dragged home. I told myself I was restoring history. In truth I was restoring a version of myself.

Rebuilding an old engine is honest work. You cannot sidestep a seized head stud. You cannot fudge valve timing. Either it works or it does not. Compared with the rest of my grown up life it felt almost spiritual.

Other like minded souls were performing the same ritual in their own sheds. We never said we needed it. We just asked and answered technical questions. It was camaraderie without confession.

When social media began to replace forums, I spent the second half of my forties, along with my Dutch friends, rescuing oldskoolsuzuki.info from slipping into oblivion. We did that because we felt an obligation to those who still wanted it and needed it. I am glad we did, and I am glad it is still doing what we worked so hard to ensure it would continue to do.

Wisdom

Now I am fast approaching sixty. The children have gone. The mortgage has gone. The time I once fought to steal is suddenly available in broad daylight.

The forums are all but gone, replaced by social media streams that seem less interested in carburettors than in outrage. I can find a hundred opinions on politics in seconds. Finding a coherent, technically useful thread is far harder. Algorithms feed content designed to trigger a response. Friends’ groups live in echo chambers. Division has replaced unity.

I have more bikes than ever now. They share one thing in common. I can maintain them all myself. Some I built from scratch, some I have rebuilt extensively, but mostly I maintain them and I ride them.

Now it is different.

I am riding more miles in a year than I probably did in my entire forties. Proper miles. Crossing half the country before breakfast. Taking the long way without apology. Loading the bike and disappearing for three days, camping under cold, indifferent stars with like minded souls who ride well, drink well and laugh heartily round an open fire. This life fulfils in a way no thread ever did.

The garage is no longer a refuge. It is a workshop in the literal sense. Maintenance and repair when required. The stable kept fit because the point now is not rebuilding but riding. The machines exist to move.

I am not pinned between a garage bench and a glowing screen any more. If I want to ride, I ride. Midweek. Early morning. No need to justify it. That freedom is both gift and warning.

Because I know it is conditional.

Bodies change. Health shifts without consultation. Friends disappear. Weather closes in. The window is open now, but I am not naïve enough to believe it will stay open indefinitely. That awareness sharpens everything. While I can swing a leg over and feel steady, that is exactly what I intend to do.

I want the real world. Damp tents. Campfire coffee. Engines ticking as they cool. Conversations that do not require Wi-Fi. Laughter that does not need punctuation. I am grateful for the online years. Those forums were a lifeline. We built something solid there, an informal, unsentimental support group disguised as mechanical advice. It mattered. I will maintain my commitment to keeping oldskoolsuzuki going, because I know how important it remains to many.

But for me, this phase of my life demands something else.

It demands that I exploit the freedom I worked decades to earn. Not recklessly, but deliberately. Use the miles while they are available. Share roads with people whose faces I can see and whose hands I can shake.

I do not feel the urge to narrate it any more. I do not feel compelled to post proof of motion. The validation I once got from a reply notification now comes from riding an open ribbon of tarmac with like minded souls, knowing I am going to laugh and drink round a fire tonight and then do it all again the next day.

At forty-five, rebuilding a bike felt like reclaiming my youth. At fifty-eight it feels more like negotiating with gravity. I make old man noises getting on and off my bikes. I have friends who no longer ride, not because they do not want to but because bodies make decisions pride cannot override.

Mortality is less abstract now. It sits in the garage with me, somewhere between the toolbox and the paddock stand.

That sharpness makes things clearer. The ride itself matters more than the build thread documenting it. The conversation and a cigarette at a roadside stop beats any online exchange. Standing with friends of a similar vintage, helmets off, laughing about how much our bike gear shrank over winter, feels more solid than any digital affirmation ever did.

In my twenties motorcycles were a calling. In my forties they were therapy disguised as maintenance. In my sixties they will be something else entirely, a deliberate choice to remain engaged with risk, skill and other human beings in real space.

I still enjoy the shed. I still enjoy the smell of fuel and warm metal. I simply no longer pretend I am rebuilding youth. I ride not to escape life, but for life not to escape me.

The irony is that we spent our middle years escaping into garages and forums to cope with adulthood. Now that we finally have time, we realise what we were really after was not escape at all. It was presence, with a machine that demands attention and with like minded people who understand why that demand still feels necessary.