Tag Archives: Bike of the Month

Bike of the Month October 2018

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I’m a firm believer of the proverb; “Better late than never”; It’s never too late to change your life for the better, it’s never too late to resurrect that website that used to be so great once (because it is once again), and it’s never too late to start Dragracing..

Anna first pointed her front wheel quarter-milewards after having owned the bike she was on for the grand total of 35 years. The seed was planted and a racingcareer was born. In the quest for more speed a Slingshot was put into service and over time up to now, all the right mods have been made to get the bike as quick as possible, yet also as rideable as possible for Anna; it’s all well and good having a 500Bhp bike but if you can’t use it, there’s not really a point (apart from being the baddest dude in the pub)

We have been enjoying Anna and Kyle’s adventures in great detail as them being one of the first (maybe even The First?) Winged Hammers, the racethread has been religiously updated after nearly every racemeet and tests that were undertaken.


We’ve all read about crashing, burnouts, racing in sub-zero temperatures, tyrepunctures and all else that comes with the age-old sport that is dragracing. I for one hope the regular updates continue to be posted up, because it’s one of the threads that makes you come back, have a bit of a read, get motivated and start working away on your own projects again.


Better late than never Anna (and Kyle), your Slingshot is this months Bike of the Month.

Read more here

Discuss here

Bike of the Month September 2018

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I’m not one for drinking (much) but generally, the best ideas are conjured up during a good session on the booze. This bike came to frutition just like that.

Imagine just any cool bike. Did you? Was it a GS500E? I bet it wasn’t. When you put that night on the piss into the equation and you start toying with ideas, together with some equally pissed up friends, what’s not cool in the sober world, can be mindblowing in the other.

The title of the buildtopic of this particular bike raised some eyebrows amongst those with access to certain buttons but with the story unfolding in high gear, all was well. The OP was left to it and we all got to see how Tony actually went ahead with his mad plan and built what could arguably be the raddest GS500E on the planet.


We’re very narrowminded here and don’t like too many different bikes, the GS500E normally really isn’t one of them. Tony’s bike however, is an example how, if you’re a bit creative and have a very big partsbin, you can cheaply make something utterly undesirable into the coolest bike on the block.

Tony, congratulations, your GS is this months Bike of the Month

Discuss here

Buildthread here

Bike of the month August 2018

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Having something like BOTM on Oldskool is a big deal. It carries a certain weight, which makes OSS stand out from all the other websites and facebookpages that scatter the internet and, to me anyway, just water things down. Good bikes are good bikes, but having to visit 10+ websites and filter through the bolt-on brigade to find a few bikes worth reading about, gets old really quick. We’re different, we know it, others know it, and it will only get better.

One could argue that choosing BOTM for the next month, should be for a newly finished project, largely built on the forum, with its own thread and many, MANY pictures. However, due to the sheer amount of bikes being built over the years, sometimes a bike more than worthy of being chosen as BOTM has to wait for a bit.


This bike is such an installment. Its owner/builder Arttu has been a OSS-household name for many years. While many of us modernise our bikes with newer suspension, wheels and brakes, Arttu takes it up a notch. You see, the bike you see here is basically a rolling test bed for all sorts of EFI-trickery, which really shouldn’t have any place on one of our air- or oilcooled motors. Now, he didn’t just get it to work properly on his turbo EFE-powered EZ, he now helps many others out to convert their bikes to fuel injection as well.


I personally have been up close with 2 projects Arttu has been involved with and I can tell you the quality is beyond what you’d expect from a factory, let alone someone working from a little shed in Finland. It’s all pretty impressive and with the build reaching a next stage, it will only get better.


Arttu, congratulations on BOTM for August 2018.

Read about the project here

Discuss here

Bike of the month July 2018

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Some months we pick  bike of the month and some months bike of the month just picks itself. July 2018 is definitely the later.

We wrote about this month’s winner back in April and shared his own amusing account of his post classic race career.

The story ended with his plans to build a very well poked 1100 version of his trusty 750 slabby which would race at East Fortune and also at Spa.

Well he built it and he raced it at Spa, sporting the OSS race team winged hammer emblem too! More than this, he achieved a first and second in his class. Not bad for his first time at Spa. Go winged hammers!

Congratulations Mole ( AKA Adrian McCarthy)  your 7/11 slabby is our July Bike of the month.

Read Moles build here.

Members discuss this article here.

Bike of the month June 2018

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May and June have been busy months for the OSS Admin team. Endurance legends at Donington followed by the TT and even some highland scratching thrown in for good measure. So OSS site time has been limited. (OK excuses for late BOTM out of the way)

Three years ago I wrote this article about a long time member who had long held a dream of building an engine that he had been quietly collecting the bits for .It may have escaped the attention of some, but not me, that he actually built that engine this year.

He didn’t just build it for fun either, he built it to compete at the Donington 4 hour endurance race, against some pretty serious competition.

What is even more special about this bike is that the builder found out early on in the build that he been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Lesser men may have chucked the towel in right there and then but not this guy. He was too busy for cancer and decided he would postpone his treatment so that he could finish the bike and compete on it at Donington. The stuff of legends, I know.

In the end the minor inconvenience of a life threatening medical diagnosis must have momentarily distracted him because although this bike got finished there just wasn’t enough time to get it match fit. Our man still competed in the event along with 2 other OSS team members but it was on the back up bike (not a Suzuki)

Now that John has completed his goal of competing in the endurance legends round at Donington his treatment can begin. He hasn’t wasted any time in making some big life changes including selling all of his bikes and parts. I know that he still has the GS though and I hope he keeps it and gets it to run the way he knows it can.

John you are a Legend mate and we love you and your GS is bike of the month.  You are also the only man in OSS history to have been awarded bike of the month 3 times.

Read John’s build here

Members discuss this here.

Bike of the Month – May 2018

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This month’s bike of the month is a tale of both resurrection and evolution.  Plucked from an insurance sale, this slightly fire damaged, pretty standard machine was rescued by nightrider. It was quite a rare find – especially the other side of the Atlantic. The decision is what we at OSS would call ‘a no brainer’.

We’ve been watching the story of this machine since the oldskoolsuzuki.info site itself was resurrected and as is often the case with projects progress sometimes stalls. Over the last 3 years we’ve seen a pragmatic mix of make do (when the OEM spares are hard to get) and mend.

With some advice and moral support from folk who have done the same thing as you and the balls to give it a go (or know when to sub it out) most obstacles can be over come. The proof is in the riding but this ES is easy on the eye in that striking blue squareness it wears so well.

So the GS 1100 ES has now returned to it’s rightful duty as a smile inducing muncher of miles. And I have no doubt the story and evolution will continue.

 

It’s a great bike. Who wouldn’t want it in their fleet?

Read all about the build  project here

Or throw your green eyed congratulations in nightrider’s direction over here

Congratulations to our Winner!

 

 

Bike of the month March 2018

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There’s many reasons to start your own build, with “because I want to” coming first and “because I can” second. (If the person taking on this project actually can, is something different, but more on that some other time)

Other reasons are aplenty but there’s two that carry much more load than any other reason I can think of. One; building the dream bike of a lost friend. Two; being asked to build that dream bike, by said lost friend.

This Katana was trusted upon Pete by Dave “Swingarm” Roberts, member of old and builder of one of the very few actually cool Bandits in history. Dave was lost to a horrible disease and the Katana for which he already had most of the parts, was left to Pete to finish.

Pete took it upon himself to finish the bike to a standard we rarely see outside of OSS. With a general idea of what Dave wanted the bike to be, he set to work.

Built over the course of less than a year, the Katana was entered in the Newark Show as its first public outing this January, it promptly won a award.

The Kat turned out, arguably, better than the Yoshimura-1135R Pete posted up as the end goal for the build and it’s received praise far and wide.

A fitting tribute to a lost friend, I tip my hat to you Pete; the Katana is this month’s BOTM.

More here

 

 

 

 

Bike of the month February 2018

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Oh no, here he goes again, twittering on about “evolution , not revolution” and “genetic engineering of an extinct species”

Well, nearly but not quite. I’m going to mix it up a bit this time and tell you a tale of evolution AND revolution.

Back in the Dino days of the old site there were many lovely bikes built but because they were scattered around the world you didn’t always get to see them in the flesh. I travelled a lot for OSS and I was lucky enough to see quite a few, close up. Some lived up to the hype and some didn’t. (I include my own creations in the latter category)

As luck would have it though, I didn’t have to travel far to see a bike, where the opposite was true. The pictures I had seen of this bike online, before I stumbled across it at a local bike meet, had not done it justice. That bike belonged to Gregg Campbell AKA Wee Man.

Looking around Gregg’s GSXR1100M Slingshot you could just tell his had been a long and intense love affair. It had the look of a bike that had been tastefully, and carefully evolved to meet its owners exacting tastes and requirements. All of which, were very tidy and meticulously well executed. If our FBOB had been there, he would have been forced to say “bugger me that’s shiny”. It instantly got my “bike you’d most like to take home” vote.

“But KM you promised us a revolution as well as an evolution!”. Easy tiger, I’ll get to that bit.

Fast forward a few years and I’m loafing around at the Fast by Me workshops drinking coffee and listening to Dave telling me about how he took an angle grinder to his modem, while on the phone to his internet provider’s customer support line. Out of the corner of my eye a familiar bike caught my attention. It was none other than Gregg’s Slingshot. “I know that bike” I said. Now we all know what happens to anything that goes to uncle Dave’s. That’s right, it gets the boost.( unless it’s a faulty modem)

The boost is pretty much Dave’s solution for everything ( I think he’s onto something). Gregg’s Slingshot was in for one of Uncle Dave’s rock solid turbo kits. Even Dave paused his internet tirade for a moment to chip in how tidy the bike was.

I’m sure Gregg will agree with me that the arrival of “the boost” has been anything but evolutionary and every bit Revolutionary! (made it, see)

This tells you all you need to know about limitless possibilities offered by 80s and 90’s Suzukis. The best part of breaking up, is making up, especially when the making up bit includes a extra-large bucket full of lairy charged up horses.

Gregg, congratulations you’re our bike of the month.

Members discuss this here.

Bike of the Month January 2018

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Unicorns and cannon balls and Aquagenic urticaria

Here at OSS.info we have our ‘sections’, and of all these the newest kid on the ol’skool block incorporates the water girls and water boys. Their choice of OSS machinery would, to the untrained eye, appear to be frowned upon and the butt of our communities ‘real ol’skoolers’ jokes, almost as if they’re are just about tolerated.

Madb didn’t let this ‘strange arrangement’ phase him, and got on with sharing the pursuit of his own wet dream in the mother of all sections.. ..’projects’.. We all love this section and the numbers prove this, so jumping in at the deep end like one of Pumhart von Steyr’s wet farts would come as a brave move to the unskooled-ol’skool, could there be a more obvious username? too far? too soon?

Here at OSS.info we have no need for toleration, these four concepts and their paradoxes are taken care of by RTFR and the sites definition of ‘what is’.  Armed with this OSS.info and an ethos that I’m sure many of the ‘project pool party’ be them oiled up or blow dried could identity with, has set about making positive evolutionary progress rather than chasing the elusive ‘wheelie wire’.

To say OSS.info tolerates anything on the site would be an insult to both parties, the site’s boundaries are set for all to see just RTFR, and In these boundaries in my own OSS.info virtual dream garage I’m in the centre (OBVS) and every members bike(s) on this site are top-trump cards fanning out, inadvertently jostling for a close orbit but for unknown reason (to me) the water boilers have to work a little bit harder to grab my attention, this bike’s gone from a weak blip on my paris dome to an active target with zero bearing rate.

congratulations Madb, your life and times gsxr is BOTM. The drinks are on you…….. Julie Andrews for me, and that’s almost as close to hobnob humour harbour as I’m comfortable with, so let’s drop a ‘boat anchor’ here before sun down….full moon….half moon…..total eclipse…..that’s it…. my bourbon biscuit built boundaries be breached.

Read Madb’s build thread here. Members discuss this here

Bike of the Month December 2017

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Lists, we all have them; shopping lists, to-do lists, bucket lists. Stuff you “need” to do/buy/build before a certain time.
When you then, in your waking life, don’t get the chance to tick off some of your most desired points on your list, if you’re really lucky, it sometimes happens that some of your friends will do it for you, in your honour and in your memory.

Craig Smith is such a friend. We know Craig as one of our like minded Down Under members who has made VERY good use of what Pops Yoshimura and Wes Cooley started in the old AMA championship, by using his GS as it should be. He has also always made an effort to let us in on all the fun.

This Katana project was started off with previously accumulated parts and a general idea of what the finished product should look like. Craig and a few friends went on to finish the bike that their late friend, Alan Baker, had dreamed off and had actually started building. This project has had many things in common with the OSS Knarf build. Both were documented on the old site.

Only when we got OSS  back up and running did we properly learn how the project turned out and how the story had concluded. (imho) this Katana on its own, even when you don’t know the story behind it,  is one of the best Kats out there. Revealed to friends and the world in May 2016, it’s more than what anyone could wish for as a lasting monument and a promise that they hadn’t been forgotten.

I realise this project has been finished for quite a while and Smithy hasn’t been on OSS much after it but that’s beside the point. I had this bike on my BOTM list for a long time and here it is; congratulations Craig, Alan’s Katana is Bike of the Month December 2017.

Read more here