I love these photos by Jean-Francois 'Jeff' Muguet of me and my Suzuki at the Cafe Racer Festival, Montlhery from earlier this year. Good memories of a really nice event.
I write regular updates on this bike for Performance Bikes magazine. G

What with the chunnel and roadworks it was a 14 hour schlep from home to the Glemseck cafe racer sprint - but worth it. Trying to digest a very phallic Brätwurst washed down with a 1litre tankard of beer at 10am is quite daunting but we had fun.
Gary's Black Arrow was hot to trot.
- or if post-industrial GSX-R is not to your taste how about rear-as-front 16" white-wall tyres and drum brakes?
Seb's BM was sporting some new bling - including nitrous, and a new paint job.
Guy Martin: "SIDEBURN, the bloody best motorbike magazine on the planet....And not just because I'm on the cover"
Nutty Target 320, based on a KTM 690.
Nick's fugly but purposeful Honda Magna mongrel.
Frank Chatokhine's Triumph with lovely mesh fly-screen.
Kraftstoffschmiede R90S
BMW Roadster concept with impressive machined aluminium tail piece
Germans do like Trannies, this Feuerwehr was a minter. BP

A few weeks ago, the editor of Performance Bikes, a magazine I've contributed to for well over a decade, rang up and said, 'We are putting on a free track day with Dunlop and Rockingham racetrack. Why don't you come on the Black Arrow.' Great idea.

Since then, though, I've damaged my left rotator cuff (painful muscle and tendon shoulder injury), highsiding on a wet track at the last DTRA race. I've crashed another two times since then... And I'm busy. So busy. I always go to bed knowing I've only done half as much as I should have that day.

Aching, busy, the black Arrow buried behind two other bikes, excuses, excuses...
But what would Jeff do? I'm talking about Jeff Wright (of FTWCo and Church of Choppers). He has two bars, his T-shirt business, four three kids... Jeff would go to the track day.

So I did. And it was great. The Black Arrow behaved. The sidestand bracket grounds out, but I knew the bike was low. I need to go up a tooth on the front sprocket and take the gauze out of the bellmouths too, but other than that, it felt good. I'm now looking forward to riding it on Montlhery's banking at the Cafe Racer Festival, outside Paris in two weeks.

And, because he's a columnist for PB, John McGuinness turned up, cool as you like, chatted and did a few laps in his World Endurance and TT leathers.

Thanks Jeff. G

Lenny at Bubble Visor sent me some questions to go with some photos of my Suzuki street bike project, the Black Arrow, taken at Racefit last summer. You can see more photos and read the Q&A at Bubble Visor.
Massive thanks to Mat for these photos. They were taken a few months ago and the bike is now a runner with a custom wiring loom, chain, the whole lot! G

The latest bike Deus Milan have built in conjunction with Yamaha. It's an XJR1300 with a heavy endurance influence (I'm going to have to finish The Black Arrow before this look is the next big thing and I've missed the boat). It's called the Eau Rouge, a corner at Spa Francorchamps.
The bike is fitted with the lovely new Campagnolo-pattern Marvic and Deus branded Discacciati calipers. They're the same make as the one-off discs we had made for our Royal Enfield (see previous posts) and also the master cylinders I've fitted to the Black Arrow. They're a little family company from Northrn Italy.
Read more at Deus Ex Machina. G

...to enjoy the delights of Sideburn's instagram feed. There are almost daily updates on the feed, that is hosted on the Sideburn facebook page. You don't even need to sign up for facebook either. Just follow this link
@sideburnmag
We very rarely put the same stuff on Instagram that we put on the blog, either.

If you do have a smartphone - iPhone or Android device-thing - or iPad, you can download the instagram app for free and be safe in the knowledge your attention span will wither down to 23.5 seconds maximum.

Once you've done that you can follow @sideburnmag and all the cool cats who used to do blogs, but now can't be arsed. Not like us!

If you have no idea what Instagram is, it's like that Twitter you've heard all about but with photos (Twitter added a photo to their original word only app to combat Instagram, I think). Users put up a photo, short video or a photo and caption and people can see them in a real-time feed on their phone or iPad. I'm totally addicted to it. It's a combination of rad, sick, and awesome. We're totally stoked to have 5800 followers. Killing it, etc... G

I've been updating progress of the custom-framed GSX-R1100 on Instagram (search @sideburnmag), and also in Performance Bikes magazine, nearly every month, but I haven't put many photos up here. Sorry to the blog faithful. So, here's a catch-up.
Above, is the bike on the bench at Racefit, where I had a Legend Ti exhaust made for it. G
Matt at AH Fabrications made me this amazing oil cooler and bracket. I'm after an Asahina Monster feel. Below is the sketch I sent to him to check the feasibility.

I was asked to write a series of three short articles about a bike that has changed my life, and while there have been a couple, I got the call literally while I was working on my Suzuki project, the Black Arrow. So I chose Steve's Spencer Evo. The articles came out pretty well, if I do say so myself. Read them at influx.co.uk Leave a comment if you can too, please. Make me look popular. G

Racefit have a new website up and running. It's iPad-friendly too.
I visited them again and picked up the titanium Legend they made for the Black Arrow and a titanium paddock stand too. Very happy. G
 A detail of my exhaust.
 A bike with taste - Racefit Legend and RCD rearsets.
 Racefit titanium paddock stands.
 Spondon GSX-R in for new system.
 Jon Racefit's new hauler.
Jon (in an old SB T-shirt) and his wife Tam.

These are the stock, four-piston, radial-mount GSX-R1000 Tokico calipers for the Black Arrow. They were roughly ground flat when I bought them secondhand. I've wet and dried them, then sent them to Matt B, the owner of a bike I featured for PB, who had the Tokico logos engraved into them. It's a tiny detail, in the overall scheme of the bike, but I love it.
Next they'll be bead blasted and hard anodised. G

Oh yes. It had to be done. Keihin CR39 Flatslides. G

The Black Arrow is progressing, slowly, but in the right direction. I bought a completely different engine, from Pete at Eat the Rich's eBay page. Why did I need another engine? The full story is in Performance Bikes (that runs updates on this project every month).
I made a seatbase I thought looked great and took it to Steve Adams (who made the seat for Sideburn's Project FT and the Sideburn Royal Enfield) and he turned his nose up at it, then fettled it into shape.
The Black Arrow is now at Racefit for a full titanium Legend exhaust system. Oh boy! G