PIP HIGHAM
Pip Higham is trying to find a lost love…
Among several other unmentionable character defects one stands out like a parka on a penguin: I’ve got a bit of an obsession about building, rebuilding, hacking, fettling, call it what you will, old bikes. I’ve loaded piles of junk into my van that were itching to go to the scrap man, but with a bit of blasting, a grizzle of grinding and usually a significant amount of welding, the scrap magically changes into a thing that works. I’ve rebuilt GT380S with front wheels tucked under the gearbox and I’ve rescued the occasional Vincent (oh the pain... and the cost!) from a fate worse than invisibility. I’ve attempted to help various mates in their efforts to rescue the un-rescueable and been paid to build a few out of a frame and a couple of boxes of rusty, ill-fitting, incorrect and worst of all, inappropriate bits. In this category was a chap who wanted me to build him a ‘chopper’ using a Norton frame and a Triumph engine. He would bring pictures to me of fantastic looking bikes out of obscure West Coast custom bike mags, usually draped with ladies wearing ripped or shrunken jeans and little else. Trouble was that none of these beauties (the bikes, the bikes) used Norton tubes to separate the wheels. I went along with it because I needed the work, no I needed the money, and I very soon started to regret saying those two short, very dangerous words ‘I will’. We built the abomination and despite the fact that it ran well and stopped on a tanner I hated it, from its extended forks to its metal-flake back mudguard. The geezer rode it away with a smile on his face and a dent in his wallet and I never saw him again, ever. We built our own take on a ‘custom’ bike too, a 1961 Bonneville (the best year, no contest). I bought it off Zack one Saturday morning when he was vulnerable; I think I gave him £120 for it and we called it Bazil, over a period of three years I thoroughly ruined that bike with a leather buttoned seat, lots of chrome and, (mea culpa) copper-plated hubs, I still cringe. Roll on a few years and we built the engine for Lew Collins’ beautiful Harris Magnum, what a bike, and worra bloke. In later years there was a succession of GS/GSX/KATANA projectiles with ever more powerful engines, probably the most ridiculous of which was a long black GSX with a 1385cc draw thru turbo motor with around 300 horses chomping at the bit, all good so far but the addition of nitrous oxide without the benefit of a progressive control system turned this bike from a hairyarsed but benevolent bruiser into a cage fightin’ psycho killer. We were not amused, and after it snapped the chain while on a moderately brisk pass down the 1320 we were also a bit scared. In more recent times the projects have reverted to older and generally smaller bikes, watching Power Ranger clad heroes, whose only purpose in life appears to be to irritate and intimidate every pedestrian, horse owner, cyclist and other motor cyclist within earshot has as much appeal for me as a helping of double ended gastroenteritis. Small bikes are great fun, discuss. We recently had a few friends over (yes, I do still have a few and generally the promise of free food and/or drink guarantees a modest turnout) for my ‘getting inexorably closer to the three score and tenth’ birthday. We had pies, beer and many laughs.
Among the ‘guests’ at Beirut Towers were Graham and his wife, long-standing mates since school days. The conversation inevitably swung round to bikes from the time before electricity. Graham’s bike, a Triumph Thunderbird, was the first customised bike I’d ever seen, as I’m only working on two or three projects at present I casually suggested that if I could find a few donor bits I’d re-create ‘The Spotted Bike. Anybody got any old Triumph scrap lying around? I’ll pay cash. And let me know if you own ‘Bazil’!