I think I mentioned that I was going to be unexpectedly busy this week, and that BMW related progress might suffer as result. That was before I remembered that my nephew was getting married on the Friday, and my nose was invaded by some sort of nanotech rubber factory. I'm fairly sure there's a rubber factory up my nose. as snot isn't usually thick enough to bounce is it?

I did get the front mudguard made along with some mounting tags to weld to the fork brace as you can see in the picture to the left. Looking at the picture, it doesn't look that bad, but it's not really floating my boat because the radius of it's edge isn't concentric with the tyre.

I've got something over half a sheet of 2mm thick 1050 aluminium that I've been avoiding using for some time now. I suppose that an aluminium mudguard on a café racer is practically de rigéur, and aluminium is much easier to shape than steel so I'm sorely tempted to have another go using the ally.

I can't remember if I mentioned the colour scheme I have in mind? I've been thinking in terms of silver and orange, as when I think of German machinery racing. in my mind's eye I see the 300SL that Stirling Moss, with Dennis Jenkinson as co-driver, drove to win the 1955 Mille Miglia. I think it's fair to say that the win was as much due to Jenkinson's invention of pace notes as it was to Stirling Moss' driving. You can read more about it on Stirling Moss' own site.

Hopefully, the silver/orange paint scheme will make the foam air filters look a little less lurid. Though, in fairness, considered as a whole, and if you can picture the exhaust in black, and the earlier type rocker boxes in place, the overall effect is quite pleasing I feel.

During the course of the week, the nice people at Spectrum Contract Vinyls sent me a sample card of their range of coloured upholstery vinyls, so I ought to be able to find some vinyl for the seat that qualifies as orange without clashing with the filters, and then go and find some paint to work with that.

While I'm brandishing links around, if you're interested in this, you'd probably enjoy yourself at RockerBoxer which is Vanzen's site and has a huge gallery of Airheads both race and café, as well as his own, rather more ambitious, BMW build.

Aside from Version 3 of the front mudguard, I probably ought to get around to doing some shopping for assorted bits and bobs. That said though, I ought to do something about the side stand in the fairly near to immediate future...