Secret Knowledge.

Usually, Saturday is the day when I have a go at the BMW, but this Saturday we were off to Devon for a birthday celebration so I was rather expecting that I wouldn't get anything done to it. I'd been kicking around ideas for posts with a view to leaving you with something a little more substantial than a negative progress report. As it happened, by Friday, despite having hidden it from view under the petrol tank, the piece of bent strap that I had masquerading as a coil mounting bracket was starting to play on my mind, so I resolved to make something to do the job with a little more style.

There are a few photographs dotted about of the bracket that I made, and I think it looks a lot better. But, as I've mentioned, the bracket is hidden under the fuel tank and even getting down on your hands and knees with one of Maglight's finest isn't going to let even the most determined observer spot the bloody thing, because if you were to find a line of sight once the motorcycle was assembled, then the bracket is still hiding behind the ignition coil, so what, if anything is the point of all this?

Well, firstly you may, or may not have been admonished as a child to make sure that you were wearing clean underwear when you left the house,  in case you got knocked over by a car. Despite the obvious reaction that learning the Green Cross Code and exercising a modicum of care around the highways and by ways was probably a more useful course of action, and the slightly less obvious one that in the event of being struck by a rampaging motor car, then in all likelihood, any but the most cruel of observers of the state of one's underclothes would surely attribute any soiling to the natural reaction one tends to have on realising that one is about to be struck by a motor car.

Applied to a motorcycle, there are likely to be occasions when the fuel tank is removed and the underpinnings are on view, and bracketry  which is the visual equivalent of underwear stains,  can be embarrassing in those circumstances. The other side of that coin though is the question of who you are building the motorcycle for, yourself, or the people who will look at it once you've finished it. I've mentioned rewarding the interested observer before, and it's corollary of not offering much to attract the casual observer.

So, in the event of unplanned public undress, then the underpinnings should hold to the same standard as all the rest of the vehicle, and sooner or later the thing is likely to change hands and the hidden bracketry will be waiting there to surprise it's new owner.

All of that is of secondary importance though, something I've also mentioned before is that I'm building this because I quite like building motorcycles. So in the final analysis, the only person I'm actively trying to please is me, and frankly, the old coil bracket was not pleasing me.

This one though, is making me feel a little smug.