Dodgy Suzuki Electrics
My old Suzi GSX550 was a lovely example of the model when I bought it. However, after my many bodges over the years it became a total rat.

My 'fixes' included:

Replacing many blown fuses by wrapping them in the foil you used to get in the old Yorkie bars.
Replacing the blown regulator/rectifier with one from a 250 SuperDream (they have magical properties and work with most old Jap bikes).
Rebuilding the seat with an oven tray, old sofa foam and bodge tape after the replacement regulator caused a small fire in the middle of Cardiff.
Brush painting the whole bike with Hammerite and adding stripes of yellow/black hazard tape, to make it look cool.
Welding up the split link on a brand new chain after the spring clip sproinged of into the depths of the garage.
Adding a ghetto ScotOiler fashined from a fairy liquid bottle, brake hose and tiewraps to keep said chain running.

In its final days, it needed 1/2 a can of EasyStart to get any sort of life out of it unless it had been run in the last 24 hours. It was finally put out of its misery by some scrotes who nicked it and torched it when they couldn't get it started.

However, the insurance (which only had a week left to go) paid out the original value of the bike, £2200! Result.

Length? About 3 years.
(Bad Monkey hasn't had an abusive gaz since, Mon 14 Mar 2011, 17:08, 4 replies)

How much
did the 'scrotes' cost?
(Appleseed Is getting married 24/05/2014. All invited., Mon 14 Mar 2011, 18:21, closed)

LOL
I couldn't believe it myself. I was pissed off initially (difficult to get to work for a while), but I was grinning like a twat when I rang the insurance company.
(Bad Monkey hasn't had an abusive gaz since, Mon 14 Mar 2011, 19:36, closed)

I had a really
ratty old Honda once, can't actually remember which model, but it was a 250 and predated the superdream. It must have been 15 years old when I bought it.

It used to run really bad at anything more than 1/2 throttle.

Not being a mechanic, but not wanting to pay a mechanic, I pulled the carb apart myself. They were vacuum type, and I noticed the rubber cap that lifted as the throttle was opened had a small split. So, as the throttle opened further, the split would open, causing the shitty performance.

One cut down bicycle repair patch later, reassembled and it ran perfectly.
( Not Pineapple anymore, Tue 15 Mar 2011, 10:04, closed)

Vacuum chamber thingy
When I was younger and rode mini motocrossers, I had a Yamaha YZ80F. Tnen when the G model came out we all noticed it had one of those (I'm actually not sure what it was called or did) can type things attached to the rubber manifold between the head and the carby. Our theory was it somehow stored petrol vapour when you throttled off going into a corner and there would be this reserve of vapour waiting when you opened up again coming out the other side meaning you'd take off faster and supposedly beat the opposition by that microsecond we all thought would make us champions. So a mate and I immediately decided to replicate this with out own version. We got small pieces of copper pipe, cut a hole in the rubber manifold of our bikes and jammed it in, sealing the edge with silastic. On the end of the pipe we clamped some garden hose that was then clamped to the neck of an old Brasso bottle that was clamped to the frame. It looked pretty similar so off we went to the track where the bikes started and rode perfectly... and as far as we were concerned, a little better than before. Chances are it did absolutely fuck all but that didn't matter because everyone thought it worked and within weeks at least a dozen other bikes had them. There's probably bike mechanic here somewhere who is right now banging his head with his hand screaming "What the fuck were you thinking???" but really it didn't seem to do any harm and maybe it really did give us an edge. We sure believed it.
( difficultchild, Tue 15 Mar 2011, 23:20, closed)