Friday Fudge

Welcome to Friday Fudge. If it’s weird, funny, or strange motorcycle news, or it just plain won’t fit anywhere else on the site – you’ll find it here.

Cafe culture

Cafe racers: It’s what all the cool kids are doing. Hipsters around the world have decided that Universal Japanese Motorcycles are the perfect canvas to hack apart and turn into a personal expression, Forget that many of these bikes probably run worse after the airbox is removed and the carbs have been rejetted incorrectly …

If you’re not sure how to do that sort of thing all by yourself, but you want to fit in with all those skinny kids at Starbucks, check out the following videos, part of a satirical YouTube series that’s gold, Jerry, gold. In particular, you gotta love the narrator’s tools.

Sweet deal

Every once in a while, if you watch Kijiji, you’ll see someone who flips bikes, buying them cheap and trying to make a profit. You can thank reality TV like American Pickers for that. However, none of them are likely to get as good a deal as the Checkley family.

The Checkley family set a new record at the Bonhams Stafford auction house last weekend when they sold a 1939 Brough Superior SS100 for £253,500. That’s the most money a Matchless-engined Brough has ever brought at a Bonhams Stafford auction. Sounds like a proper sum, right?

It gets even crazier when you find the seller got the bike from his father, who bought it used back in 1957 for £70. He actually used it on the road for ten years before retiring it, passing it on to his son, who’s no doubt very, very happy with that arrangement.

Dropping in

As soon as this video starts, you reckon there’s no way it will end well, despite appearances.

Opportunity knocks

Hey kids! How would you like to be in a comic book, with Captain America? It’s simple! All you’ve got to do is fill out some forms on Harley-Davidson’s US site and you can be entered in a contest to become a comic book character that publisher Marvel will use in an upcoming digital comic and mini-film series! Wouldn’t that be just swell? You could be a comic book superhero, just like the Flash or Howard the Duck! And you could win a motorcycle while you’re at it.

Oh wait. This is a contest marketed to adults. As in, people who are over 18. It’s true plenty of adults buy comic books still … but they’re not generally the same people buying Harley-Davidsons. Unless dentists and accountants have some downtime in between their appointments, and they borrow some reading material from the waiting room.