Sounds like a great day indeed Uncle Tez.
Quite a bit better than mine, but that's another story for the pissed off thread.
I've been hunting around for a decent lathe with a one meter bed for awhile now.
A decent one is a lot harder to find than I thought it would be with the budget I have.
What's the story with yours.
G'Day Brian, well I hope you update the piissed off thread, that's what it's for, I find it very enjoyable to have a good old whine about something, and to read other peoples too. I bet those Ducati boys were probably posting in the pissed off thread of the Ducati forums last night, ha ha!
Ok, now sit down here and I'll tell you a story, as requested. Back in 1996, before the internet was remotely useful, I bought a Honda CB350F from an Indian specialist (whose name escapes me now, three sheets to the wind on Ginger Virus.....) who'd taken it in part payment for some Indian parts. He was really pissed off, it was Sunday late Morning at the Bendigo Swap Meet, everyone was going home, and apparently he'd dragged it from Swap Meet to swap meet with no success (i.e., he probably wanted too much money for it) I asked if it went, he said it did, but the battery was buggared, and the fuel was stale, so I'd have to take his word for it. I asked him how much, and he said, $400. I said "Thanks, but I'll pass". He was getting really #$%*ty, and he said, "I don't want to fcuking take it home again, make me an offer!" I said, honestly, "All I've got in my wallet is $200". He said "Sold!". The deal was done, and I wheeled it around to my mates site. He said "What the fcuk are you gonna do with that pile of sh1t?" I said, "I'm gonna put it on your trailer, and you're gonna drop it off at my place". And he did.
It was a pile. Rusty, rotten, repainted many times, the only non rusty chrome on the front fender was between the fork legs, where the forks seals had blown and leaked all over them. But when I got it home, with very little effort, I got it going, and it ran like a little 4 cylinder sewing machine. I was in love. Back then, before Ebay, I had to buy everything from my local Honda stealer. I had a part time job working every saturday at a 15 hour shift at a service (gas) station in West Heidelberg, Melbourne's version of East LA, and I was paid the princely sum of $200 each shift. I'd go to K&W Honda on Monday, give Rex Wolfenden or Johnny Budge my 200 beans, and I'd walk out with a points cover and a pair of sidecover badges, or a set of spokes, or maybe, if I was really lucky, a fender.
This went on for about a year, and in that time I'd done a top end rebuild, had the frame powdercoated, the tins professionally painted, everything re-chromed and Johnny Budge felt so sorry for me, he sold me a NOS 4 into 4 exhaust for it for only 400 bucks. I almost came to blows with a hugely overweight bloke at "Town and Country Honda" because he didn't want to sell me his $900 NOS seat for the $400 his partner had offered it to me for over the phone, but eventually he took my threat seriously, and handed it over........
The day finally came when I could ride it, it was as shiny as a new pin. I "borrowed" a number plate off my Suzuki GS1000S, and rode it to work. I got it up to around 95 MPH on the freeway, and it ran like a top. It was a bit slow on takeoff, and I was a bit disappointed when a lady in a Mitsubishi Magna (one of Australia's most forgettable cars) kicked my arse in a streetlight drag. I stopped in at my mate John's "Total Tools" store, and he came out to take a look, and was smitten. He said, "I know you had to sell your lathe to pay for the BMW R100RS (sh1theap) engine rebuild, so how about I swap you a new lathe for it?"
He had a small-ish lathe in his shop for around $2500, and I was looking at it, but he said, "No not that one, a bigger one" and drove me over to another Total Tools store run by one of his friends, and there was my lathe. Geared head, thread cutting, 1 metre bed, weighs a tonne etc. I was drooling. The price tag was $5000, and he threw in another $2000 worth of various tools. Deal. It's a big heavy Chinese beast, probably a copy of something American or British, but it's done me well, and I use it all the time. John got a bit tired of the 350/4 and advertised it in the Trading Post, and the owner of the local Mercedes dealership bought it, when he was an apprentice mechanic in Germany he had one just like it, so he bought it, and put it on a display stand in his lounge room. It's probably still there.
