What Could Possibly Go Wrong ?

The above phrase has been adopted as the shit-bike club strap line (love that marketing speak). I have long aspired to emulate the great Jacopo Monti (pictured - with style)

and earlier '70s heroes of the art of dirt oval racing. To this end I have embarked on a race-bike project. I plan to allow some of the fraught process to trickle on to these pages over the coming months. In answer to our simple title - an awful lot. The slightly inauspicious history behind the donor bike may give us a clue. In true Diplo fashion I failed to capture any "before" pictures. The sculpture illustrated below is the pulsing heart of a 1999 Husqvarna 610 enduro bike.

These are massive, sturdy, wilderness-eating, snarly monsters in the right hands. The previous owner thought it wise to slip it into some dirt-track tyres and try flat-tracking it - what could possibly go wrong ? suffice to say - a night in hospital in Swansea and several months recuperation followed the attempt. Here in the lab at Diplo HQ much Yorkshire Gold has been taken and the application of proven dirt track chassis geometry is under way. The shopping list is long and expensive but rest assured we will be taking all the obvious shortcuts. MORE LEFT TURNS !