It’s all too easy to spend your days surfing the web looking at amazing and priceless old motorcycles with a...
JoinedMarch 31, 2021
Articles91
“ Andrew was born and raised in Australia on a diet of CARtoons comics, farm bikes and far too many Mad Max movies. In 2009 he rolled his sleeves up and spent the next 10 years turning an anonymous Squarespace website into the popular Pipeburn.com custom bike blog. He now owns and operates Machines That Dream, a Sydney-based Auto and Moto Media company. Look out for his new coffee table book, “The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride - A Decade of Dapper” available on Amazon now.”
Whether it needs a simple fix like replacing the handlebars or a much more elaborate overhaul, rescuing a bike that’s...
The 1970s were dark, dark days for Harley-Davidson. After 60 proud years of making great motorcycles and pretty much inventing what a modern motorcycle was, someone decided that it’d be a good idea to take all that heritage, learning, culture and hardware and hand it over to a bunch of...
The noise. The speed. The danger. The rebellion. It seems motorcycles were made to cause trouble. From scaring old ladies...
While you could argue that all bikers have a little bit of crazy in them, anybody with a decent amount...
At first glance, reviewing motorcycles and riding gear for a living may seem like a bit of a dream job. You can probably imagine an all-expenses-paid trip to some sunny location just for the sake of riding brand new bikes along some exciting stretch of road. Heaven on two wheels,...
It’s summer in 1915, and freshly famous motorcycle racer Otto Walker powers across the finish line at the Dodge City...
So you’ve won the lotto. It’s a biggy, too. With the help of a decent accountant and by hiding from...
The 1970s and 1980s were a golden age for forced induction engines. Like shoulder pads in suits and mascara on men, turbos were the flavor of the decade. And for a while there, it seemed that if there was any way that manufacturers could bolt on a go-faster snail to...
You can bet your bottom dollar that somewhere out there in the motorcycling afterlife, alongside the likes of Burt Munro,...
Nothing gives you street cred faster than riding on the historical coattails of a famous brand. From China’s new MG...
Last month we discussed five sure-fire ways to make your precious motorcycle look like crap using some truly awful custom mods that have proven time and time again to be total flops. Like seeing someone constantly headbutting a wall, you can’t help but wonder why people keep doing them again...
Ever noticed how some bikers only ride on Sundays and for others it’s just something they do all the time,...
In a previous life, I spent the best part of ten years sifting through an almost infinite amount of custom...
Forgive me if I sound about 10 years old, but as a grown-ass man I still have my childhood obsession with weird and wonderful WWII vehicles in full effect. Be it their wild creativity, overblown mechanicals or straight-up ‘let’s cross our fingers and see if this works’ hopefulness, they still...
So, just how much do you know about T.E. Lawrence? Who, you ask? And as you do, the long dead...
All brands have certain challenges to overcome, especially the historical ones. Be it a poor marketing decision, failed product launches,...
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the times, they are a-changin’. The Internal combustion engine’s days are numbered, and for the first time since Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach created the petrol-powered ‘Reitwagen’—aka the first internal combustion motorcycle—we’re going to shift wholesale into a new powersource. Whether it’ll be...
Look, I try to lead a positive life with a sunny outlook. I’m a ‘glass half full (of beer)’ kinda...
Being flown all over the place to ride some of the world’s most beautiful motorcycles may seem like the stuff...
I don’t care what other riders tell you, or how they justify their moto purchases. They talk about horsepower and handling and technology. Spare me the flapping gums; it’s all about how they look—and how you look on them. Looks are the first thing you see when you see a...
Like popping your first wheelie or having a serious session on a race track, getting some decent shots of your...
The Scottish have found it hard to trump their invention of Whisky. Like Fender with their Stratocaster or Apple with...
Compare the average cool motorcycle rider to your typical daily car driver. Any rider with even a skerrick of self-worth will probably be able to give you an impromptu 30-minute lecture on motorcycle safety tips. And the car driver? Well, if it doesn’t involve seatbelts, bald tyres, and not driving...
Like many teenagers in 1980s Australia, I was a willing participant in the Japanese rotary-engined street racer phase that swept...
All photos courtesy of Jason Lau In 2017, a popular moto blog that I was running at the time was...
The global success of George Miller’s Mad Max first installment in 1979 meant a lot for Aussies, young and old. Not only did it prove that we could punch above our weight when it came to motion pictures and storytelling and introduce the world to the new genre of ‘car...
Daryl Villanueva is a guy that’s very hard to pin down. Just when you think you have him figured out,...
Those not in the know might call it ‘panel beating’ or ‘smash repairs’. But to do so would be like...
The explosion in popularity of cafe racers over the past 10-odd years was a challenge to Australia’s old-school motorcycle journos in more ways than one. Seeing the existential writing on the wall for their typewriters and booze, they began to snipe willy nilly at the new kids on the block....
It’s the early ’80s and 12-year-old me is in deep trouble. My parents were livid. One minute I’d been fooling...
**Photos courtesy of Jason Lau Even for Aussies, Tasmania is pretty much the end of the earth for a multitude...
**All photos are courtesy of Christine Gabler With the rise of phone cameras, literally anyone these days can take a photo at any time, day or night. But instead of the avalanche of cool photos that this army of lenses should be creating, we see the same old guff. Happy...
Fame is a real litmus test. Think of it as a crucible that melts down a person to their base...
Good ol’ Eddie ‘Dave’ Davenport from the Tulare Raiders on the borrowed Harley with all those smashed beer bottles. It’s...
It was my Dad’s birthday a few days ago. I was on the phone to him from my ‘home office’ (think garage full of bikes, second-hand rugs and music gear) in Sydney’s inner west wishing him all the best. ‘What are you up to?’ he asked. ‘Well, if you really...
Talk to any biker over a few beers at the end of the day, the same old question comes up....
Like Deus ex Machina, the Distinguished Gentlemans Ride and sweating while riding, Rob Hamilton and his ‘MotoFeelz’ brand is a...
When I first started shooting cars and bikes professionally, I got myself a highly-regarded book on small business. It was full of wisdomful pearls that explained everything in excruciating detail. And while I didn’t read it from cover-to-cover (it was eye-gougingly boring), I’m sure that at no point did it...
So, the word on the street is that you want to take some sweet, sweet photos of your precious wheels....