It is an annual event, and this year was perhaps a bit larger than usual. In addition to the ongoing changes and small additions I do as a part of normal house-keeping, I also do rebuilds on sections of the site on an annual, or sometimes semi-annual basis. New contributions from owners sometimes piles up as I go through the process of validating new material offered to me. And some parts of the site start to look a bit dated after a period of time, and just need a refresh.
During this year’s update process so far (it isn’t finished yet) I have added about 400 new images – many of them new scans of service bulletins from Suzuki Canada, but as well I was passed a set of US Suzuki bulletins by Paul H. in the UK which were in colour. While they were duplicates of many I already had on the site, it seemed like a nice update and so I decided to roll them into the work list. Other areas that have been updated include:
- sections of the GT750 Field Guide: new gauge photos, new prototype photos, additional JDM sales material (thank you Mike W.).
- sections of the Resource pages: the service bulletin material already mentioned, additional indexes in some pages, updated photos.
- and sections of my Projects pages – mainly in the 1972 GT750 project area as it was getting too big and needed to be sub-divided to make it a bit easier to navigate.
I also am in the process of adding an SSL certificate to the site. This will allow encrypted communications between your browser and the site. The only real difference most people will notice (assuming I don’t break it completely !) will be that you will see an HTTPS: cue in the address line of your browser address bar. The main reason is to stop having the site flagged as ‘insecure’ by most of the newer browsers, which started in large part this month. I’m not really doing any e-commerce which would require encryption, but it is a ‘good practice’ to follow in this day and age unfortunately.
And finally – I wrote a series of articles about my last build (The Oily Purple) which were accepted for publication by RealClassic magazine in the UK. This is a magazine I have subscribed to for some years now, as I like the style of writing and the self depreciating humour of the various contributors. It tends to not have the breathless ‘was this the best xxxxx machine ever’ sort of article which are all too common elsewhere on the news stand, and which I generally find annoying. RealClassic tends to feature articles about owning, maintaining and using old (and some not so old) motorcycles. If that sounds like something that would interest you, then you should pick up a copy, and you should especially buy the January, February and March 2017 issues as my articles are in them ! Information about the January 2017 Real Classic issue may be found at this link.
I continue to slowly bolt together my current 1972 GT750 project. With a bit of luck I should have the wiring finished this weekend, and then I plan to start building the engine this coming week. You can follow my progress (or lack thereof) at this link !
🙂