*** BREAKING NEWS ***

GRiSO Pinko has been found!

Greg just let me know that the Chatanooga Choo Choo has turned up in nearby Gig Harbor. I have no idea what condition it's in, but it looks like it will be headed back to Georgetown tout suite.

Rebuild is possible - but likely?

Yeah, we're going down to Gig Harbor on Monday to pick it up. Greg said it's in pretty bad shape and missing the rear wheel. I guess we'll know more when we get there.

In other news, Julia Roberts was on Jimmy Kimmel last night...

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[quote="Street"]Yeah, we're going down to Gig Harbor on Monday to pick it up. Greg said it's in pretty bad shape and missing the rear wheel. I guess we'll know more when we get there.


Pete: I have a rear wheel w/ tire on it. Might help recovery if you can roll it...

Damn i thought Gig Harbor was affluent where white collar crime might be more appropriate, but i digress.

Jin

FreshEgg wrote:

...I have a rear wheel w/ tire on it. Might help recovery if you can roll it...

Thanks Jin, check your email.

Pete

Any news of a suspect? Or was it just abandoned?

Just abandoned and stuck in the mud apparently.

So it was not under water?

Okay, I'm back from the Pinko recovery mission. Lots of mud, but except for the rear wheel, tank badges, oil cooler lines and mirrors, it looks like most of it is still there. Front fender broken, ignition and seat locks fucked out, it looks pretty bad, but it could probably be worse. And no, it wasn't under water, I don't know where that came from. The thieves did put a battery in it, and a license plate, and even a chain and lock! Thanks for that, Assholes! It cost Greg $600 US to get it out of impound. As you might expect, he's a little nervous about how bad the damage is and how deep it might go, but he didn't really have a choice. If he refused to pick it up he would have continued to accrue storage fees until such time as the bike was sold at auction.

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Jin (Fresh Egg) lent us a rear wheel to aid in the recovery and that really worked out well. I took a wrench and a couple of wheel bolts off of my GRiSO Rosso, but amazingly, in spite of the wheel being off, two of the wheel bolts were in place. Go figure.

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Once we got it upright and into the truck we could get a better look at it. It's a pretty sad picture, but I think Greg can salvage it.

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It's a mystery why and how it ended up in a muddy bog, missing its rear wheel, but nothing about this whole scenario makes any sense so why even bother speculating? ...because, we can't help it.

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Mud-encrusted CARC and a clean, loaner tire and rim - Thanks Jin!

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The other side doesn't look too, too bad. Fortunately, the seat was in Greg's garage the whole time. And by the way, the exhaust (High Mistral) is off in this picture, but we have that too and it doesn't appear to be damaged. The bolts were loose and it was dangling so we took it off for transport. You can kind of see it through the rear wheel.

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What a bunch of stupid fucks.

BTW if Greg needs a lock-set I've got the one off the Queensland wreck. In fact if he cobbles together a list of shit it might need and let's me know I've probably got most of it.

Pete

That's great, Pete, I'll certainly pass that along to Greg. Thanks.

That is one sad sight.

Yup, it'll need more than a wash. Both gearbox and CARC will almost certainly have got water/mud in them. Engine? Maybe, but it'll need the sump off at the very least.

Pete

What do the BMW Airhead dweebs call it - a Techday? Maybe we need to get together for a communal Garage Trash and rebuild of Greg's bike. I'd be more than happy to bring some tools. Alas i do not own a power washer.

Poor bastard. Neither Greg or the GRiSO deserved this.

And the big worry is these arseholes breed !!!!
Hope it all comes back together ok
Regards

Damn!l Looks like it went ballistic and landed in the bog on the RH side. Or it needed some work and someone said "rub some dirt on it!" and went too far.

Hopefully it looks much worse than it really is. Really hope so.

i do not know the whole story in regards, but whomever did this should be shot and pissed on ..

For those who don't know the back story, this bike has a long and sordid history. Originally purchased by Pete Roper in Houston and ridden to the National MG Rally in John Day, Oregon in 2010, Pete left the bike in Greg's garage here in Seattle for his own future use or if needed, for use by any Guzzisti who happened to be passing through our fair city and in need of something to ride. So at one point another Aussie, Bruce, was in town for a stretch and renting a basement apartment from Greg and Jen. One evening he took the bike out and while it was parked in front of a local pizza joint, some drunk dickhead on another bike lost control and crashed into it, along with several other bikes parked there totaling this one and at least one other. Eventually Pete got an insurance settlement and Greg bought the bike as a salvaged vehicle and rebuilt it. Then this summer, Pinko was stolen from the back of Greg's house early one morning. It was chained to a fence, the steering lock was engaged, the seat and battery had been removed. It was neither currently registered nor insured and Greg figured it was a total write-off. Last Friday he received a call form the police saying that the bike had been found and was in impound in Gig Harbor, about 35 miles away. So today we went and recovered it and now you know the whole a bit more of the story. See Roper's comment below and stay tuned for more...

Actually there's a bit more to it than that Pete which categorically tells you that Pinko is Cursed!

I'll fill in the gaps later!

Yeah, I should have checked with you first, sorry. There's always more to the story, isn't there? In any case, Pinko may well be jinxed. I sense that Greg may be feeling it too and half wishes the bike had never resurfaced. Maybe if the bog had been a little deeper?

Looks like the work of filthy meth zombies. Let's hope they're sunk in the bog too.

I think Pinko will live again. Maybe like a teen who has been really bad, but grows up to be an upstanding member or the GRiSO community........

We all deserve a second / third chance??


All that aside - complete Bastards that nicked it. I HATE thieves, hate them I do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Poor old Pinko, it's had a shit of a life!

Story began way back in, I think, 2009. GRiSO at the time was a $22,000 motorbike over here and I'd bought one and fallen in love. One day I saw a msg on Wildguzzi linking an ad for what was basically a brand new, (Sub 300 mile!) G8 it was listed at something silly like $8000. This was back just before the GFC really bit I think but our $ was good and I thought 'Fuck it' and said on WG that somebody better jump on it damn quick or I was buying it!

There then ensued the usual WG conversation. Why would you want one when you could have an Ambassador? Would it make a good sidecar tug? Did it have enough space for extra Collostomy bags etc. After a week I got the shits and bought it and had it shipped to MPH in Houston to be prepped for me. Why? Because I knew it would need it.

I bought the bike from a Chrysler dealer in some 'Baccy Chewin' state, (It might of been one of the Carolinas from memory?). They ended up with it as part of some debt settlement. It seemed that the original dealer was also a Chrysler dealer but they took on Piaggio to get scooters, most notably Vespa, (Pre GFC, right?) and had a couple of 'Prillas and Guzzis foisted on them. Anyway the dealer principle's son fell n love with the looks of it and bought it, despite his previous experience not having extended further than a Vespa 150!

Two weeks later he traded it back in for another scooter. Unsurprisingly if you've ever ridden a G8 with the GRS8V-01 map in! They were a pig of a thing!

It's then that things started to get interesting. It seems that Daddy, (The dealer principle.) hadn't been exactly honest. He'd been borrowing large lumps of cash off banks, friends and relatives and living what passes for the 'High Life' in West Frecklepork NC and it was about then that the shit hit the fan. His businesses were wound up, he did some minor gaol time and his entire inventory was auctioned off or given as part settlement to creditors. One of those creditors was the dealership I bought Pinko from and it had arrived as part of a job lot of Chrysler munt! They didn't have a clue what it was! It could of been a fucking guilded unicorn for all they knew!

Long story short, I got it, it went to MPH where it got a screen and the first tappet recall and somewhere along the line a Mistral Hi Pipe fell on to it. It was serviced and tuned properly by the Havens and then I had it shipped to my mate Margrave in LA as that is where I would be flying in to......

More later!

I'd forgotten that chapter, Pete. Can't wait to read the next one...