Phoenix Finally Makes The Big Time !!!

[H2RICK]

Are you ready for this ??

The Back Story:
This Saturday past, I'm out at Bob's (the VERY large local wrecker) where there's tons of bikes, as reported by me last year and this year. I was wandering around trying to remember where that GT550 I saw in January was located. It had a very nice grab rail still in place. I located the bike, made the deal with Manuel, he pulled it off and I was a happy camper. The chrome has absolutely EVAPORATED from the base steel. I've never seen this before !!! No bubbling, no peeling.......just evaporation. It's the strangest thing to see. Very little rust and nice and straight. WooooHoooo !!!
My 550A never had one (they were not equipped with one in Canada that year), so I now have the option of using the factory parcel rack setup or my new grab handle. Pics to follow when available.

The Real Story:
So after the grab handle thing is all sorted out, I look over and here's a guy stripping a nice chainguard and rear fender off of a T250R. I'm thinking there can't be too many guys in Phoenix looking for T250 parts so maybe he's a member of this board. I start yacking with him and it turns out he's from England but doesn't know about us. He and a buddy are serial dismantlers of 70's Japanese bikes back there. They sell everything on fleabay. Since the UK seems to be mined out of this kind of stuff nowadays, these guys have to go further afield for suitable material. He and his buddy flew from the UK to Phoenix and are FILLING a 40 foot container with bike corpses and loose parts just from Bob's yard for shipment back to Jolly Olde.
They have also been to a big wrecker up in Minnesota (IIRC) and done the same thing, last year, IIRC.
Two very nice guys from "oop North".
Apparently Rick Brett isn't the only Brit with deep pockets.

[Craig380]

There's an old saying from the North of England: "Where there's muck, there's brass", which translates as where there's rubbish or junk, there's money to be made

It's true, over the past decade the stock of 70s wrecks in the UK has been steadily diminishing. It's partly because of the spending patterns during the 70s -- cars and bikes have always been costly in the UK relative to salaries, so people had fewer leisure machines -- and partly the more stringent vehicle testing, which meant a lot of bikes would get scrapped rather than sent to a breaker's yard.

The bike manufacturers' policies of buying up NOS parts from their dealers and crushing them didn't help either ...

[H2RICK]

UPDATE:

Those guys were so happy with what they found at Bob's that ONE container wasn't enough.
Sooooo......they're flying back in May/June sometime and expect to fill one more container.....or maybe two!!!
This according to the guys at the yard.