Italjet Dragster - News Archive

MARCH 2004

30/03/04 : A film crew from Granada Men & Motors will be coming to the Cat & Fiddle in Derbyshire this Saturday (3rd April) to film and interview members of the Northern Scooter Club for their 2 Wheels show. If you want to be there for the experience and the possibility of appearing on TV then make sure you're at the Cat & Fiddle for 12 noon. The more of us the merrier. The TV presenter will be Paul J who will be loaning a Vespa GT 200 for the day and will be following us on the rideout etc. Fingers crossed for some dry weather, hope to see a few of you at the Cat & Fiddle.

For more information on the Northern Scooter Club and for directions to the Cat & Fiddle, then check out the Northern Scooter Club website.

Message Board news, it will be back up-and-running soon I promise, I have been liasing with the Infopop support team (the makers of Ultimate Bulletin Board) for some time now, and they are trying their best to get it working again. There's been a few technical issues to sort out since the move the new server. As for the Members Gallery, it requires MySQL which I basically have to pay extra for with the new hosting company. Since I don't make any money from the site, this is on hold for the time being. But please keep submitting your pictures for inclusion in future Gallery updates.

22/03/04 : Well, yesterday's "Twist & Go Sunday" at the renowned Ace Cafe in London went rather well despite the weather conditions which seem to have caused quite a bit of trouble for those of you in the North who couldn't get down (on your scooters) because of the gale force winds. It's sad to hear about Dave (aka divuk) being blown off his bike with his pride and joy ending up in pieces, but hey that's one way to make your way into the BBC News! All the best to Dave for a quick recovery. Anyway, the weather was sunshine and showers for pretty much most of the day, the turnout was very good, it's estimated there were about 80 scooters present throughout the day, with scooterists coming and going at various intervals. There was a fair bit of stunting going on the road outside the Ace which attracted the attention of the local constabulary. A few words of warning were given but this didn't stop the proceedings, the stunting carried on a short while later. I'll have a full report in issue 28 of Twist & Go. Nice to meet you guys who made it to the event.

17/03/04 : By now the new issue of Twist & Go should be in the shops everywhere. This issue is a bit different to the norm in that it comes with a FREE Tuning & Accessories supplement written by, yep, yours truly. (Sounds like I'm blowing my own trumpet by I don't mean to, honest). But hopefully you will find it useful as I've tried to get as much stuff in there as I could given the time scale (including doing the cover).

Included in the main magazine is stuff like: MBK Kilibre test • Extreme Scootering (part three) - the third and final part • Piaggio 172cc custom scoot • 'Knight Rider' Tom Speirs's cool custom Dragster (in the mag finally) • 'Fusion' Gilera DNA conversion • Scooter Attack Stage 6 demonstrator • Earth Warrior off road scoot • Technical tips • Tyres explained and much more... Get your copy TODAY!

Meanwhile, work on sorting the new Gallery system and the Message Board is still ongoing, I could have done a fresh install but I'm trying to retain all the member registrations and posts along with all the data from the new Members Gallery. So please bear with me on this.

16/03/04 : Hi folks, and welcome back. Many of you will have noticed that the site has been down for a while, this is because I have had to upgrade the site to a new server. The main reason for doing this was because it had outgrown the server it was on before due to the site's popularity. Consequently the previous hosting company asked me to either upgrade the site (at a cost of Ł899 + VAT) or move it elsewhere or have the site taken off-line. So what I have had to do is move the site to a new ISP, but this has ended up costing a fair bit just for the hosting. Some of you have sent in donations and I thank you for that.

At the moment, the site is far from fully functional and has taken some 40 hours or so to upload data so far. I am still working on piecing it all back together though, in particular the Message Board and the newly introduced Members Gallery. This is quite a messy job and if worst comes to the worst both the Gallery and the Message Board will have to be re-installed. But this is a worst case scenario. So, in the meantime the rest of the site is slowly being uploaded and hopefully everything will return to normal soon. Thanks for your patience and support. I know that a fair few of you have been getting withdrawals!

Until the Message Board is fully operational once again, feel free to use this scooter forum here which myself and a friend have set-up. It's the basis of a new website for what will become an e-zine called PETROL. The site is still work in progress as you will see, but the idea is to build an on-line community initally which caters for both bikers and scooterists alike. After all we're all on two wheels at the end of the day. Anyway, it's there if you want to chat or send messages to other members.