A few years ago the late Stan Rose sold his business and decided to go on the big round Australia retirement trip. He and his wife sold their home, bought a Winnebago and purchased a shipping container to store his race and collector bikes for the year or two the trip would take. The idea was good but he made a couple of big blues......Worried about theft, had Stan welded the doors shut and unfortunately didn't consider fitting a ventilation "whirly gig".
Cut to two years later and Stan and his wife are back from their adventure. Out comes the grinder and the door of the container opened to reveal a veritible horror show. Thick green moss had grown over all of the bikes and some bikes even had mushroom like 'plants' growing from them. Once removed the damage to the bikes was even more obvious, it was if they'd been on the bottom of Sydney Harbour for the two years, they were almost all totally rooted with rust, aluminium corrosion and the previously mentioned carpet of mossy stuff all over them. Even moving the bikes was difficult as many of the wheel bearings and chains had rusted solid. For all intended purposes the bikes were pretty much beyond help bar major ground up restorations. Amongst the written off bikes were.....a classic Douglas, a Rickman 900 Honda CR, a recently restored Rickman Montesa, his Honda CB72 and CB77 road racers, a Z900 Kawasaki and more.
If Stan had given some thought to ventilation these classic bikes would have survived almost unaffected.
