Russell suffered a Brachial Plexus injury in 1985, as a result of a collision with a Suzuki jeep, losing the use of his right arm. As he became more used to the change this made to his life he gradually started attending rallies as a pillion (assuming that his riding days were over) until he eventually heard about the NABD.

In 1994 after rebuilding a new motorcycle, and having it adapted to left hand riding courtesy of the NABD grant system, Russ was back on the road on his single seated Kawasaki GPZ 750 low rider conversion - a bike he expected to last til the end of his riding career.

At the start of 2002, however, with a number of jobs that needed attention on the 750, along with the desire for a new challenge, Russ decided to look for a new machine, finally settling on an nice American import Kawasaki ZL 900 Eliminator.

As the NABD aim to put people back on the road, we knew it was unreasonable to ask for a second grant and so proposed an alternative, which we hoped the NABD would accept - that if they paid for the adaption to the ZL 900 Eliminator, we would donate the GPZ 750 to them to do with as they chose. Fortunately, they agreed! We were then left to find somewhere to undertake the adaptions. To adjust the bike for safe riding without the use of his right arm (Russ can still grip the bars with his right hand) required the linking of one front disc and the rear disc to work from the foot brake and moving the front brake lever to the left hand side to work the second front disc. This needed to be mounted on the same side as the hydraulic clutch, which posed some problems mounting the two master cylinders on the same side; the throttle also needed to be swapped over. BOOM TRIKES in Bolton completed the work.

Having the clutch lever above the brake lever this time did pose some difficulties, as the original adaption was the other way round, but Russ has arrived successfully - and thoroughly enjoyed - a few rallies during the year. And as the Eliminator has a pillion seat I CAN GO TOO!

Thank you NABD for your help and support.

This NABD grant of £524.00 was sponsored by donations from The Shiteshags MCC