To meet some one as enthusiastic as Ed is refreshing, to then find out that he too is a loyal Yamaha man is for like-minded me at least, a true delight. Ed’s real name is Andrew Hufton, but the nickname stuck when he was just 13 years of age, after he switched from his rock god, long hair to a number one cut and his mates joked they could now see his head. “My mates bet me a fiver I wouldn’t have the drastic style change” Ed joked “but that was a lot of money back then, almost two weeks worth of paper round cash, so off the hair came.”
That was 31 years hence, but the name is still around and now all know him simply as Ed. Bikes soon beckoned and as a 14 year old, and with a crisp fiver in his pocket, Ed had a Yamaha YG1 field bike, but dad wasn’t keen and didn’t allow the usual Fizzie once Ed became old enough to ride one. “I guess dad thought I would lose interest and opt for a car a year later but I didn’t” recalls Ed “Once I was 17, and in full time employment working in a wholesale warehouse, I bought a Yamaha RS100 and that was the start of the biking craze. A year later I borrowed some money to buy a 350LC, and then proceeded to spend nearly double the original cost on a variety of mods that was popular at the time. There was quite a gang of us with LC’s at the time and we regularly buzzed the guys on bigger bikes as they made their way to Matlock and other bikers haunts.”
Marriage came soon after and with it went the bikes, many cars followed before a Suzuki GP100 was bought in boxes, Ed set about restoring the single pot Suzook before selling it at a fair old profit. This, along with divorce, was the beginning of the business we now see, a succession of sports bikes came and went, Ed working from his shed at the bottom of mums garden while working as a milk man. A year of doing the milk round proved more than enough and when he was offered the franchise for the round, Ed figured the time was right to go full time with the bikes. The premises at Peveril street, Nottingham came up and a deal was struck, the extensive property was in need of serious repair though, and Ed is certainly not shy of work, so he got stuck in, exchanging his time and considerable technical ability, for rent costs, soon transforming the labyrinth like cellars into an impressive storage facility for bike parts.
Then something quite miraculous happened, Ed takes up the story “A mate of mine told me about some bike parts that might be for sale. A breaker from North Notts had shut up shop and stored his stock in a house, and was now ready to sell at the right price. A meeting was arranged and a deal struck, I had some shares that had grown nicely and sold my Urban Tiger Fireblade to find the purchase too, but I could never have ever comprehended the amount of stock I had actually bought until we started to shift it all. I borrowed a 10-ton removal lorry, thinking that it would handle it all in one go, but it didn’t and 8 trips later the stock had been moved to my premises. Even then the lorry was seriously over loaded on every trip and I’m sure the guys house was creaking back into shape with ever load removed, there was rooms literally full of the stuff, he even had to get water for a cup of tea from the bath as the kitchen sink was no longer accessible. When his living room was finally liberated from the boxes of spares, he asked if we had checked under the floor boards, well a couple were lifted up and underneath was piles of exhaust pipes all wrapped in bags and well greased to protect them. There was also some complete bikes that came with the deal.”
This was a great kick-start to Eds new business, and ten-years-on he has barely tapped into this great resource with healthy stocks of 70s and 80s spares on tap. The boxes fill the lower part of his premises, all arranged neatly on miles of racking built by Ed, and each one is full to the brim with valuable and hard to find parts, in particular, being a Yamaha aficionado, Ed has just about every part for the RD range from engine parts to frames and exhausts. His premise aren’t easy to find but Ed isn’t too bothered about that “The world is a different place these days” Ed states “And the need for shop counter has all but disappeared, with a lot of business being done on the phone and over the internet. I do have a large workshop here though and love restoring bikes for myself and people, currently, alongside a replica of my original LC, I have an RD400C ongoing, along with a 350LC waiting in the wings, the latter having been restored already, but there is so many parts not right on it that the owner has entrusted me to get it right.”
And get it right Ed will do, his work is top class, while his knowledge, and attention to detail, has to be experienced to be believed. If you need parts, advice or a bike restoring then, I for one would put this man at the top of the list.
Ed’s bikes
Tel: 0115 911 1722
Ed’s Bikes Gallery
[dmalbum path=”/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/Eds Bikes/”/]
