No luxury ...

While I work on a lotta Benz' and BMWs and Jags, along with exotics, I also get my share of luxury cars like this Rolls Royce Silver Spur:







Or this classic BMW:







But Nunz also has some contractors' vehicles we look after. Like this electricians' truck ('02 Ford Econoline-250) with a scrillion miles in need of a tune up.



Now, changing spark plugs on one of these is a huge pain in the ass. There ain't no room to do shit and you're working from inside and outside (Is there a motor in there?).





The fuel rails gotta come loose (don't break the injector [yellow things] seals unless you wanna replace 'em) to access the coil packs (round things) of which you can't see the hold down bolts so you're going by braille half the time. The big pucker is the plugs themselves that, in these engines with big miles (the truck 4.6L and 5.4L V-8s) they like to break instead of thread out (Ford has a fix but it's an even bigger pain in the ass). Do yourself a favor and loosen them a half-turn and then squirt a little carb cleaner (I prefer the Berkebile 2+2 gum cutter. Yeah, it's toxic as hell but it works.) down the holes. Let 'em sit for 10 minutes before taking them out all the way.





I told Nunz that when I got into this business, if somebody told me it would take 3 1/2 hours to change 8 spark plugs I woulda called the men with the white suits and butterfly net. Times like these I shoulda been a doctor.

"The only thing really vintage on them is the motor and the guy sitting on 'em."

I really like Peckhammer. His stuff is pretty interesting and easy to pass on to you. Here's another interview with The Squirrel, with some of my own observations. Previous interview here. Eddie talks about his West Coast Dirt Track Series (pix), and, er, motorcycles.

Eddie Mulder was a leading TT Steeplechase and desert racer back in the 1960s. He won The Big Bear Race at age 17, beating a field of over 500 racers -- even after getting a late start because he was in the bathroom instead of on his bike. He is best known for his five AMA Grand National victories, all on TT circuits. Eddie Mulder, was a factory sponsored Triumph racer who ran under National #12, and he's been a Triumph guy ever since.

We flew to California in November to interview Eddie about his various motorcycle-related ventures. Eddie runs a small business that builds custom Triumph street bikes closely based on his Triumph racers of the 1960s and 70s. Although he does do some restoration work, the bikes he builds have very modern components: Brakes by Brembo, cables by Motion Pro, and Works Performance shocks. The hand crafted motors come with Johnson cams, electronic ignition and all sort of trick bits housed in a C&J Frame. A Carbon fiber tank and body works keeps things light, and Maxxis tires provide the grip. As he said in the interview, "The only thing really vintage on them is the motor and the guy sitting on 'em."

Grrrr...



A few personal observations on things Eddie talked about:

'Digger' Helm got his name because he's a mortician.

There's a lovely and pristine Cheney-framed Triumph in the vid, the 325th Cheney frame. I used to own Cheney No. 2.

Re his 'little motor man': Carl Krohn is an acquaintance of mine. He's been a Triumph mechanic at least as long as I have and is one of the best, with long experience building race motors. He's also an old desert racer and therein lies this tale: If you ever want your bike tied down on a trailer, get Carl to do it. One time, he was on his way to one of my club's desert parties and got hit by a drunk driver. The drunk missed his pickup and hit his trailer with a coupla Triumphs on it. The trailer came loose from the truck, flipped over, and was dragged along by the safety chains until Carl could bring the plot to a halt. When he righted the trailer, the bikes were still solidly tied down, and other than a little scrapage on the handlebars were undamaged! He hooked 'er back up and went and partied.

Re John Healy (Irish spelling, no 'e') of Coventry Spares, which has no site of its own that I could find: John is the founder and still the owner of the major Britbike parts house on the East Coast, located in Middleboro MA now, but it was in Wellesley Hills MA when I met him. In '79, I was National Service Manager for Triumph Motorcycles America, the factory-owned Triumph distributor in the U.S. I went back east to speak to dealer meetings about the lovely and newly discovered '60s technical updates on the about-to-be-sprung-on-the-world '79 Triumphs, stuff like negative ground and electronic ignition. Accompanying me, or I was accompanying them is probably more like it, were a coupla factory sales reps who had come over to see why their antediluvian products weren't selling well.

They sorta got it figured out. Triumph at the time was a truly bucks-down motorbike factory, long past its heyday and there was nothing much they could do about modernizing the product, but they thought they could galvanize the dealers in some way. They found out at least two things - first, whereas in England they could visit five dealers a day, in the States it was five days between dealers, and second, a lot of the dealers had been dealers for thirty years and had long ago added Japanese lines which quickly outpaced Triumphs in sales and made these guys rich. Also, the dealers were getting on in years (many were old Indian dealers who had taken on Triumph when Indian went belly-up in '53) and were selling out to younger people who had no interest in Triumph whatsoever. But I digress.

John and Susan Healy, very, very nice people, took us to dinner at a Victoria Station down on Boston's waterfront. We discussed Triumph parts. Duh. I believe that John wanted Coventry Spares to be the East Coast Triumph distributor. My orders from my boss in California were to keep an eye on the factory reps (our bosses, by the way) and not let them sign anything along those lines, although that kinda shit was way above my pay grade. To my knowledge, it never came up. Would've been a bad move anyway, as Triumph was just about out of business. It might've helped, but probably not.

At some point, the waiter brought out a bottle of Charles Krug Zinfandel. He displayed it on a white cloth draped over his arm for our viewing pleasure and poured a little glass, which mine host jiggled a little, sniffed, drank a little after gargling with it or whatever you do with wine under those circumstances, and accepted it for our table. All very proper and nice, I am sure.

I almost choked to keep from laughing, which would have been terribly rude. I'd heard of this little wine dance before, but I'd never seen it. To see this treatment given to what we in California thought of as a jug wine is what was so funny to me! Winophile tip: if it's from California, just check that the cork is wet. If it is, go for it. Doesn't matter with the screw top vintages, and they come in their own glass. Tip and enjoy. There I go, digressing again.

After a coupla glasses of zin, talk turned to the relationship of the Triumph factory to its American distributor and dealers. Ever the imperialists, the factory guys thought they knew more about the American market than we did, and thought they should be calling the shots. The phrase 'how's that workin' out for ya?' was not on the scene at that time, but if it had been, chances are we'da used it.

John and I disagreed with them of course, and about this time teamed up and offered to escort these gents across the parking lot and show them the exact spot where the early colonists had dumped the tea in the harbor! Reminding the Limeys about the American spirit of independence kinda shut 'em up and we had a good laugh over it. I still laugh about it. I may have to e-mail this to him and see if he remembers it the same way I do. Heh.

Thanks for bearing with me when I reminisce.

Addendum:

Here's an e-mail I received from Peckhammer. Boy, was I thrilled when it wasn't a cease-and-desist order!

Hey.

Not sure if I am writing to Fixer or Gordon, but I wanted to drop you a line and say thanks for linking to my webisodes on Peckhammer TV. I noticed that you are linking to the YouTube vids and wanted to make you aware that my primary posting site is on blip.tv. I've got more stuff there, some really interesting pieces that are too long for YouTube's 10-minute limit. These can also be embedded if anything strikes your fancy.

I also post stuff to www.peckhammer.com (blog).

Again, thanks for the nod on what we're doing. It's nice to know someone appreciates the work. And I was glad to read about the details on Digger Helm, etc.

I enjoy the Fixer and Gordon blog. Always interesting.

Peckhammer
www.peckhammer.tv

Thank you for the kind words, Peckhammer. None of us at F&G are exactly new to the gearhead world, and we know good stuff when we find it.

(Note: none'a the effin' links in the e-mail work for me, but go ahead and try 'em. I'll sort 'em out later. Blogspot's link device was acting a little funny too.)

OK now.

"I don't know how they ever made it back from the Eastern Front on these things..."

A lot of those guys never did make it back from the Eastern Front. There are still Russian farmers using those bikes to pump water and power things. They're waiting for that German kid to come back for his bike. He left it there when he figured he could get back home faster without it.

Peckhammer's got a lot of stuff like this.

Rare Bugatti found

All us gearheads dream of finding a 'barn fresh' job like this one. It happens. Keep dreamin'.

EssEffChron

It was the equivalent of finding an old Picasso or an unknown Beatles tape hidden away in your uncle's attic.

Relatives of Dr. Harold Carr found an extremely rare 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante — a Holy Grail for car collectors — as they were going through his belongings after his death.

The dusty two-seater, unused since 1960, didn't look like much in the garage in Gosforth, near Newcastle in northern England.

But only 17 were ever made, and when it's cleaned up and auctioned in Paris next month, experts believe it will fetch at least 3 million pounds ($4.3 million) and possibly much more.

Fuck that! Clean it up and get it runnin' and sport around in it for a while!

Every year some Bugatti club comes through here on its annual run and I've had the chance to take a pretty good look at some of those old Guinea loads. They are totally bitchin'.

Epic Fail

Someone please hit the "OFF" button.

In the thirty plus years I have been turning wrenches, this is the ultimate example of stupid people who have a license to operate a motor vehicle.

From an Email I just received, these are not my words because they have too many letters in them for how I would be describing this nightmare.
I can only hope that this complete moron was charged 75 dollars to diagnose this obvious problem and then FOUR HUNDRED dollars to cut this giant birds nest off of his drivetrain.

This guy ran over a mattress and decided to keep going. The ensuing jumble finally whipped around enough to put a tear in the gas tank, the subsequent lack of fuel is what finally brought this vehicle to its knees.

It had still managed to drive 30 more miles decently with a 60lb tangle wrapped around the driveshaft.

This genius complained that the vehicle had a "shimmy" when driving at high speeds.

This is what the dealership found...........

Someone give this idiot a bus pass.

Oddball Old Crock of the Week

No, for once I'm not referring to myself. This is a 1929 German Triumph 500cc Side Valve single, or 'flatinzeehead' if you prefer. Note the hand gearchange and exposed valve gear. The muffler musta fell off back there somewhere...

Dude ...

When the sidewall of the right front (curb feeler) tire on your Caddy looks like this, you ain't getting an inspection sticker. Don't argue with me about how good the tread is, you cheap fuck. You're buying a tire.







I'll be damned how it held air.

11.55 Seconds in The Quarter Mile , An Electric Car.

OK, now somebody in Detroit needs to explain to me why there aren't thousands of these being built every day.
I don't want to hear about crash tests and air bags, I want to know why we can't have a small runabout town car that has half the horsepower and the simplicity of plugging the damn thing in to go get groceries that this vehicle obviously has.Yes, it isn't cheap, no, there is no good reason not too.
At this point, after GM and Chrysler have announce they are shutting down for a month, why the hell not do this and jettison the money losing vehicles they are trying to keep foisting on the American consumer?

Reality is a bitch boys, get with the program, this is really making you look bad.

H/T to my Pop.

Lightin' Ranchero farts

One of my all-time favorite Ford models lights 'em up!



Update:

Go see this one too. I wonder what all the guys in the trunk were thinkin'!

Easy brake job ...

Yeah, right. Had this fucking Chevy Avalanche in today. Inspection, service, and I spotted the front brakes were thin when I inspected it so I sold the guy pads and rotors.



Well son of a bitch, I was cursing General Motors all morning. An easy brake job (shouldn'ta taken me more than 20 minutes) turned into 2 hours.

Usually, I pull the caliper bolts, compress the piston with a small prybar, pop the caliper, pads, and the mount, get out the big brass hammer and give the rotor a whack, pop it off and then reverse the procedure with new parts. About the time I gave the rotor a whack, I knew it wouldn't be easy. I could swear I heard the damn thing laughing at me. I hit it again, and again, and again, and again ... Got out the torch, heated the fuck out of it and hit it again. The laughing got louder and it still didn't move.

Seems GM has a very close tolerance between the inside of the rotor and the wheel hub (Ford does this too on the Expeditions). In areas where road salt is used (like here on Long Island), the inside surface of the rotor rusts to the hub. No matter what you do, you ain't breaking it loose ... until you break out the Sawz-all.



I sliced the rotor down to the hub, squirted everything with penetrating oil, and then beat the fuck out of it some more until it let loose. Hadda do the other side the same way. Notice the rust ring around the outside circumference of the hub, just outside of the wheel lugs.



So, being a guy who looks long-term, before I put the new rotors on I sanded and gave each hub a coating of adhesive copper grease to prevent this problem for the next guy (me or Nunz probably) who services the brakes.



Like I said, this ain't indigenous to GM, just the latest crap I had to do this on. Ford is just as guilty of this poor design and it makes you wonder, after a hundred years of building cars in the United States, how simple engineering fuckups like this still happen. Once again, there's no surprise these guys are on the balls of their ass.

Singularly disappointing ...

2005 Chevrolet Corvette, 6.0 Liter V-8, 6-speed standard shift, all the toys. And utterly disappointing.

Had one in the shop the other day and naturally I got to beat on road test it. You know what it reminded me (especially the interior) of? An '86 IROC Camaro. The clutch was heavy and shifting was laborous. Compared to the Porsche 911 Boxster it's a load. Handling was good but nothing impressive, no comparison to the Honda S2000 which takes off-camber, decreasing-radius turns like a slot car.

And while the 6 Liter is powerful, it's more suited to a Suburban than a sports car. When you can get a better ride and save 2/3 the fuel doing it, why bother with the big load?

70s thinking, 80s styling, and 90s engineering. No surprise why GM is losing their shirts.

Interview with 'The Squirrel'

You might enjoy this interview with legendary SoCal desert and flattrack motorcycle racer and movie stunt man Eddie Mulder. He's my age and we hung around in the same neck of the woods for many years. I've met him several times. He'll be faster than I ever was when he's dead!

From the Banner is Up!:

[...] The last Big Bear Run was in 1960, and ran from Lucerne to Fawnskin and back to Lucerne. Eddie Mulder won that one on a 500 Royal Enfield thumper...

What that quote fails to mention is that one of the rear shocks was broken in two! Eddie was a crazy kid and he's a crazy old man. An inspiration to us all!



Thanks to peckhammer.

Saved By The Bell

I don't know, would you pay a quarter of a million dollars for a forty five year old rust bucket Pontiac Tempest?
No motor, no transmission but it has Plexiglass windows and is one of only six ever built, I guess that makes it just a little bit rare.




Quite the amazing story behind the final price tag for this old factory produced drag racer!

The eBay auction for this 1963 Pontiac LeMans Tempest started out innocently enough. Obtained after owner died. Appears to have original interior but no motor, no transmission. Body has a little rust and some dents. There's stuff in the trunk, but no key to open it. Opening bid nine days ago was a mere $500. After one week, eBay seller 123ecklin will pocket $226,521 before auction fees. What happened between Day 1 and Day 9 is an amazing story.

The car's plexiglass windows, unusual suspension setup and a dash plate bearing the name of a racetrack tipped the owner to its racing history. But what he didn't know is that the car is one of only six 1963 Pontiac LeMans Tempest Super Duty coupes ever made. Hemmings recently did a story on the rare cars in which they listed all ever built. This one looks to have been driven by Stan Antlocer and was the fastest drag car in 1963 before disappearing.

There is a little more of the history behind this story here.

I think it is awesome that someone recognized the cars provinance and history, I do think a quarter of a million as is was a bit steep though.
I am tickled that this rare race beast now has the chance to be restored, it is part of an under told part of the Factory wars in the early Sixties.

Hat Tip to Fark for finding this story and publishing it.

The Brammo Enertia

In a mind-boggling leap from the post below, here's what's happenin' now:



I want one. These guys need a gearhead venture capitalist to invest some serious money to get the retail price down.

More at Brammo.

Don's Road Tests

I like motorcycles that are older than I am. They're getting harder to find (sobs). I found a whole bunch of vintage road tests from Limey Telly at Trapper 100. Enjoy.

Don Hall road tests a Brough Superior V twin 990cc 1920-30

Here's a coupla excerpts from The Road by Thomas Edward Lawrence. Sheer writing beauty:

Boa is a top-gear machine, as sweet in that as most single-cylinders in middle. I chug lordlily past the guard-room and through the speed limit at no more than sixteen. Round the bend, past the farm, and the way straightens. Now for it. The engine’s final development is fifty-two horse-power. A miracle that all this docile strength waits behind one tiny lever for the pleasure of my hand.

Another bend: and I have the honour of one of England’ straightest and fastest roads. The burble of my exhaust unwound like a long cord behind me. Soon my speed snapped it, and I heard only the cry of the wind which my battering head split and fended aside. The cry rose with my speed to a shriek: while the air’s coldness streamed like two jets of iced water into my dissolving eyes. I screwed them to slits, and focused my sight two hundred yards ahead of me on the empty mosaic of the tar’s gravelled undulations.

Once we so fled across the evening light, with the yellow sun on my left, when a huge shadow roared just overhead. A Bristol Fighter, from Whitewash Villas, our neighbour aerodrome, was banking sharply round. I checked speed an instant to wave: and the slip-stream of my impetus snapped my arm and elbow astern, like a raised flail. The pilot pointed down the road towards Lincoln. I sat hard in the saddle, folded back my ears and went away after him, like a dog after a hare. Quickly we drew abreast, as the impulse of his dive to my level exhausted itself.

The next mile of road was rough. I braced my feet into the rests, thrust with my arms, and clenched my knees on the tank till its rubber grips goggled under my thighs. Over the first pot-hole Boanerges screamed in surprise, its mud-guard bottoming with a yawp upon the tyre. Through the plunges of the next ten seconds I clung on, wedging my gloved hand in the throttle lever so that no bump should close it and spoil our speed. Then the bicycle wrenched sideways into three long ruts: it swayed dizzily, wagging its tail for thirty awful yards. Out came the clutch, the engine raced freely: Boa checked and straightened his head with a shake, as a Brough should.

Awesome. I never caught up with no airplanes, but I've hidden from a couple police helicopters. Heh.

Where I work* ...

So this is my first post since I started at Nunzio's. Completely different place than Harry's. Where Harry's place coulda been snatched up off a dirt road in the desert and dropped on Long Island, Nunzio's is Europe.

For instance, I'm there alone one day (Nunz was off on a road test) when I hear this sweeping noise. I was wondering what it was when I got to the office and there's a little old Italian lady sweeping the floor. Nunzio's mom.

"Does yer boy make you sweep his place?" I ask her.

"He dona do ita right," she replies. "People come ina here, they thinka he's a slob."

And so it goes. Couple times a week, she's in and cleaning.

Then one day, his father-in-law (another off-the-boat Guinea) shows up in his beat up old pick up truck. He takes a garage door opener out and dumps it in the shop.

Then he and Nunz argue whether it will work or not (the old man found it in somebody's garbage). It's been laying there for a week now. Nunz is waiting for the old man to forget about it so he can put it out for the trash.

Then there's the shit I work on. A first for me, in 35 years of being a mechanic, is rebuilding a differential in an old Maserati.









It's different and that's pretty good. I work on all sorts of shit I never did before. Next week, I gotta look at a gearbox in a Ferrari Quattroveloce.

Part of an ongoing, semi-regular series.

Pinup Girls and Rockabilly Cars

Here's a little eye & ear candy for everybody who slicks back their hair and carries their cigarettes in their t-shirt sleeve. You know who you are.

Not "no" ...

But "fuck no"!

Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., the largest U.S. automaker, has asked the Treasury Department for financial aid to help complete a merger with Cerberus Capital Management LP's Chrysler LLC, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

...

$10 bln worth at last count.

Didn't we just hand the U.S. majors $25 bln last month so they "could modernize in order to be competitive"? Fuck them. Sorry you decent, hard working folks who work for GM, I feel for you, but enough is enough. GM and the other major U.S. auto houses have made one bad business decision after another since 1978 and I'm tired of bailing them out.

The reason they can't compete is because they refused to learn from the Japanese and Europeans, even when the writing's been on the wall for the last 25 years, longer for the more perceptive.

Fuck them. Let 'em drown.

Off to work on their crap ...

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Split Precision

I have so many aspects to my personality that this it what it looks like when I go for a ride.

Erzburg Rodeo

I'd never heard of this event before, but I done found it. It's sort of a cross between Free Style and a Hare Scrambles, held in a quarry in Austria. This is the gnarliest bike race I've ever seen.

I think 'Erzburg' is Austrian for 'Turn a $10,000 motorcycle into 10,000 beer cans in 35km'.

Later. I gotta go watch 279 more of these. Fixer, you might like this one. This video is from 2006.



Update:

Here's the 2008 event. Good video, strange music for anyone older than about 15.

Motorcycle Rider Training in 1959

And a spin down Memory Lane as well. Found this at The Kneeslider:

Yes, we’ve come a long way with motorcycle rider training and safety courses. I was digging through The Kneeslider research library and came across this Jawa training motorcycle in an old issue of Cycle. It was powered by a 250cc 2 stroke engine and had complete dual controls. The instructor sits in back and has fully functioning handlebars connected by rods to the front fork with a throttle, front brake lever and clutch. He had a rear brake pedal and footshift for the 4 speed transmission and there was also an ignition cutoff.

That had to be an odd experience for both student and instructor. I wonder how many of these they sold.

Not many. I actually remember these things, and I could be wrong, but I think there were two of them. The other one is probably still in its crate somewhere.

From memory, the photo was taken on the sidewalk (Great place to learn how to ride a motorcycle! Could (and has. Heh.) come in handy...) in front of Clymer Publications on Alvarado St. in L.A. to where I pedalled my bicycle every Saturday when I got my allowance to buy back issues of Cycle. The lady is Cycle staffer Carol Sims, and the guy on the front seat is another Cycle staffer whose name escapes me, although I will probably remember it at 3 AM and sit bolt upright in bed. The grinning gent on the back seat is Jack Snyder, at the time the general manager of Cycle Imports, the JAWA importer on La Brea Ave., and later the sales manager at Bud Ekins Motorcycles from whom I bought my brand new '69 Triumph Tiger. Nice guy. A coupla years later, Jack gave me my first job in the motorcycle industry, also at Ekins' shop. I remember that he brewed his own draft beer and had a tap in his den.

I did a little more digging and found this page from Motorcyclist:



Still Jack on the back, but in front is Clark Atkinson, a friend and schoolmate who already knew how to ride but just happened to be at Cycle Imports when they needed a photo. The blame, or credit, for my love of motorcycling is all on him, as he gave me my very first ride on a motorcycle on his own 175cc JAWA circa when the above photos were taken. I haven't seen him in forty years, but the bike thing has kinda stuck.

More Flat Track Porn

Here ya go Gord.
I wished you had been there, you would have thoroughly enjoyed it.
I know I did, what I can remember, whoo, did I get hammered for three days!

The guy on the left is the one who owns the two silver Nortons, quite the character.
The Two on the right are Ma and Pa Knuckles.














What can I say?
These three sisters were all over the place.

Muy Caliente!

Here We Go

Click on them.












There are more to come.

Busy

Update;

Here is The Beast.







Crap, I been as busy as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

I went to do a post last night over at the Ornery Bastard and fell asleep right in the middle of it.

I busted my ass all day Saturday, drug a 3/4 ton truck up onto a trailer with a come along and some help and then brought it to work and stripped it down to the frame and the cab. I think I popped a rib out of joint yarding on that damn come along.
Then I took the service body box off of my old Ford and swapped beds so at least it looks halfway decent.Of course I broke the back window out of it during this process, luckily the one I was stripping had the same window glass.
I had a buddy stay after work and help me put that back in too last night, then I spent two hours last night getting the bed bolted down and some of the wiring hooked up, cleaned all the crap out of it that I have been storing in it and put the canopy on it.
I still have a TON of work to do to this thing.
My Boss is on vacation so I am trying to get as much done as I can INSIDE of the shop instead of OUTSIDE in my gravel fucking driveway.
I still have brakes to do, a major tune up and the whole exhaust system to be replaced with headers and Flow Master mufflers.
I also still have to drill the frame so I can install the tow hitch assembly and put the back bumper on it.
That will at least make it street legal.

Much work to do, again, no rest fer the wicked!

Just A Little Teaser

I have asked my Dad to try and find the rest of the pictures I took at that Flat Track race I went to a while back, I did manage to find a couple.

I am currently unable to enlarge these, I am waiting to see if Pops can resend the whole batch and if I can't play with them then, sorry!




Here are a couple of old Nortons that were right across the road from us.


I am looking forward to this event next year already.

Pre'65 Scottish Two Day Trial

All these sleds are 43+ years old and this is a hell of a climb! Enjoy.

Wearable Motorcycle

Go see this video.

LATimes

The Deus Ex Machina is a wearable exoskeleton motorcycle concept, and it's pretty damn cool (although it looks a little impractical to me). Note that it says he invented a concept vehicle. It means he invented a concept, so it's legit. Crazy, impractical, and unworthy of attention, yes. But he did legitimately invent a concept. A very, very bad concept.

And here I thought center-punching a tree on two wheels was an unattractive prospect!

The best laid plans ...

As I told ya about 6 weeks ago, I started my temporary 'retirement' at the beginning of the month. I started it off well, taking a nice vacation. So I get home Thursday night and the answering machine had about 10 messages (the first 9 from Mrs. F's clients who forgot she was out of town), the last from my buddy Nunzio who owns the place up the street from the shop.

"F-man, can you call me as soon as you're back?"

Mrs. F called it right away. "The Greek quit and he needs you to help him out."

"And where do I have the time?" I ask her. "I left Harry because it was too much and you want me to go work up the block?"

"He's your friend. Call him," Mrs. F said. "You'll figure something out."

So I call Nunzio (against my better judgment) and it's as the Mrs. thought. I start in 2 weeks from 8 - 12 in the morning until he can find a full-time guy. So much for my time away from fixing cars. Oy!

And, speaking of vacation, I spotted some wild things on the streets of Europe. Click the pics to make big ... very big.

I was in a hurry to get somewhere in Amsterdam when I spotted this GI-looking thing across a canal. I didn't have time to get over there so I zoomed in as best I could. Got any idea what it is?

And when I spotted this parked on the main drag in Amsterdam, I figgered Gord would get a kick out of it. The next amphib for the Marine Corps maybe? Heh ...

And I thought this wood carving in a shop in Florence, Italy a very cool thing.

I told Mrs. F I need one of these to run back and forth to Home Depot with.

'Sickles an' old pals

I'm back from another whirlwind thrash to L.A. It was a dual purpose trip. The first purpose, chronologically speaking, was to pick up a piece of sporting gear. Backstory here and here. This is it:

Click photos to emhugen.

It's an '05 290cc Sherco. The engine is a watercooled two-smoke. I could no way afford a new one at about $7Large, but I got this one for considerably less than half of that and I know its backstory and where it's been. My friend Steve bought it new and sold it to the gent I bought it from at the end of the '05 trials season. It has not been ridden since. It's been sitting for three years, which in a sport where the bikes get dropped off of cliffs, literally, pretty regularly, is a heck of a deal for me. I saw examples of this year, make, and model with four seasons on them for a $Grand more than I paid.

I bought it from Mike, a New Zealander who owns Kiwi Indian in Riverside. We got treated to a showroom full of Indian motorcycles, most of which were manufactured before 1954, and in the Back Room AKA the Service Dept., a full-bore dyno run on a customer's bike while said customer stood there watching his sled run faster sitting still than it probably ever has with him on it goin' down the road. I don't know what the dyno run turned up in terms of numbers or problems but it sounded great!

I've done similar dyno runs myself, and have been an interested party at dozens of 'em, and I've always kinda wondered what happens if the engine goes 'POP' and there is sudden silence, a brief flurry of shrapnel, and a hot oily mist in the room. Thank you Lord for my ignorance...

I haven't ridden the Sherco yet, or even started the engine, but I know for a fact, on the basis of what you can see in the photo, that it will go 70+ miles per hour for hours on end in 100° heat. And sideways at that!

The photo was taken at the Coso Junction rest area on US 395 in the southern Owens Valley. Click the link and zoom out slowly to see what the middle of nowhere looks like.

Just as an aside here, you make your choice as to which end of L.A. you want to go to at an intersection about 130 miles out in the Mojave Desert. Quite handy, really. From Riverside to the Sunland-Tujunga area of the east San Fernando Valley was a straight 60-mile shot on the connecting 210 Freeway.

The second purpose of the trip, and by far the most fun, was to go visit our friends Dave and Joy, and to attend our friend Arnie's 60th birthday party.

Dave is one of the best friends it has ever been my good fortune to have. We have had untold numbers of adventures over 35 years and we have a damn good time whenever we manage to get together. Joy is just plain gorgeous in every respect you could think of. She makes me look like a wingnut, and if she ever upgrades from dial-up, she'd be on the Feds' shitlist in a New York minute. Heh. We weren't there for politics, so enough of that.

By trade, Dave is an electrician. He figured out a long time ago that the way to make money is to do custom work for rich folks, and since he retired (yeah, right!) has more work than he really wants. He'll keep doing it 'til he has more money than he wants...

By avocation and nature, he's a stone(d) gearhead. Here's a picture of his dining room:



That's my Maggie heading for the kitchen. I took a picture of that as well, but forgot to check the batteries or the result, so it didn't come out. Suffice it to say there's a row of potted palms(?) and a small-block Chevy engine between the counter, the corner of which you can see, and the stove across the room. He has more kitchen workroom since he moved one of his Triumphs to one of the sheds in his back yard.

Dave is an El Camino freak and has several of them in various stages. I swear I can look at which ones he's been working on, and which ones run at any given moment, by looking at his house on Google Earth and seeing what's been moved around. He doesn't work very fast, so yes, Google changes the photos nearly often enough...

We sat around and shot the breeze all afternoon. Dave and I left the girls to their own devices and traipsed out to his shop, well-equipped and with wall-to-wall projects going on, a good many of which we chatted about. His shop is about the most fun old Triumph guys can have in L.A., and it's quite exclusive. Dave's latest deal is to dismantle LED taillight bulbs and rewire them to work on positive ground English motorcycles.

We were gone a long time. I sort of apologized to Joy and Mrs. G for that and Joy just laughed and said for as far back as she could remember, every time me'n Dave would smoke some home-grown and go out the back door, we'd be gone a while! Some stuff never changes.

We all watched a DVD I brought with me, and this takes a little background, but it's germane to this story.

The motorcycle club that Dave and I and Arnie all belong to throws a big invitation-only desert party every year and has been doing so since 1960. It's not a race, but there's a dirt bike run as the centerpiece of a three-day party in the middle of nowhere (there's a lot of that in the Mojave). The club is kinda famous for it in some circles, and an invite is a sought after hot-ticket item. Since the anti-fun people may, probably are in fact, watching, I won't go into the details. Let's just say a rollicking, rowdy good time is had by all.

For about 5 years in the '70s, I took Super-8 movies of this thing, both to record it for folks to enjoy and to get out of doing any actual work to pull off the event. I spliced the reels into 30-minute films and showed them at parties, in the club hang-out saloons, etc. There are four or five of them. No one, including myself (my projector broke), has seen them in 28 years.

For the last coupla years I've been wanting to transfer the movies to DVD but didn't know quite how to go about it. The answer came one day a few weeks ago in a blinding flash of inspiration while I was walking past the photo counter at Costco and saw a big sign that read "Put your Super-8 movies on DVD! Right here!". Doh...

I took one reel in to have it done. Just one because I wanted to see how it came out. It's $19.95 for the first 200ft and 12¢ per foot after that. They'll put titles and music on it. Your choice of music genre from a list, their selections. They add features so you can click to a variety of points, and put a montage on the case. It cost $49 and included two copies. It came out totally bitchin', and I'm going to get the rest of them done toot sweet. I was a little worried that it might have faded, but it hadn't. The movies have been in a nice cool place all these years and in fact look better on DVD than I remember them.

Purely by chance, I picked the DVDs up at Costco the morning I left for L.A. On the way down there I decided to give the spare copy to Dave, since he's in a position to make copies and dole 'em out to interested folks in and around the club. I never made the mental connection between the movie showing up in L.A. on the day of Arnie's party and the fact that everybody there was in some way connected with the club and had been to these desert runs. Dave made the connection instantly when I handed it to him, and off we went to the party in Joy's Honda Hybrid, DVD in hand.

On to the festivities!

First, a little mush is order. This was a surprise party given by Arnie's main squeeze Vivian. They've known each other almost forty years, the same time I've known both of them, but have only been an item for a year or so. I think that's nice.

Arnie is a Vietnam Vet brown-water Navy river rat and was in the same class to learn that stuff as John Kerry, although that meant nothing to him at the time, it's just interesting. He's also a hardhat diver and once cleared mines in the Red Sea. He's a member of the Piledrivers, Divers, Bridge, Wharf & Dock Builders Union. I'm not sure if that's the right local. Hard work, good pay. Besides being a dirt rider, he's an old Harley guy since back before they were all middle-aged yuppies.

The photo shows Arnie, bag in hand, not being very surprised. Vivian is in pink on the left almost, and Dave is in the formal t-shirt and ball cap. In between them, sitting, is another old pal, Chris, who is 81 years young and still rides his dirt bike pretty regularly, although he admits he can't do it like he could in his 20s. He proved later on that he could still smoke enough weed and drink enough beer to fall down. Heh. He had a slight heart attack at his 81st b'day party, and since all the guests were getting high, they couldn't exactly call 911 so they loaded him into a car and took him to the hospital. The nurse wasn't exactly amused by the alcohol on his breath, and told him he should quit all that and give up riding motorcycles too. When he innocently asked "Why?" as in "What? It'll keep ya from livin' to a ripe old age?", she had no good answer so he didn't.



Also there from the octogenarian set was a founding member of the club from 1949, 81 years young, the #1 desert racing champion in 1960, and great-grandfather of four, who rides his 650 Triumph desert sled every week, along with his club member son who is the grandfather of the four. The old dude has gotten high every day of his adult life. If weed'll kill ya, it's takin' its own sweet time about it!

The SoCal hard partyin' desert-racin' lifestyle is not for the faint of heart. I suppose some would say not for the particularly intelligent either, but they'd be wrong.

It was a lovely evening so most of the party took place outdoors on Vivian's patio.This photo shows, l to r, Chris, Arnie's brother Howard, Vivian, Arnie opening presents whilst seated on the lowest chair he could find, and Jamie in the pink.



Everybody trooped in to a huge flat screen TV and Dave put on the DVD. It played over and over all evening and was a big hit. Most of the folks at the party had been to that run and a lot of 'em were in the movie. Everybody had a great time of the "Look! There's _____ passed out under his bike!" variety. Toward the end of the movie, a young lady pulled down her top, exposing a little slice of heaven. Actually, it wasn't 'little' at all, a honkin' great boobie! This may have been in response to the 'Show yer tits!' sign I had hanging around my neck. Anyway, one guy actually said her name and nobody believed it. Determined to get to the bottom of this, and not minding a little hard work, a small band of guys watched the scene over and over, trying to figure out who it was. They finally did, believe it or not, by her smile. Turns out it was Jamie, in the photo above, who when they told her, promptly grinned and did it again! As a compliment to a pretty lady in her '50s, I must say gravity has ignored her so far!

Another reason I'm glad I gave the DVD to Dave was I knew he could keep control of it and not 'lose' it, and he's going to have to do just that. Everybody wants a copy, and they know there are more to come.

It was not a huge party, maybe twenty or so people, but it was the best party in years, they tell me. Folks got drunk and stoned and laughed a lot. No bummers except Jamie lost her shoes for a while. A good time was had by all. It would have been worth the trip by itself. Click here to see the birthday cake if you haven't seen it yet.

It must also be said that there was word about folks who are no longer with us. We're at that age, though.

It was the latest night out we've had in years. We were asleep at Dave's house by midnight. The four of us went to breakfast and me'n Mrs. G hit the road for home.

Lotta old memories and a few new ones as well. Couldn't ask for more.

Update:

Since I described Arnie's service, in fairness I should tell you about Dave's. He is a Navy Vet. He was a machinist and has a rather odd service-connected disability because of it. He goes to the VA for all his health needs, and has for 40-some-odd years. He was using a grinding wheel in port when there was less demand on the compressed-air system than at sea and the thing blew apart from excess speed and opened him up from belly button to sternum. I've seen the scar. It is not pretty. I saw him take his shirt off in Mexico once and about a dozen Meskins crossed themselves from being so close to one who had had such a close brush with death.

Dave served on the Bonnie Dick and went ashore in Southeast Asia during the Laotian Incident in '61 I think, perhaps to bolster the Thai government. He doesn't really know why, just that he was tagged for a landing force to augment the ship's Marine detachment. He remembers getting handed a rifle and being told to "do what the Marines tell you". Woulda scared the shit outta me.