Vintage Motorcycle meet

Thanks for the bit of history, Uncle Kenny.....

 

"I attended the Oregon Vintage Motorcycle meet again this past May, and again saw some great machines.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera!  This year they were honoring Norton, so there were more Nortons than usual, along with many other marques.  I met an interesting guy there, from Portland, who had a booth where he sold parts and also a couple of nice restored Triumphs.  Check out his website: www.classicvmb.com and click on "Our Bikes" at the top to see some of the machines his shop has restored and the pretty decent prices he asks

When I first bought my 500cc Tiger twin, I used to frequent a shop on Sandy Blvd in Portland, for parts and machining services.  It was run by a REAL character, named Cliff, but who was nicknamed the Sandy Bandit, because a lot of people felt his prices were high.  But he had any and every part you might have been looking for.  When you entered the shop, you walked past ten or fifteen classic British bikes, just a small part of his collection, which included an Ariel square four, BSA Gold Star, Matchless and AJS large displacement singles, all for sale.  The rest of his enormous collection was stored in a warehouse in dry eastern Oregon, near Bend, including a huge stash of parts, gaskets, etc.  When he died, his estate must have been worth quite a bit, as he bought all these things at low prices when Triumph was on the decline (losing out to Japanese bikes on the rise) so Triumphs and BSAs were available for a dollar a cc (I paid $450 for my Tiger on 1973). 

 

Anyway, this fellow with the website, Cornell by name, somehow acquired the Sandy Bandit's old shop and has a few guys working for him restoring old machines there.  Next time you are in Portland you ought to stop by and check it out."

Seat pan, pad and fiberglass cowl...

I saw this bike a few weeks back (Spotted in Cambridge) and left a note with my contact info.  The owner responded.  In his words....

"The brown seat pad was home made.  The covering is vinyl from Joanne's Fabric and my wife did the stitch pattern with her sewing machine. The tail light was bought on e-bay.  Attached are some pics of the seat process."

The base of the pad is made from a marine material called Starboard.  It's easily cut and can be formed with a heat gun, and nails/staples hold well in it.

The first layer of foam is actually from a few cheap gardening knee pads.

Then I put another layer of soft smoothing foam on that.








 

The foam is glued to the board with contact cement...

...and wrapped the vinyl around it (stapled underneath).






 

The vinyl is glued to the foam where it curves upward in the back to keep it flat.  The vinyl was cut into strips and then sewn back together in the pattern you see here (stitching idea taken from THIS technique).

The fiberglass seat cowl was purchased from Sean over at Roc City.  Check them out HERE

2011 Recap

Just like for some, 2011 had it's ups and downs.  We lost a family friend to cancer, while another family member fought and beat cancer.  The boy started flag football (Joseph the Machine) and hopped on his first motorcycle ride by himself (Honda 50).  Our youngest daughter started pre-school, and our oldest daughter competed all the way to the New England Regionals for cheerleading.  A good friend suffered a stroke and overcame it with surgery.  The wife and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary.  I hesitantly sold one of my bikes, the 75 xlch (and still looking for another bike to replace it).  We bought a vacation place, and look forward to hanging with friends.
Life is about ups and downs.  I'm thankful for everything I have (health, family, friends).  I don't have any New Year resolutions.  I'll just say that I'm looking forward to riding more, learning to wrench more, spending more time with loved ones, sipping icy cold PBRs, and enjoying it all.

1949 Harley 125 Hummer

This is how it starts.  Thanks Norm, for another very cool story...
 I looked at your blogspot and the first think that caught my attention was the sissy bar.  That is exactly how I made the one for the 1949 Harley 125 "Hummer"

Here is a picture of what the bike should have looked like.  It was rough when I got it and I was going for the Easy Rider look.  I dumped the bars for a set of bicycle (yes bicycle) handle bars from GC Murphy, ditched the bicycle seat and made a banana seat out of 1/2" round stock and naugahyde covering.  The sissy bar was the same steel stock and I bent it around a jack post in my parents basement for the apex.   There was no exhaust on the bike when I bought it, nor magneto I found out later.  But what do you expect for $25 in 1965.  For the exhaust I used flexible exhaust pipe and the muffler was from a friends 1960's Benelli 125 maybe.  Definitly Benelli.  Anyhow I needed more horsepower (or so I thought) and a better sound so I hacksawed the muffler off at the widest point to produce a megaphone.  I installed it a rakish angle up the rear wheel forgeting that my girlfriend (reason for banana seat) might burn her leg on it.  Fortunately it never got that hot or she never complained.  I painted it with Testors Blue Metal Flake model paint.  That's when I learned what "hot fuel proof" meant and the the first spill of gasoline washed it off.  A quick repaint and some hot fuel proof clearcoat solved the solvency problem.  Adding the high bars meant the old cables were far too short.  I ended up going to a Triumph dealer for some universal cables that ended costing me more than the bike did.  Riding was not too bad.  You will notice there are no shocks on the front.  It had what resembled gumbands for suspension.  The sound was great but riding was limited to as long as the battery would last. Remember the missing magneto.  Night riding was less of course.  Got to find the picture of the blue beast.
Norm

CB750F Super Sport

The following story comes from a friend....
Here are the pics.   Honda had two models the CB750K and the CB750F.  The differences were K - exhaust 2 into 1 each side, spoke wheels,silver engine and paint colors (orange, green and blue I think).  The F had 4 into 1 on right side, "mag" wheels, black engine and only two colors - burgundy and black neither of which was available in the K.  There may have been other mechanical differences that I am not aware of.  The F was referred to as the Super Sport.  I think I remember the bike was $1995 or $2195 and they through in a free leather jacket (which I also still have.)   I had another pic that partly shows the other side.  The metal object by the front wheel is a mast for a Hobie Cat 16.

 
To add to the story of how I came to have the 77.   It was mid 1975 or so and I had an old Mazda pickup with very bad rings and valve seals.  So bad that when I connected the PCV it would just about kill the engine.  I traded it to a guy for some money and a 1966 Suzuki 250 oil injected.  The bike had a bad kickstart and I ended having to get another engine and make one good out of two.  I had aways wanted an all black bike so I painted everything black.   At least I thought it looked cool.  When I had it all assembled my wife would ride the back but with her on ,  it would barely get out of its own way.  My wife, being the dear that she is, suggested we buy a new motorcycle.   Disagreeing with your wife can only cause problems, so reluctantly (not) I relented.  We went to the local Honda dealer in Greensburg, PA.  It was the introduction of the new  1977 models but they had a number of 76"s  they were trying to sell.  We had been steered by the saleman to the 1976 CB750K's of which they had a few.  While I was looking at the different colors available my wife wondered off and noticed the 1977 CB750F Super Sport that you see in the pics.  She came back and asked why we couldn't buy that one (the 1977) as she liked the color and style.  Neither I nor the salesman were going to diagree with her.  So that's how I (we) became the owners (and still are) of a 1977 Honda CB750F Super Sport, currently with a little over 10K miles.

Norm