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Editors Note: Part two of the series...the madness begins to
take hold as we see the first parts being purchased!
-Warren
Hi folks, loggin back on after a great supper, I got to
take just a minute to tell you, I got the best ol' lady on the face of the planet.
Whatever I want for dinner, she comes up with it, whatever I want to do, she says
"let's go", and when it's time for one of those special times that we all love
so much, she makes me feel like I'm king of the world, and the best "ride" in
town. We call her Five-Mile, but her name is Kasey, and guys, I'm glad I found her before
any of you, cause she'd surely have been taken before I got there.
Anyway, I had to order the movie on video, and the poster wasn't
going to get here for a good while, so I figured I'd hunt up whatever parts I knew for
sure I'd need while I was waiting. In the meantime, the man I work for part time, John
Cordsen, a helluva nice man as well as a pretty fair hand with a wrench, told me that one
of the guys I worked with had heard what I was starting, and had a magazine with an
article in it about the Captain. I got excited about it and called him at home to have him
bring it to work with him, which he did. What it amounted to was a piece in Cycle World
magazine, with a few pictures of what turned out to be two different bikes built by a guy
in California named Jim Leonard. I decided to try to get in touch with him, and started to
call, and write to the magazine to see if they would help me, which they tried to do, but
I never heard back from him. I guess things are really busy out in California these days.
At any rate it turns out that I didn't need any help from him anyway.
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| The very first of many, many parts purchases. |
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I went to a big swap-meet we have here, and thought I
might, by some chance, find some stuff for my chopper, and that day I bought what was to
be the first parts I actually bought for "The Captain", as it was beginning to
be called, the "dog bones" for the handlebars…. Ten Bucks! Man if that
won't give you the wrong impression! That was the beginning of a long line of small parts
that I was to buy, not many for Ten Bucks.
Next I started looking for help with the motor, (for all of those
folks I mentioned before, it's a motor, not an engine, if it was an engine, they'd call it
an enginecycle.) I have been in the bottom end of a Harley-Davidson motor a few times, but
I didn't like it much, so I figured discretion being the better part of valor I'd get help
in order to insure the absolute best motor possible.
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| OK! I'm ready to ride! Wait...I may have forgotten a few items here... |
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I landed on a man I'd done business with in the past, and
had always enjoyed dealing with, who is one of the best H-D wrenches I've ever known a
fellow named Scott Yamasaki, of Scott's Motors. I went to him one day to talk about my
intentions. The first thing he asked me was if I was going to ride this motorcycle, which
I answered of course, and from there we began to come up with some specs (SPECIFICATIONS
for those of you…. You know who you are) for this mythical motor. First and foremost
was the decision to keep the motor at 74 c.i. for the sake of reliability, after all I
wasn't building a hot rod, and I wanted to have a reliable motor. The next issue to decide
was cases. Scott told me he could get me a "ZOOMO" deal (his words) on a set of
Delkron cases, and save me a few hundred bucks, as well as get me a damn good set of heavy
duty motor cases. I guess Delkron cases are used a-lot in racing, at least that's what
I've been told, and they are very heavily made. I asked him about the rest of the parts
and he told me that he would get them as he went along, and that when he had all he needed
he would put it together.
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| Warren swings a leg at Sturgis in 98. Who's the goofy dude in the boxers? |
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The next item of concern to me was a frame. I knew that the
movie bike, which I now knew was actually two bikes, and had recognized them as such, had
a wishbone, rigid, H-D frame, vintage 1952, as the rest of the bike was. I was reluctant
to use an original '52 frame for reasons of metal fatigue, and possible unknown
modifications, so Scott suggested we use after market, saying Paughco was the least
expensive for the quality. I later found a company making replica frames that are pretty
damn good copies of H-D frames, although they are awful pricey. What I finally decided to
use I will leave to your discerning eye to determine…for now.
Continue to Chapter 3 |
