Captainkirk's Duster project
Fate is fickle. After reassembling the entire motor (practically all by myself) and dreaming of the day I could light it off, the instructor just gaped at me, slack-jawed, when I asked when we got to run the motors. Then he laughed. "Oh, no, no, no, we don't run these things
. We cant use gasoline in a school!"
Right. And auto shop was down at the end of the hall, where everyone and their brothers were working on cars chock-full of leaded premium.
I was crestfallen. I'd wanted to hear that thumper pop soooo bad.
And then, as usual, Dad pulled off one of his zingers.
I swear the guy was a freakin' mind-reader. Only a few weeks after this disappointment, he comes home from work with not one, but two motors; big honkin' cast-iron block Wisconsin side-shaft engines, one a seven horse and the other an eight horse. Seems somebody at his job had run the eight horse out of oil, and the seven just wouldn't start or run. He handed me the two motors with a repair/overhaul manual and basically said, "Have fun!"
Boy, did I ever!
I ripped into those things like a monkey on a cupcake. I tore them down to bare nuts and bolts, taking care to make lots of notes, funky diagrams and cryptic pictures and to keep the parts from the two engines separate from each other. One thing was clearly and painfully obvious; the eight horse motor was junk; scrap iron. As soon as I opened it up I noticed the sharp, pungent odor of scorched motor oil; a smell I've never forgotten. The crank was actually fractured and the rod was welded to the crank journal. It was the first time Id ever seen blue cylinder walls, looking almost case-hardened with a magical rainbow of different hues. This one was toast, all right. The seven horse turned out to be a horse of a different color
..(no pun intended. Well, OK, I did intend it); the flywheel key was sheared, setting the timing off by 20 degrees or more. As long as I had it apart, I went through every aspect the manual offered, measuring, inspecting, and reassembling by the book; torqueing and checking everything as I went. Dad sprung for a new gasket set, and in a few days it was back together;
knock on wood. I still remember filling it up with Havoline oil from the garage. (Dad was a big Texaco/Havoline fan) and how nauseating that Havoline smelled. Man, that stuff smelled horrible; like dead fish in a garbage can or something! I still won't use it today. I've morphed into a big Castrol fan, myself. Anyway, I hauled this big old (heavy!) motor out to the garage and bolted it to a pallet, fabricated a pull-rope from a length of clothesline, tied a knot in one end and looped it around a sawed-off hunk of broomstick. I poured about a cup of gas into the tank from the lawn mower gas can (Dad had upgraded to a power mower by this time; the 20th Century had arrived!) , wrapped my homemade pull rope around the sheave, crossed my finger and pulled. Nothing. Lots of compression, though! Again, and nothing. Hmmm. This was not supposed to be the way things worked. Again. again, and again. Nary a pop. Maybe it needs a bit of choke?
POP, POP, POP! And then it was roaring, full throttle, farting and backfiring
..I eased off the choke and it settled into a rhythm; surge, tip in the governor, throttle itself back, then surge again. Over and over! It was running, and I had made it run. I had dissected the damn frog and brought it back to life! It was a magical moment; to be cherished, dreamed about, remembered
..SHUT THAT DARN THING OFF! came the shouts from the house. Oops. I guess I had gotten a bit carried away
The motor was pinging and ticking as it cooled, the smell of scorched paint and fresh baking Permatex mingled with the nauseating smell of Havoline on my hands and clothes and the ripe, rich fumes of fuel-laden burned exhaust that stung my eyes. My ears rang like a five-alarm fire. The Seven Wonders of the World had just unfolded in front of my eyes; if I was a chick, I would've cried. But I wasn't a chick, thank God, so I did what any other motor-mad misfit would do
. I fired it up again. (duh!)
WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT THAT THING OFF! Oops. Sorry!
There was no turning back from here, you see. I was in way too deep to save at this point and I knew it.
At the dark end of this bar, what a Beautiful Wreck you are//When you've gone too far, what a Beautiful Wreck you are//What a Beautiful, such a Beautiful, what a Beautiful Wreck you are.
Shawn Mullins, Beautiful Wreck
Now, I s'pose if youre a kid, the coolest thing your Pop can do for you is give you a car to play with. Well, nothing doing; not in my family, at least. I was still several years away from my license anyway.
The next coolest thing he could do is give you a motorcycle. And when he dragged home this wrecked Honda CL350, you coulda knocked me over with a feather. Not like in, "Heres a brand-new, shiny motorcycle for you, son", but rather, "See what you can do with this wreck."
And what a beautiful wreck it was. Some guy had T-boned a car with it. The fork tubes were bent. The frame was bent and buckled. The front wheel was a pretzel. The lower motor mount lugs were broken off the cases. But on the bright side, it was only two years old! Dad had traded a Motorola short-wave radio for it.
Well, theres no way I could've done it myself. Dad gave me free rein to take the thing apart, though. Like, "heres your project, now go to it". I got the motor off; he took it and the broken lugs to a welding shop, had them TIG welded back on and re-drilled. Next he found a junk frame. I got to remove every nut, bolt and widget from the old frame and transfer it over to the new frame, starting with the complete wiring harness. Now, I couldn't have managed any of this without the Oh-fishull Honda Shop Manual, painfully translated from Japanese to English and full of such exuberant euphemisms such as "Upper seat cover dont attached". Dad got a hell of a kick out of that one. Anyway, as the winter dragged on into spring and it became much more enjoyable working when you could feel your fingertips, things began to come together. Dad found a couple of used fork tubes to replace the bent ones. He brought the tank and side covers in to the basement workshop and made that his pet project, sanding, priming, and applying a really cool looking green candy-apple metalflake paint, highlighted by his own hand-pinstripe job. (OK, it was tape; but it looked really good). He found a serviceable front wheel, and we gave it new shoes; on/off road tires; semi-knobbies. By the first of June that year, it was ready to rock.
I was so excited, I could've peed my pants. I remember we had some trouble getting it to fire, and when it finally did, it needed some fine tuning, but within a couple of days it was ready for a test hop. I took it out on the front lawn, fired it up, and pulled in the clutch. I snicked 'er down out of neutral and noticed with smug satisfaction that the green neutral light was out. I rolled on the power and eased out the clutch
..
Just about that time, the throttle cable stuck WFO and I did my first wheelie, in front of a crowd, no less! The bike heaved me off like a dog shaking off a flea, and lurched to a halt on its side like a mortally wounded buffalo. It embarrassed the hell out of me, but pride notwithstanding, the only damage done was some overturned turf and a bent turn signal. I could feel my cheeks burning like hot branding irons as I slunk back to the garage dragging my wounded Japanese buffalo.
After a brief autopsy, it was discovered that one of the two throttle cables had been damaged and badly kinked in the T-bone accident. So, Dad went up and bought a new cable assembly and I had it back on in a jiffy. The next day, I tried it again, not feeling near as smug as the day before, and this time it went well. Soon I was cruising up and down the street, until Dad hollered at me to get it off the road without a license. No problem. Flushed with success, I asked if I could take it over to The Field. He nodded his OK, followed by "Be careful!"
Now, The Field was a bunch of vacant land with an abandoned railroad bed running through the middle of it. Somebody must've owned it, perhaps the railroad, but we neither knew nor cared. The rails and ties had all been removed years earlier, leaving behind a rail bed-sized swath of pea gravel running down the middle of hills and grassy fields. Now, you weren't supposed to ride motorized vehicles on this path, but this was The Field, and we were in Mudville, and we pretty much did whatever the hell we wanted.
I pushed the bike over to the Field, mindful that Dad was watching to make sure I didn't ride on the street again. When I got to the field, I fired it up and took off down the trail. I thought I'd died and went to heaven! This was my own bike and I could ride it as much as I wanted! Never mind the fact it was heavy, and far from an Mx-er; it was a bike and it was mine and I was riding it and just you try and stop me. Yeee-hah! I rode that evening until the sun had slunk below the horizon, a huge, red rubber ball in a sea of violet and it was too dark to see. I pushed it home hearing the crickets chirping, mosquitoes dive-bombing any uncovered inch of flesh, smelling the hot engine smells and raw gasoline and thinking that it didn't get much better than this. And I rode just about every night after that; all summer long. Rain or shine, dry or muddy, I tore up the trails and made new ones of my own, learning to jump the lumbering beast and not do a Billy, fishtailing through mud holes and sending up huge rooster tails of mud in the summer breeze. I beat the hell out of that bike, flogging it relentlessly and taking a few spills in the process, but I kept it clean and well-maintained, changing the oil regularly (yuck....
Havoline.
Gross!) and keeping the chain and sprockets lubed and adjusted. That year was the Summer Of Honda. My buddy Dave bought an XL125, Howard had his DR125 and we would ride until it was dark, every single day that we could! None of us wore helmets or protective gear, which was pretty stupid now that I think about it, but we were just untamed horses running free on open range and no cowpoke was gonna put his lasso around us!
The one thing that did take the wind out of our sails some was the Great Arab Embargo of 1973. Gasoline jumped to $.50 cents a gallon! (gasp!) IF you could get it. I remember the cars lined up down the street and around the corner, the signs on the pumps blaring out their shocking news in hastily-scrawled magic marker signs; NO GAS!. No ****! Look at the lines down the street and tell me something I don't know. Now, I plead guilty to hocking gas from the mower, but it didn't really hold all that much; a gallon at best. So we rode when we could the rest of the summer until things slowly returned to normal, school began, and the fun was done for the season.
