Thursday, December 8, 2011
It Takes a Lickin'
After a thorough diagnosis, my beat-up motor is actually in REALLY good shape. It's apparent that someone in the early 70's did some stuff to it to make it a bit racier, then put it in a barn for 30 years. Mark gave me a list of parts to pick up, and the homework of polishing most of the the top end. Parts ordered, parts polished. I've got 1 thing left to do before I go back to the shop next week. Clean out the top end. Ugh.
Aloha from 2004!
Where to begin? I guess I'll mention who I am. I do website stuff for a living, but that's irrelevant. I've been riding bikes since I was 15, and working on them since I was 9. A lot of my background in motorcycles came from my dad, and this bike is no exception, since he was there to haggle on my behalf to buy it, and wrote the check for $400 on the bike's seat to buy it. (How perfect is that?)
I suppose I should mention that it's a 1967 BSA Royal Star (A50). It's not as rare as a Vincent, AJS or a Matchless, but it's not very common either. It's just weird enough to turn a lot of heads, but common enough to still find parts for. Here's what it looked like when I bought it:
Wow. Just looking back I think, "What have I done?" Actually, I might have made a VERY bad decision, since it was so nice to begin with. Ugh. Folly of youth (Also, I just showed my wife the photos of the original bike and she hit me. hard.)
Like I mentioned above, I bought it right out of college with all the extra money I could scrape together, and it spent a lot of time sitting in the basement, while I took it apart piece by piece, and reconditioned it as well as possible with no budget.
Fast forward 2 years, and my wife and I bought our first home. It was a wreck, but cheap, and in an up-and-coming neighborhood. The beez was a sloppy rolling frame, and the motor was a joke. I was too busy building bathrooms and fences to think about motorcycles, so my old dad made me an offer. He was moving from Michigan to Texas, and said, "if you're not working on it, I'll take it with me and fix it up!" Good deal! Sadly, it didn't work out.
As soon as the bike was in Austin, it got tarped and set in the yard to rot. 5 years. Luckily, Texas has been in a drought, so it didn't acquire too much rust, but it was in bad shape. However, I made a promise that I'd do the bike right, and come hell or high water, it's gonna run.
Now, for the good news! Thanks to an active community of vintage bike guys in Indy, I was put in touch with Mark, a retired BSA hill climb racer, and builder of INSANE British engines. I brought the engine to his shop, where I met him for the first time, and he says, "Alright, let's tear this thing down." He told me that he's not going to charge me a cent, since he loves this shit, but I buy the beer and do the grunt work. Uh, okay. His general estimate is about $300 for parts to get the engine running and perfect. Uh, okay. Long story short - this is a Cinderella story for a resurrection project. I'm really thinking that this pig has wings!
I had a really fun idea of what I would do to the bike, but I'm older and wiser now, and I'm thinking about a lot of different ways that this build can go. For now, I'm wise enough to say, "Let's get the motor running, and we'll think about the other shit later.
I suppose I should mention that it's a 1967 BSA Royal Star (A50). It's not as rare as a Vincent, AJS or a Matchless, but it's not very common either. It's just weird enough to turn a lot of heads, but common enough to still find parts for. Here's what it looked like when I bought it:
Wow. Just looking back I think, "What have I done?" Actually, I might have made a VERY bad decision, since it was so nice to begin with. Ugh. Folly of youth (Also, I just showed my wife the photos of the original bike and she hit me. hard.)
Like I mentioned above, I bought it right out of college with all the extra money I could scrape together, and it spent a lot of time sitting in the basement, while I took it apart piece by piece, and reconditioned it as well as possible with no budget.
Fast forward 2 years, and my wife and I bought our first home. It was a wreck, but cheap, and in an up-and-coming neighborhood. The beez was a sloppy rolling frame, and the motor was a joke. I was too busy building bathrooms and fences to think about motorcycles, so my old dad made me an offer. He was moving from Michigan to Texas, and said, "if you're not working on it, I'll take it with me and fix it up!" Good deal! Sadly, it didn't work out.
As soon as the bike was in Austin, it got tarped and set in the yard to rot. 5 years. Luckily, Texas has been in a drought, so it didn't acquire too much rust, but it was in bad shape. However, I made a promise that I'd do the bike right, and come hell or high water, it's gonna run.
Now, for the good news! Thanks to an active community of vintage bike guys in Indy, I was put in touch with Mark, a retired BSA hill climb racer, and builder of INSANE British engines. I brought the engine to his shop, where I met him for the first time, and he says, "Alright, let's tear this thing down." He told me that he's not going to charge me a cent, since he loves this shit, but I buy the beer and do the grunt work. Uh, okay. His general estimate is about $300 for parts to get the engine running and perfect. Uh, okay. Long story short - this is a Cinderella story for a resurrection project. I'm really thinking that this pig has wings!
I had a really fun idea of what I would do to the bike, but I'm older and wiser now, and I'm thinking about a lot of different ways that this build can go. For now, I'm wise enough to say, "Let's get the motor running, and we'll think about the other shit later.
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