|
Continued from page 2…… With a couple weeks left, I called Joker Machine daily. I didn’t want to press, but I was going out of my mind. My contact, Geoff, had faced some health problems and decided that smoking was his cure. I didn’t want to add to the stress of building high-precision, very costly components that were already on back order. I considered myself a nuisance so I was trying to tread lightly. The staff at Joker was more than helpful and I finally got the call from Geoff. “Come on out and we can bolt on the parts right here. I’ve even found a guy around the corner at Greased Lightening who will make up the brake lines. We finally got the stuff back from chrome, but as usual, all the elements aren’t perfect. You’ll have to roll with one polished piece. The others were sent back to be rechromed.”
I respected his desire for perfection and that he had paying customers breathing down his neck, so I was perfectly happy to take whatever he had. Jay from Station 34 in San Pedro, a cool restoration shop built in an old gas station down the street, volunteered to haul me out to Azusa to the Joker Machine facility. Jay from Japan works with the Japanese Easyriders Magazine and wheels and deals with bikes back and forth to Japan. He was also building a rigid to ride to Japan until I helped him make a contact with the Harley-Davidson fleet center and he was able to borrow a Road Glide. The cheater. Anyway, we loaded the Blue Flame into the back of Jay’s ’79 ranchero and hauled it out to Joker, where we installed the forward controls. Then we rolled a couple blocks to Greased Lightening where the owner, Mike Ingle, custom made the hydraulic brake lines for the front and rear brakes. We bled and tested them and loaded the bike for the return trip to Pedro and the first start up. Mike’s shop is small, but his engine building facility is well equipped. He’s experienced and ready now to take on building engines for a larger clientele. He told us that when bleeding brakes, smearing a tad of grease on the threads of the bleeder nipple prevents air bubbles from creeping around the threads and results in a more positive bleed. An hour later, we pulled up in front of the hot rod body and paint joint around the corner from the headquarters. Henry the proprietor and Bob, the owner of one of Henry’s creations, came scrambling out of the corrugated steel building to check the metallic blue monster sticking way out of the back of the baby blue Ranchero. Using Henry’s driveway for an assist to Jay’s ramp, we unloaded the bike easily and fired it to life for the first time. In the back of my mind I planned to use Eddie Trotta’s break-in scenario where he rides the bike for one mile then tweaks, the next day he rides it for 10 miles and tweaks some more, then 50 miles, and so on. I liked the notion and the bike rumbled easily but idled too high. I rode it around the block and discovered a number of tweaks that needed to be addressed immediately. The formula was working. We pulled the bike into the garage as the dark-haired beauty arrived. We celebrated the occasion with more than just a drink. The night was gone in a blur of sex, sweetness and excitement at bringing the beast to life.
I’ve been building bikes for 30 years and the exhilaration of a metallic accomplishment that can carry you across the country is still the same. It’s something like sex and winning the lottery. Although nothing compares to sex, like, well … more sex. We’ll leave that for another discussion. I had less than 10 days left when I took the bike for its 10-mile excursion. It ran fine, but the tightness of the belt was bothersome. Something was rubbing on the final belt. The rear wheel spacing was slack and there was still no speedometer. The rear fender was finding its home and the bolts needed to be tightened. The new front brake line needed to be secured and we discovered some industrial wire cable ties with rubber inserts that would do the trick. We removed the inserts and polished the aluminum, and we had a couple of custom hydraulic hose guides. I mounted one to the Weerd Bros. lower triple tree by drilling and tapping a small hole, but I made sure to go in about an inch so I had plenty of thread depth. I also made sure I had enough fasteners to have them match if and when I ran the speedometer drive. I had 10 days to put 500 miles on the bike and dial it in for the 2000-mile jaunt across the desert to the Black Hills. With another round of tweaking under my belt, I rode the bike down the coast for breakfast an put another 50 miles on it. I pulled into a gas station to refill and couldn’t get the gas cap off the Sportster tank. It was a carefully manufactured super clean custom cap that fit right down on the surface of the tank. Damn it looked clean, but the gripping edge of the cap was less than an 1/8-inch thick and a hair off the surface of the new paint. With little surface to grip, it wouldn’t budge. I stood in the station perplexed. I knew I would run out of fuel before I returned to headquarters. Unlike most of the stations in L.A., this one actually had a technician, and a wrench who spoke English. On top of that, the man was generous with his tools, another rarity. I borrowed his largest pair of channel-locks and a rag that I draped over the cap and the top of the tank. The cap came loose. Another item to be tweaked. When the weekend came for the calendar show, the bike had a couple hundred miles on it and I had less than a week until departure. There was still no speedometer but the bike was running fine. I had yet to respace the rear wheel, but two women wanted my company at the show and how could I possibly resist? The sun was ablaze as the girls followed me into the check-in area where I planned to display the bike with Joker Machine’s fine rides and then at the Mikuni booth, which sat alone on the edge of the water without any bikes or babes around it to draw the crowds to their product. I ran into a girl who I had once come very close to dating on a regular basis, Lexy, a blond bomb shell with tiny feet and a skirt that could have been made out of one of my Hawaiian shirt sleeves. She dripped with sexiness as I greeted her. The dark-haired beauty at my side stared at the youngster in the stretched-on skirt and her emerald eyes glistened with some mysterious feminine emotion. Sweat beaded on my forehead and the sun hadn’t even crested the horizon yet. The show was flawless and I escaped early to log on more miles and spend some quality time with the lovelies who chaperoned me through the bikinis and chrome. I continued to ride whenever I could while making arrangements for the trip. A noise nagged me and I suspected the BDL system, which is the easiest thing in the world to install if you watch the spacing and the initial alignment. If I ever install one again, I’ll know just how to go after it, and the thing will be a breeze. I also noted some aluminum shavings in the clutch basket. I kept riding, adjusting and tightening the Joker Machine mirror, which was very flexible and sturdy. The Joker controls worked perfectly and I found a couple CCI frame clamps to hold the clutch cable in proper alignment. Two days before departure I pulled the rear wheel for balancing and fixing the spacing. This time a neighbor had loaned me a flat belt and disc sander and I immediately took too much off the spacer and had to take it to the local shop for shims. The next morning I was at Century Motors first thing. When I asked about shims, the mechanic looked at me with disgruntled eyes, stroked his long beard and said, “I’ll check the washer drawer.” I jumped in the flamed Bikernet T-bird and hauled over to California H-D for an assortment of shims, which I quickly took back to Century Motors. With the proper alignment and the wheel carefully balanced, I returned to the garage for installation. Then I decided the noise was coming from the clutch and began to dismantle it. I couldn’t seem to knock the clutch nut loose and more loose ends began to appear. It was Wednesday, with a day left before a crack-of-dawn departure on Friday, but the signs were pointing at a postponement until Saturday morning. Thursday morning I had lists in my pockets and notes on the Panhead Desk. The spare bedroom was becoming the packing department with my bedroll, my HA leather vest, a Prison Blues denim jacket from Chrome Specialties, my ditty bag, extra sunglasses and shirts. The bedroll was rapidly being buried under shit I threw on the bed every time I wandered down the hallowed Bikernet hall.
With each new creak of the feeble hardwood floor, I thought of something else. Sun Block, bungee cords and the battery charger for the cell phone. Just before noon, as I was writing news for the Web site, the UPS man showed up with a small square box. It contained the Custom Chrome Speedometer. I stopped to sign for the package, confirmed what it was, then headed to the garage. The Blue Flame stood majestically in the dim light as I studied its sleek form. She was beautiful and gave off a sense of alertness and anxiousness to hit the road. I wanted to load up and cut a dusty trail that minute, but I had lists to check off, calls to make, the news to finish. I was waiting for Bikernet patches to arrive. The UPS man had already left. If I waited one more day, perhaps? I looked at the speedo and set it on the bench. I went back to the glass Panhead and kept hammering on the news, although my heart was heading for the door.
|
