Frustration

You ever really try to fit a square peg into a round hole?

It is possible you know. Sometimes a knife helps to whittle the peg down. Sometimes it helps to just pound the peg in place with a hammer. It is all child’s play, however you get that peg into the wrong hole.

In motorcycle assembly, it just doesn’t work that way.

I followed every direction from the manual to put that motor back together. I did it several times, each step, because it was not only confusing but I was squarepegging it.

With lots of help from Calvin, lots of moral support from my roommates and my buddy Steven, it all came together finally and it was ready to reinstall the motor in the frame. The most memorable of it all was the smell of the RTV silicone sealant we used as a sealer for the case.

I have always thought that for everything I do I learn something new. Looking back I think I gained a sense of care that I have forever used to put things together. Except when I am squarepegging of course; nobody is perfect.

I learned perseverance when I worked on transmissions, but that was much later in my career as a mechanic.

To wrap this up, the bike didn’t run right off. I had to pull the motor apart again to make things right. I will blame old age for not being able to remember why I had to pull the motor out and tear it down again. Remember I am bareing all here, I really don’t remember why.


I do remember cross threading a spark plug. I walked all over the city of Bitburg looking for a Tap to rethread the hole. I learned several terms for tap and die that day in German. I ended up ordering the taps (it was a three tap kit) to make the repair from one of the hardware stores.

I remember the clerk was really helpful and so he got the order from me even though he thought the taps were too pricey. I had to wait over a week for the taps to come in. I didn’t want to wait that long without being able to ride. But in this case, Calvin came through for me, he cleaned up the threads with an old spark plug and the bike ran good once I got both spark plugs in.

Those taps are still in my toolbox.

I never squarepegged a spark plug again.

So I graduated from motocross to street rider.

The Tear Down

My introduction to motorcycle ownership started with the complete rebuilding of a dead motorcycle. The Honda CL450 had been “more than” just “around the block” so to speak. It was a very well cared for source of enjoyment for my good friend and coworker, Steven Pundock. Since we have already discussed the importance of which state you hail from in the Military, Steven was from Cape May, New Jersey, thank you Billy for that information. He used the bike daily as transportation to get to and from our shop on the flight line where we worked on F4D model fighter aircraft.

Steven sold the Honda 450 twin when he upgraded to what was the world’s fastest motorcycle, at least in his eyes it was. I am referring to the Kawasaki triple he bought, it was a 750 cc two-stroke monster referred to as a Mach IV. The Honda was sold to a mutual friend who used the motorcycle to commute on and off base to a nearby home [If you were there you may remember the situation, if not just leave a comment and your email and I will elaborate further because there is another story that goes with the fellow but this is not the correct venue for such stories]. That is he used it to commute off base until he blew it up.

The bike was parked across the street from our barracks with all the other motorcycles for enlisted men. I was propositioned to buy the bike and fix it up. All three of them, Calvin, Steven and the unspeakable owner of the blown motorcycle were urging me to buy it and fix it up. Calvin said he would help me with the mechanical parts and since he was from California and he was a motorcycle mechanic I went ahead and bought the bike to fix it up.

I was scared though. They had removed one of the spark plugs and you could look right down into the cylinder and if the light was just right you could see a part of the piston with the rings. I was still learning to be a mechanic but I knew that you should not be able to see the rings or the grooves in the piston for the rings. That meant there was severe damage to the motor.

I don’t recall how but I obtained a manual on the bike from somewhere, probably it came with the bike, most of us bought the manual when we bought anything mechanical back then. So there I was during my time off, wrenches and screwdrivers in hand and I was removing the motor from my new bike.

New? NOT!

So I hauled the motor up the stairs to my barracks room and I started tearing it down. I was excited because I was getting started into new territory. Let me take this moment to mention that I had always considered myself as a mechanic and I have enjoyed tinkering with cars and anything mechanical but this was my first complete rebuild. It definitely was not the slant six I rebuilt in high school auto shop. The book came in handy with things like how to separate the chain links and remove the timing chain, on this model it ran between the two cylinders and from the crankshaft to the cylinder head and over two cams past several idlers and it had a friction tensioner.


This was more than just a motor rebuild because the transmission came apart with the engine, something I didn’t have to do in auto shop. Now I had to keep tract of things like multi-disc oil-bath clutch plates, transmission gears and shifter shaft, and little brackets and fittings for the control cables.

With help I had it torn down and all the parts in boxes and bags, labeled and cataloged. Calvin helped me with the inspection of all the parts and ordering from the bone yard in California. The rebuild kit came from a mail order supply house. But I knew that when everything came in the mail I would be riding my own motorcycle.

I hope I don’t kill myself; my mother would never let me live it down.

Motocross

Motocross?

Me?

I was kicked off the playground for being uncoordinated in hop scotch. I was always first out in dodge ball. I was the last one picked for sides in baseball or football. I was told I was too clumsy to play with others when I was a kid, even by my best friend. I never rode a motorcycle before. And now, you want me to ride motocross?

Calvin had bought one of the first Honda CR250M motocross bikes, a full-on race machine built for competition. It was Honda’s first look into becoming a competitor in racing and this fool had bought a brand new bike from Honda, stripped it down, cut the frame into two pieces, and mailed it to himself in Germany. Is he a fool? Now he wants me to learn to ride on his bike. Calvin said that if I break it I had to fix it. As if I didn’t already have enough pressure.

I saw it but it was hard for me to believe. Calvin was from LA, a different part of California but he was still from my home state. When you are in the military, anybody from your home state is instantly a friend. But he seemed weird. He was about my height, 5’ 11”, or so he seemed in my eyes. He was probably only 5’ 9” or so but he was thin. I’ll bet Calvin only weighed 110 lbs. Calvin rode a bicycle to and from work because, as he says: “It’s got two wheels!” A little close to my heart or at least it will soon be.

It was hard for me to believe that anybody would take a brand new anything and cut it up into pieces and mail it to himself. But, he is a welder and he knows what he is doing, I think. Calvin showed me the pins he had someone in the machine shop make him. They were just a length of cold rolled steel machined into pins that fit inside the cut tubes of his frame. His idea was to drop the pins in place and weld the frame up around the pins. I went with him that cold Saturday morning, to the welding shop, and I watched him set up the welder. His plan was to reconnect the frame with a type of welding called TIG welding (Tungsten Inert Gas).

For those of you who don’t know, TIG welding is one of the hardest types to perform. It consists of having an electrode made of Tungsten that is surrounded by a shroud that provides an inert gas atmosphere. TIG welding is a lot like the old style of welding using an acetylene torch and select metal rod, the torch makes puddles in the metal and you drip the joining molten metal into the puddle by holding the welding rod over the hot torch. But in TIG welding, a form of arc welding, the welder uses rod made from some alloy, stainless steel, or aluminum and the heat is controlled by a foot pedal. Oh hell, that must take a lot of coordination.

Calvin said he was going to weld 4130. Today, that cold Saturday morning, I am going to learn about alloy steel too. 4130 steel tubing is lighter than aluminum of the same strength and it is much stronger for the same size. That means Honda did their homework when they designed that racing bike. That also means Calvin must be a pretty good welder, he definitely had the confidence. So I put on a spare welding helmet and I watched over Calvin’s shoulder as he meticulously dropped little molten balls of alloy steel into his work to rejoin two sections of frame. Frame that I thought would never be the same. Little did I know, those welds were stronger than the rest of the frame.

In retrospect, I was concerned as we rode that little devil of a motorcycle all around that motocross course just off base. Calvin would inspect his welds every once in a while until he was satisfied that they were good. But they held up under some great stresses as we pulled endless wheelies. We made jumps, not over busses, but we did jump across small obstacles like mud ditches, wood debris and whatever. Steven, Calvin and I all had a great time on that Honda 250, I learned to do stunts and I just had a great time on the weekend with my two friends.

But I am getting ahead of myself; I was still sitting on a time bomb, ticking away. The fuse was set to go off the minute the parts arrived to rebuild my Honda twin.

Mother

Mother.
How did my mother influence my motorcycle riding?
What didn’t she influence in my life would be a shorter subject.

We all try to impress our mothers, don’t we boys? Well, my mother was not impressed, at least by me. In high school I borrowed a piston and connecting rod that fit a 283 Chevy V8 to impress my mom. I was driving a Toyota Corona, one of the first to be imported to the United States in 1966. My dad had died recently and I was trying to keep the little Toyota running. Mom would ask me why do I work on that car so much? So I borrowed this piston and connecting rod from a friend at school and when I got home I came into the house brandishing the parts and I said:

“Hey Mom, I found what was wrong with the Toyota!”

She flipped. “Go put that thing back in, right now!” She said.

I laughed for at least a week, I still get a kick out of it when I recall how I tricked my mom into believing I could even take such a thing out of the car.

So here is was in Europe, owner of a broken motorcycle, and in dire need of parts for my bike. Call Mom? I don’t think so.

I went through several motorcycle magazines and found ads for used parts. My buddy Steven helped a little, but he was a far cry from being a qualified motorcycle mechanic. We all worked on airplanes, but to know what you are doing when it comes to putting together a motorcycle takes a certain amount of familiarity and flair.

Cheers to all who do.

A mutual friend, one of the welders on the base, was not only from California, as I am, but he was a great motorcycle mechanic. Calvin was his name and he was the spark that got me started. Calvin showed me what to look for while rebuilding the bike. He helped me contact the motorcycle bone yard somewhere in Southern California and order the hard parts I needed to get the old 450 back together. I also ordered the gasket set and the new pistons and rings I would need.

Calvin was a welder and his solution for my exhaust was to have my mom go down to the nearest auto parts store and get me a pair of glass packs and he would weld them onto my original pipes.

Whoa there Calvin, did you say my Mother?

I just spent one month in my ‘61 Volkswagen riding all over Europe with her. We had a great time together even though I could not impress her. Now you want me to call her and ask her to get motorcycle parts?

OK I will do it. I got on the phone and I called her, I figured the truth was better than telling her it was for my VW. “The guy at the parts store would tell her they would not fit a 1961 Volkswagen and why didn’t I just get a new muffler, after all I was in Germany, isn’t that where they make the damn stuff,” I mulled it over in my head.

“Mom, can you go down to the nearest auto parts store and get me two glass packs and send them to me in Germany?” “Please”

“What do you want?” She asked.

“Just go to Grand Auto and tell them you want…

…they are for my motorcycle.”

I braced, then she caught on and I will never be the same again.

20 minutes of trans-Atlantic and trans-continental conversation about how I should not be on a motorcycle. I told her I was 21 and I am old enough to make those decisions myself. I think I gained a few years during that conversation. The upshot of the conversation was that she would do it. Hurdle passed.

You ever shoot ducks? You have to shoot in front of where you think the duck will be when your shot arrives. Or you don’t eat. It is called leading the bird.

I was leading the bird by ordering everything I needed all at once, then as parts arrive I could get to work on putting my future together.

Meanwhile, Calvin had shipped his brand new Honda CR250M to himself from California and his parts had just arrived. We were going to weld the frame back together and go riding. It looks like I am going to learn to ride Motocross before I even get my bike back together.

Yee-Ha!

In The Begining

My first motorcycle was a Honda CL450. Honda built this bike as a kind of a cross between a street bike and an off-road bike that was good for neither function. The Honda 450 was also available in the CB450 version that was definitely a street bike. However suited this machine was, it was small enough for me to learn to ride on and big enough to keep me out of trouble. It gave me the opportunity to travel throughout Western Europe in the early 1970’s and it gave me a new perspective on life, something I was in dire need of.

I was stationed in Germany while serving my country during the Vietnam War during the early part of the 1970’s. I was working as a mechanic on the famed F4D and F4E Phantom II fighters stationed at Bitburg Air Force Base, near Bitburg Germany. We provided NATO support for the protection of Western Europe during the cold war. Just after I left Germany for the States the 525th Tactical Fighter Squadron upgraded to the F15. So the only aircraft I worked on at that time was the F4 variety.

One of my friends and coworkers, Steven Pundock, was an avid rider and he was the original owner of the Honda. I accompanied Steven when he ordered a new 1973 Kawasaki 750 from the motorcycle dealer in downtown Bitburg and I remember how dedicated he was to getting the world's fastest motorcycle. Since I was new to the world of motorcycling I did not know the difference between any of the models other than the definitive Harley-Davidson and the Honda. I still recall hearing the slogan: You meet the nicest people on a Honda.

I got my introduction to Kawasaki and I was astonished that there was no choice of color as Steven ordered the bike in English and as the dealer relayed his information as he ordered the bike over the phone in German. Gold? That was the only color? Later when I owned a Kawasaki 750 myself, I became very accustomed to the color scheme of blue for ’72 and gold for ’73. There were other particularities but the color was the most obvious.

Steven sold the Honda to one of our mutual friends when his new Kawasaki 750 arrived from Japan; he was not in need of owning two motorcycles. Steven always took very good care of his possessions and the Honda was no exception. Cassick, the fellow who bought Steven's Honda, sorry I cannot recall his first name, had demolished the motor and was looking for some sucker to buy the expired Honda. So there I was, the sucker that ended up buying his first motorcycle, in pieces. And I didn’t even know how to ride.

Welcome

Hi and welcome to my blog on motorcycling. This site is dedicated to providing stories from my past as well as I can remember them. All are based on my experiences as a motorcycle owner, rider, and mechanic. I will make no promises other than I will try to make the posts interesting and informative. There are a lot of articles and magazines dedicated to motorcycling and I hope to make this one as simple as possible, rich in history, and I will strive to make my writing as creative as it can be without stretching the truth.

I would also like to acknowledge Billy Dexter, who reminds me constantly how it really was. Bill is the one responsible for correcting my mistakes and therefore he deserves the credit (as in movie credits) as an editor of this blog.