Motorcycle beginnings.

When I was a boy my main interest was airplanes. I remember waiting eagerly for Air Progress magazine to arrive at the local news stand.

But as the age neared where I could drive, my interest shifted to cars, and then.... Motorcycles.

What actually got me up on two wheels was sort of a c.c. race. It was the summer after my senior year in high school, 1965, l and it turned out most of my buddies had... Motorcycles.

Jock was the first on the block, so to speak. His liberal and affluent parents gave him a Honda S90 as a graduation present. That was a small but very nifty sporting motorcycle.

Not to be outdone, Lenny cajoled his parents into buying him a Benelli 125cc Sprite, another cool horizontal cylinder machine.

Scott, who lived just down the road from me, had a set of parents that were young and quite liberal. So, he showed up one day on a Jawa. It was a two stroke and looked kind of dorky, but it convincingly topped the c.c. race at 175!

Then there was me. I had no bike, no car,not even a motor scooter. My parents were older, more conservative and both scientists. They didn't understand my yearning to have a vehicle of some sort. But I protested and eventually they relented. To a point. They would allow me to get  something to drive or ride -- if I earned the money to buy it.

So,  as soon as school was out I was started two summer jobs. Each morning I worked at a Grand Union Supermarket for a guy named Leo in the produce department. After a quick lunch I then went and toiled for old man Orth at a Texaco service station. This went on until about mid-August,  when I had earned about $125.

I began surveyinging local motorcycle shops to see what that kind of money would buy. One evening I visited Corey’s Cycle in Upper Saddle River New Jersey. They led me down the stairs to a basement where in one corner was a big black motorcycle. It was pretty much assembled, but there was a box of parts that went along with it. They told me the name plate said Zundapp, but it was actually a Horex motorcycle.

And the engine size was not 90, not 125, not 175, but a monstrous 452 cc's.

They said the price for the bike was $125. So I thought, Zundapp, Horex, who cares, sold!

Scott's dad had a furnace cleaning business and his son was working for him as a summer job. So, Scott had access to a panel truck. That's what we brought the motorcycle home in. We went down to Cory's Friday night and picked it up. I remember sitting on it in the back, wondering if it would tip over and get baptized by  the many cans of furnace cleaning solution called Jiffy Juice. It was creslic acid, a compound that has long ago since been banned by the government.

I remember as we rolled it off the truck and down into my parents basement (it was a walk-in), my mother came downstairs and practically had a nervous breakdown. Close on her heels was my father. Who took her aside and said quietly,” don't worry, he will never get it started.”

Of course he had not counted on my buddy Scott, who had at least one go-kart and was also fooling around with lawn mower engines. So he knew all the basics about an internal combustion engine, which to me at that time was knd of like an alien spaceship.

Scott said the first thing to do was determine if the engine would turn over, or if it was stuck from some years of storage. That was pretty easy. We fished the kick-start arm out of the box of parts and put it on the spline that came out of the engine. Then I stood on the arm to see if things would move. Nope, nothing budged. No big deal, said Scott. He went out to his dad's truck and came back with a big tin of lacquer thinner. We remove the finger-loose spark plugs and used a  funnel to put a good amount of the lacquer thinner into each cylinder. Scott said, wait overnight and see if the fluid level dropped,

The next thing to concern us was the battery. Scott put a screwdriver across the terminals and it did throw a weak spark. He said it would need a charge and, hang on just a little bit. He went home, got a trickle charger, came back and put it on the battery to charge overnight. He said,okay that's enough for tonight. Tomorrow I'll bring some fresh oil and gas. He also left me a little set of adjustable wrenches so I could start taking the carburetor apart, because he said they would probably need to be cleaned.

In the morning I came down to the basement because I was no longer working. This motorcycle was now my full-time job. The first thing I noticed was that the lacquer thinner had disappeared from the cylinders.  I thought to myself, that seems like a good sign. So I bravely went around and stood on the kickstarter and eureka. The engine slowly but then easily turned over. I took the bottom part of the carburetors apart as Scott had suggested.  

I then looked up into the recess with a flashlight and there were these two little brass jets in each carburetor. And, sure enough they had some guck in them. I took a paperclip, unbent it, and used it to clear the guck out of the Jets. Then to make sure, I dipped an old toothbrush in some gasoline and cleaned the jets further, and put things back together.

This took quite a while as I was new to this whole motorcycle mechanic thing. By that time it was not long before Scott showed up after work. I gave him the progress report. He said the lacquer thinner had done its job but then of course now we had to change the oil. So he fished out a big adjustable wrench out of his toolbox that let us unscrew the cap where the oil filter was,  and then out dropped the filter and a bunch of old dirty oil. Thankfully we had placed a pan in the right place. We washed the filter in gasoline put it back, tightened things up and added new fresh oil. Scott's wild guess was straight 30 weight. Which in retrospect was exactly what the engine spec called for, I learned later.

The next thing was to add fresh gas. We put a cup under each open petcock to catch any nasty old stuff was in the tank. In with the gas, and we quickly noticed not only was there fresh gas flowing out of the open petcock but also through the petcock itself. By that I mean when you closed the petcock it was still leaking gas. Scott said not to worry,  that the seals in the petcock had been dried out and that the gas would swell them up and things would tighten up and be leak-free pretty quick. He was right.

The next thing was ignition. Scott looked on both sides of the engine and there was no ignition points to be found anywhere. But then we delved into the parts. Lo and behold, there was a little circular plate with a breaker points mounted right on it. We quickly figured out where it mounted on the engine and found some little screws that fit exactly. Scott then had me kick the engine over slowly so he could figure out approximate timing of the points, which were opened by a little cam on the end of the crankshaft.

By this time it was getting pretty late in the evening, but Scott said we should give a shot at trying to start it. So the first step was to open the gas taps, let gas flow into the carburetors, and then kick the engine over to suck some of that mixture into the cylinders. The next thing was to wire things so that we had juice for a spark.

Scott spliced a lead from the points plate to the positive terminal on the battery and as soon as he connected it, the engine gave a little jump. Scott smile and me and said, wow man that's a very good sign.

Then, per his directions I stood up on the kickstarter and pressed it down with my foot as as quickly as I could. The engine gave a big cough. He nodded and I did it again. This time, it started with a blood curdling roar and a big ball of blue smoke. The rings had been stuck against the cylinder for a long time and now it was going to be a while before they sealed  things up properly. The bike was up on the center stand and the vibration caused it to dance around the floor. I tried to steady it and in my haste I tipped over the pan of oil that we had just drained out of the engine. Scott carefully turned the points plate where it was mounted on the engine until we had a higher speed. Then I turned the throttle, which was the right twist grip, back a little and the engine speed dropped down to a fast idle.

By this time most of my family had descended into the basement to see what the ruckus was all about. What they found was a dirty smelly noisy situation with two teenage boys who were beside themselves with joy.

In the following days I took the bike out of the basement and into the side yard. After starting it, I carefully, gingerly got on it and rode slowly around the yard. Although the transmission had supposedly four forward speeds I quickly discovered it would only go forward in two of them.

So that's how I ended up winning the c.c. race. I had a bike that was way bigger than my friend's but it only barely ran. That was good enough for me for the time being.

In the following months I began to learn about this monstrous creature I had purchased and found a good supply of spare parts and the all-important manuals. Most notable among these was a parts manual that had very detailed illustrations of all the engine parts.

That was a godsend because it now enabled me to figure out where all these little parts in that box went. I took the transmission out of the engine and discovered that it was missing a number of shims. And guess where the shims were? Yes, in that box. I reassembled the transmission with the shims in place and bingo. I now had all four forward speeds operational.

By this time fall had arrived and I was now in college. But over that winter I put all the parts in the box in their proper places on the motorcycle and by that spring I had a machine I could ride on the street. I went and registered it and found a garage near my college where I could keep it. I shared it with several of my fellow classmates who also had motorcycles. So we had a kind of cadre of guys who would go out riding occasionally. Throughout spring, summer, and the following fall I became an official motorcycle rider. These were the days when there were so few motorcycles on the road, you would wave whenever a full fellow motorcyclist drove by.

It was about at this point that I determined the bike was going to need a complete rebuild. I had amassed enough knowledge and parts that I thought I could do it. It took several years but in the end I ended up with a very nicely restored cafe racer styled bike. I still own it to this day.

And in the meantime I began a two new branches of my lifetime motorcycle journey called the Vincent Motorcycle, and Motorcycle Journalism.  But,.those are tales for another time.

Sandy Roca