|
|
Post by oldchopperguy on Sept 3, 2018 11:19:16 GMT -5
OK Boyz n' Gurlz…
I'm amazed at the treasure-trove of pix I uncovered while searching for the infamous "Easter Bunny" shots...Way too many to post at once. I'll post more "by subject" as I get them scanned. For some, this thread will be of little interest, but for my friends who wonder "Just WHAT was this guy about for the last seven decades?" it will be a time capsule... Pix from the beginning in 1947, to some from my teens, my pals, military, and of course, many of my BIKES!Some are poor quality, but "they are what they are"... These were mostly shot with OLD "Brownie and Poloroid" cameras... Can't go back and take them again with a better camera!
That said, Here is THE beginning... "Little Chopper Guy" comes on the scene seventy-one years ago...    All the pix I'll post here came from a long-lost box which went through a flood back in the seventies... Many prints and slides survived, and I'm SO glad they did. More pix coming including the only color pix of "Old Blue", documenting the three different builds... Wow! What memories... Have a GREAT Labor Day, and... RIDE SAFE!
|
|
|
|
Post by shalomdawg on Sept 3, 2018 14:58:13 GMT -5
howdy leo
those were the days---i helped dad overhaul the old flathead on the front lawn when about six. gosh, it had 80,000 miles on it and really needed that overhaul. i discovered that a little water on a drop light bulb made a strange sound just before the light went out.
keep on with the pictures as you are able. i like seeing the historically accurate memories come to life. thanks
ken
|
|
|
|
Post by wheelbender6 on Sept 3, 2018 17:53:11 GMT -5
The grill on that hot rod Lincoln is awesome.
|
|
|
|
Post by SylvreKat on Sept 4, 2018 8:00:10 GMT -5
I'm loving the pix! Esp your expression in the 6months one. You really were plotting something!
>'Kat
|
|
|
|
Post by oldchopperguy on Sept 4, 2018 9:20:22 GMT -5
howdy leo those were the days---i helped dad overhaul the old flathead on the front lawn when about six. gosh, it had 80,000 miles on it and really needed that overhaul. i discovered that a little water on a drop light bulb made a strange sound just before the light went out. keep on with the pictures as you are able. i like seeing the historically accurate memories come to life. thanks ken
I briefly had a BEAUTIFUL '51 Ford ragtop which had a loose rod-bearing. We pulled the pan in the driveway and removed the cap from the offending rod and replaced the bearing with a piece of leather from my garrison belt wrapped around the buggered-up crank-journal... Soaked it in STP first. We drove that flattie for several months trouble-free, and finally sold it for top-dollar because it was so pristine. We DID inform the buyer of the leather rod-bearing. We weren't pretty but we were honest!When I joined the Army several years later, that Ford was STILL putting around town trouble-free! Fixes like THAT just don't take place with modern, high-tech motors... Of course, modern mills don't usually toss rod-bearings either... LOL!  |
|
|
|
Post by oldchopperguy on Sept 4, 2018 9:28:27 GMT -5
I'm loving the pix! Esp your expression in the 6months one. You really were plotting something! >'Kat
Yeah, I do believe I must have been up to something... P robably scheming to get Dad to take us to "White Castle" in the Lincoln for a bag of sliders... LOL!
Funny memory though... After 71 years, I still remember there WAS a patch of poison ivy behind the sandbox!  |
|
New Rider
Currently Offline
Posts: 34 
Likes: 2
Joined: May 5, 2017 17:04:04 GMT -5
|
Post by mjsfoto1956 on Sept 5, 2018 14:30:27 GMT -5
My pappy said, "Son, you're gonna' drive me to drinkin'
If you don't stop drivin' that Hot Rod Lincoln."
Have you heard this story of the Hot Rod Race
When Fords and Lincolns was settin' the pace?
That story is true, I'm here to say
I was drivin' that Model A.
It's got a Lincoln motor and it's really souped up.
That Model A Vitimix makes it look like a pup.
It's got eight cylinders; uses them all.
It's got overdrive, just won't stall.
With a 4-barrel carb and a dual exhaust,
With 4.11 gears you can really get lost.
It's got safety tubes, but I ain't scared.
The brakes are good, tires fair.
Pulled out of San Pedro late one night
The moon and the stars was shinin' bright.
We was drivin' up Grapevine Hill
Passing cars like they was standing still.
All of a sudden in a wink of an eye
A Cadillac sedan passed us by.
I said, "Boys, that's a mark for me!"
By then the taillight was all you could see.
Now the fellas was ribbin' me for bein' behind,
So I thought I'd make the Lincoln unwind.
Took my foot off the gas and man alive,
I shoved it on down into overdrive.
Wound it up to a hundred-and-ten
My speedometer said that I hit top end.
My foot was blue, like lead to the floor.
That's all there is and there ain't no more.
Now the boys all thought I'd lost my sense
And telephone poles looked like a picket fence.
They said, "Slow down! I see spots!
The lines on the road just look like dots."
Took a corner; sideswiped a truck,
Crossed my fingers just for luck.
My fenders was clickin' the guardrail posts.
The guy beside me was white as a ghost.
Smoke was comin' from out of the back
When I started to gain on that Cadillac.
Knew I could catch him, I thought I could pass.
Don't you know by then we'd be low on gas?
We had flames comin' from out of the side.
Feel the tension. Man! What a ride!
I said, "Look out, boys, I've got a license to fly!"
And that Caddy pulled over and let us by.
Now all of a sudden she started to knockin',
And down in the dips she started to rockin'.
I looked in my mirror; a red light was blinkin'
The cops was after my Hot Rod Lincoln!
They arrested me and they put me in jail.
And called my pappy to throw my bail.
And he said, "Son, you're gonna' drive me to drinkin'
If you don't stop drivin' that hot rod Lincoln!"
|
|
|
|
Post by wheelbender6 on Sept 5, 2018 21:43:55 GMT -5
I always thought the hot rod lincoln would look similar to the one Leo was sitting on. According to the Charley Ryan, this is a pic of the hot rod lincoln in the song. It sports a v-12 and 3 speed overdrive.  |
|
|
|
Post by oldchopperguy on Sept 6, 2018 8:34:28 GMT -5
Mjsfoto1956Wow! THE original lyrics! I've got the original song on a 45rpm record, and the later cover by "Commando Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen"... Great song about great days gone by... Like Chuck Berry's "Maybellene" chasing that Caddy! Done more stuff like that in my misspent youth than I want to admit to....
|
|
|
|
Post by oldchopperguy on Sept 6, 2018 8:42:13 GMT -5
Wheelbender6,
YESSSSS! That IS the one! It would be ah, well, pretty tough to get my Dad's '47 Lincoln to be very frisky at its "boat-anchor" weight... LOL!
That car was like a battleship! Specs say the V12 flattie put out 150hp (a LOT for those days) but top speed was an optimistic "estimated" eighty-five mph. Before coast-to-coast freeways were the rage, it was PLENTY of speed. I am surprised though that so few Lincoln V12's made it into Model T, Model A and Model B Ford hotrods. It's a natural conversion, but the 12 probably won't easily bolt into the 4 and 8 cyl. Fords and a virtual "plethora" of speed goodies was available for the V8 Ford flathead.
Thanks for posting!
|
|
|
|
Post by oldchopperguy on Sept 6, 2018 8:50:56 GMT -5
Here are a few pix from my teens through Army years... Approx. 1962-1974...    
|
|
|
|
Post by oldchopperguy on Sept 6, 2018 9:02:20 GMT -5
OK, now for some bikes...
This is the 1965 BSA Hornet 650 I traded aging "Old Blue" for. NOT one of my best trades... At least it LOOKED cool... My touch was the black n' yellow "Hornet" paint and"Clubman" bars. I cut the tubing and bar-stock and tack-welded them together... Then took them to "Big Max the Welder" and he professionally finished the job... I did NOT want homemade bars coming apart on the road!
Once I had them CHROMED, they did look sweet!
______________________________________
That's my Mom TRYING to be enthusiastic about my purchase... LOL! C'mon, Mom... I can make a silk purse outta that sow's ear... Trust me!
Yeah, "Old Blue" was gone, my BSA Hornet was a major disappointment and I wanted another HOG!!! I found this truly AWFUL looking 1958 FLH (at least the BARS were cool!) at Ronnie's Harley Davidson in Villa Park, Illinois where I bought the '57 pan which became "Old Blue"... And, later, the 1970 bagger... I spent a LOT of time and money at Ronnie's!
__________________________________________
Below, here I am with the '58 after some quick surgery... Cut the pipes, reinstalled the expansion cone muffs... lost the front fender and that truly bizarre sissy-bar.
__________________________________________
Next pic, me two years later on the little Honda Super Hawk 305... Probably more fun per dollar than any bike I've ever had!
These two pix were taken two years apart! Same place, same clothes, same helmet, same Brownie camera... Am I a creature of habit or what? Talk about deja vu...
That little 305 was THE best all-purpose bike I ever rode. Even back in 1968 when I bought it, I could see the Asian invasion was on the way!
That old Hog rode a LOT better than it looked... It had a 3/4 cam, shaved heads and some other more "questionable" mods. It also had my all-time FAVORITE H/D feature: The "faucet-handle" road damper! That little gizmo has saved lives. Look carefully at the front fork and you can see the legs "bow" forward slightly from wear. Fork wobble at it's WORST... But... Just a half-turn on that damper and all is well with the world again.
That rusty, shabby, raggedyazz old Hog would STILL do an honest hundred-and-five on the flat, and cruise eighty all day... But EWWWW... those DISMAL dry-rotted tires... Appear to have come from a WWII delivery truck... LOL!
Forget today's "hatchback car window lift" stabilizers tying forks-to-frames. ALL bikes (especially step-through SCOOTERS) should by law have a road damper!!!!! 
As I view these pix, I see me wearing the same windbreaker and "Beatle boots"... Cheesh, those rags traveled all over the world!!! I still wore them for years after coming home...
______________________________________________
This is "Mustang Jimmy's" truly FABULOUS custom Triumph Bonneville...
"Mustang Jimmy" was a REAL-DEAL gearhead... He had a PAIR of Mach I Mustangs (one in pic)… ONE was a daily driver, the other full-on drag car. He pulled the drag car behind the street car and they looked nearly identical except for wheels/tires.
Jim could make ANY motor scream! He ended up a major exec at International Harvester where he got to play with DIESELS.. He also got them to discover my pal Ray...
Sadly, Jim lost a battle with cancer last year. He was ONE day younger than me.
_____________________________________________
And finally, Ray and his resurrected Norton 750... Next to my finished chopper (which Ray REALLY helped design, engineer and build) it was the FASTEST bike in our posse! Ray was my "homie"... His skills even as a 12-year-old surpassed ANY degreed engineer I had ever met.
Ray was the most ingenious natural-born engineer/innovator I've EVER known. At 12 years old, he could do things degreed engineers called "impossible" and make things that dropped jaws...
He retired a few years ago, and IH still calls him in for emergencies with tooling and machines he modded 20 years back as NOBODY can figure out HOW he did it, and nobody can make repairs... Talk about making your position fire-proof!
He dug that Norton out of a dumpster where it had been stolen and burned. Carbs had melted and run down the intakes... Even I, being a real believer in the little nipper doubted he'd ever get it running. WRONG!!!!! One year later it was running in the low 12's. He had more fun on that bike than anyone I knew. Funny thing: Until posting this, I never really paid attention as to how he rode with us for two years before being old enough to have a driver's license! I'm not sure it ever even had a title!
Never got stopped, just enjoyed the ride... The local police cut us a LOT of slack because they all knew us and that we were "OK" bikers.
Coming up, I'll post pix of the brief but WONDERFUL story of "Old Blue"...
|
|
|
|
Post by oldchopperguy on Sept 6, 2018 21:20:54 GMT -5
It's 1961, and "Old Blue" begins life from a tattered 1957 Harley Davidson FLH Duo Glide... No pix of the original stocker ever taken.  First build... Just a start... Motor bone-stock. Amazing "factoids" about the old Pan-Heads: Up to 1954 the FL 74 CID (1208cc) motor put out 9.44hp @ 5K rpm. About the same as a Chinese 150! In 1955 the improved FLH version of the SAME motor put out 60hp @5,500 rpm. A whole LOT better "raw material" to work with... LOL!
I already had the Goodyear Grasshopper tire on the rear which turned out to be a FANTASTIC all-round tire with its semi-knobby round tread running smooth on the road, yet having traction on all surfaces. An old ancestor of modern multi-use tires! The true knobby front tire just happened to be on the 19" rim when I got it, and looked AND rode pretty bad... LOL!
The seat was a Bates 2-up leather buddy seat made for a Sportster. Comfortable, but NOT the right look for a chopper... The rear fender was the original front fender turned backwards. OK, but still amateurish. Heck, I still had the FLOORBOARDS on the old gal!
Oh well, it WAS a good start.
OK, NOW we're getting somewhere! Much refined, the old gal was now "coming of age"... Stock motor was now rebuilt with bored jugs, shaved heads, big valves, ported/polished, 1/8" overbore with Venolia pistons and 3/4 cam. Horsepower upped from stock 60 to a healthy eighty-five. NOW we're getting more than 1hp per cubic inch, and some FRISKY performance! My boy-wonder Ray was indispensable in all builds... He REALLY got a hoot out of doing the first burnouts and smoking donuts! The neighbors were NOT as enthusiastic as Ray and I were... LOL! Note: no seat at all... LOL!Just got her running... not even a plate on her yet... But STILL had that unsightly front knobby.
__________________________________
NOW... Licensed and on the road! I'd forgotten "Old Blue" was originally "Old Red"... Ford "Poppy Red"...LOL! This second build was now refined. A chopped H/D sidecar fender was on the rear. Stock Sportster muffs replaced the straight-pipes. Solo-seat and pillion-pad replaced the buddy-seat. A proper 19" Dunlop runnin' rib replaced the front knobby... THIS was classic Harley bobber at its best! Easy to kick-start, simple to maintain, quick as most cars, she'd go WELL past the century mark, and cruise any speed desired. An absolute JOY to ride.The motor, though pretty well warmed up was still painted. No chrome, and while pretty frisky for a Hog, would only turn the quarter in the mid 14's @ eighty... Time to get SERIOUS!!! _____________________________________________________
THIS is SERIOUS... Three times more money in the build than my Dad paid for our house... Little Jan "The Flying Squirrel" took these pix with my Dad's Polaroid camera race-day morning before heading for Oswego... Where I ran some mid-elevens (11.4 @ 129.4, 11.21 @ 122.3) and she ran her first mid-10 (10.68 @139.7) and I still have the tattered time-slips.   
In this final incarnation, the bike had a full-on drag motor built by Triangle in Chicago, and all-chromed up. Their own foundry cast the cases and turned the billet stroker-crank and steel jugs. Stock spec's were 3.4" bore and 3.9" stroke. The new motor had a 4.3" bore with Chevy 409 pistons, and a monster 5.5" stroke for a 159.74 CID displacement. Compression was 13.5:1. Steppul's Dyno service in Chicago showed 256hp @ 2,800rpm.
For a time, I ran the fishtail straight-pipes but at the request of "many" I tried numerous mufflers. Finally, I took the bike to Triangle and they modded the stock Sportster muffs from the second build for street riding and the setup ran VERY well... And the sound was fantastic. At the strip, we pulled them and ran shorty straight-pipes. The carb was a dream to tune... All outside-adjustable and combined with the adjustable timer, open-exhaust setup took only minutes. I raced on straight Sunoco Blue 260 gas (or aviation gas if available).
One final funny memory was Ray and I putting the new motor into the frame... Ray said: "Ah, Leo, this motor don't fit in the frame..." Oh, Yesssss….. A trip to Triangle put the frame into their jig where it was cut and reshaped/welded to allow the bigger cases and taller cylinders to shoehorn into the old rigid frame. When you're 16, you don't think ahead all that well... LOL!
I can't say enough about Triangle and their drag-motors and transmissions. I wish they were still around, but their 1950's methods, while MARVELOUS, would not fit today's ways. To get this one even remotely street-drivable was a monumental achievement. The only Harley/Davidson parts left on the motor were the hydraulic lifters. Cases, jugs, heads, intake and carb were all proprietary Triangle parts.
The tranny was a Triangle full-drag setup. Teeth were selectively removed. Remaining gear-teeth were re-contoured to encourage forced-engagement rather than their repelling and grinding during no-clutch shifts. Then all parts were re-heat-treated. I never had a problem ever with that tranny. Triangle promised it would withstand both no-clutch shifts, and, neutral-drop starts up to 350hp. They were good for their word. After two seasons, the only damage was a crack in the right-rear motor-mounting boss on the block. I had that heli-arced without removing the engine from the frame.
Old-school tech, old-school riding... We used the spinning rear tire as a "clutch"... Not the way it's done today, but it worked well, turning superb times.
While I liked to think the bike was about unbeatable, recent research turned up a mid-sixties STREET-DRIVEN California KNUCLEHEAD with similar custom-cases/cylinders that ran in the MID-NINES! Had I run against THAT chopper, I would have lost big-time!
And THAT is the story of "Old Blue"... Yes, I finally had an 11-second HARLEY-DAVIDSON chopper that could be street-driven. All that remained was to win enough to PAY for it... So long as she'd run mid-elevens with my 350 pounds aboard, THAT was a no-brainer! For those challenges that were "questionable" little Jan's 76 pounds always ensured a win!
Ain't life GRAND? 
|
|
|
|
Post by pistonguy on Sept 7, 2018 7:35:06 GMT -5
 Dude!!! get at least your own facts straight from your own posts here and on other boards. |
|
|
|
Post by cyborg55 on Sept 7, 2018 9:10:53 GMT -5
I second that motion and send it to the floor for a vote
|
|
