MC Ramblings

The Milk Crate Lesson

Court Canfield has been known to tell folks to “remove the bodywork, pull up a milk crate and look” at your tube framed Buell. The closer you look the more amazed you will be. First off it is hard to miss the oil tank. The polished aluminum sheet is partially visible with the bodywork on but you can really appreciate it in all its fabricated glory with the body work off. The fellow who built them is the master welder Jim Schneider, he also did the frames. The tanks really only need to be polished along the bottom third; the only bit visible with the body work on but that simply would not have been right. They have a real “industrial art” look about them. Speaking of welding, every weld on the bike, from the oil tank through the frame and up to the handle bars was done by hand by Jim and they are pretty. Excess material and splatter is non-existent but what you don’t see is the coping done to allow all those round tubes to join together perfectly. Every spot where the tubes join was coped. Jim built jigs so he could cut these accurately and it is part of the reason the frame looks so fine. (to be continued)

This Is Low!

 Saboteurs stuck the Mid-Antrim road race.  Let's hope they are caught; this is a terrible thing to do for many reasons.

    Oiled Track

Some Interesting Photos

These are well worth a look; Magnum is a coop of outstanding photographers all strong points of view so these will not be what you expect and you may not even like some of them but they are all interesting.   Magnum Bike Pictures

Still working on this weeks Buell History post, stuggling to get it right. 

On the Track with a 1914 Harley

Wearing shorts and an old-school "helmet," Bill McMahon, 68, of Wisconsin Rapids, on Saturday drove his 1914 Harley-Davidson around the track at Golden Sands Speedway.

via www.wisconsinrapidstribune.com

Nice story.

Yamaha out of World Superbike!

Details here

This is not good news.  Ducati our for this year, Yamaha next year, this dam recessin needs to end!

Gas Cap Keys

The gas caps on the early Buell, all the Buell Motor Company bikes and many of the early tube frame models came from a small outfit in London.  – I don’t know how Erik ever hooked up with these guys, I think he must remember everyone who was ever supportive to him during his racing/mechanic/parts importer days and used these contacts to track down the stuff needed to make bikes.  The incredible variety of vendors needed to make a motorcycle is staggering; from a Yamaha dealer who sold us turn signals at cost to a foundry that sold us logs of cast iron that were turned into brake rotors and hundreds of things between. – But back to the story. 

We had been using these caps for several years before the inevitable happened and someone lost the keys.  We had a key code recorded on the build sheets but when we contacted England we learned that the code was just for show; every key we got was the same.  All we had to do was ship the owner a key, any key and they could open the caps.  The vendor was very confident that with the very small number of Buell bikes using the key no one would end up with a stolen cap.  He used different codes for other customers so only Buell owners had the matching keys.       

Nice photo of a "real" biker

This unimposing gent is Rod Coleman and while he may not look the New Zeelander was an Isle of Man TT winner so her certainly had the chops.  

Now this is a hard core biker!

 The Vintagent reports that an AJS Porcupine (Coleman is on one in this picture) will be auctioned at The Quail motorcycle gather in August.   Save up your pennies!

PAY ATTENTION!

   Nice read on active safety features in cars and possible unsafe effects.  Autonomous Cars

 

Dave

AMA racing

Sat down and watch the AMA Superbike race last night. What a fun race to watch.  Way better than the MotoGP.  Michael Gougis really had it pegged here  Road Racing World Opinion . The racing is very good; the fans seem to catching on to it and the racers do seem to like the new management.  Maybe the complainers will start to fade away?

Ralph Lauren - Yes, Ralph Lauren

If you have you have not seen this check it out.   Absolutely stunning.

http://www.ralphlaurencarcollection.com/

Yes I know they are over restored and in some cases not even the right colors but they are gorgeous.  With the exception of the pure race cars I have to think that some of these builders would have gone this far originally if they could have gotten someone to pay for it and they had the technology to do it.