The Racycle Crank

Racycle Dating and Sharp Turns of Fortune on the Restoration Road

2010-02-16T19:39:00.000-08:00

First, the Good News:
The Racycle Crank got an email a few months back from a reader in California who had recently become a Racyclist. His name is Blue Nelson, and he asked whether I could help him date the Racycle Roadster he had picked up from a local Craig’s List seller. The bike was complete and looked to be in pretty good nick, but Blue thought he’d like to restore it sometime.

By the absence of a pinch-bolt binder for the seat post, I figured the bike was built somewhere from 1901 to 1908. In 1901, the Miami Cycle and Manufacturing Company dispensed with using a pinch bolt through the frame to secure the seat post and instead equipped the entire Racycle range with seat posts (from the Standard Welding Company) that used an internal-expander bolt like that used for securing the handlebar stem. However, the switch was not permanent, and by 1908 most Racycle models were back to using the pinch bolt behind the seat post. Of the six different models in the 1908 Racycle range, only the Roadster Model 135 (second picture) still retained the internal-expander seat post.

It was impossible for me to define the build date any narrower than that because the bike had no model-number badge. This is not unusual. Some badges have been lost over the years, and some individual Racycles never had a model-number badge in the first place.
As to why the maker’s use of model-number badges was inconsistent, we can speculate that perhaps these badges were left off of bikes made at the end of the model year so that unsold machines wouldn’t suffer the stigma of being last-year’s inventory. Or maybe the maker simply ran out of badges at times. It’s always fun to speculate.

But then I noticed that Blue’s Racycle came with a bonus. It had the later “improved” crank hanger used from 1911. A crank hanger of the same vintage as the frame would have had a two-piece crank assembly with the two crank arms meeting in the centerline of the bottom bracket and working together by virtue of a set of three, coarse gear teeth (or "dogs") and held together with a draw bolt. This device is illustrated in cut-away view in the third picture. However, the later article uses a one-piece axle to which the crank arms are attached in more or less the modern way and work together by way of pins (1911 and 12) or Woodruff keys (1913 to ?) on the axle. The exploded view of the crank hanger (fourth picture) is from the 1913 catalog.

It’s fun to speculate about how the bike came to have the improved crank hanger. Was it installed to satisfy a warranty claim back in 1911, or it could have been installed to sell the bike on Craig’s List?

As an aside, the factory literature uses the term “improved” to describe the later crank design, but I have not tested the two designs for comparison. Although the later design seems sound (it came with a three-year guarantee!), “improved” will be only a descriptive name until we late arrivers can determine whether it really was better than the one it replaced. Below is a cut-away view of the "improved" crank hanger with one-piece axle as provided in 1913.

Bad News

Just last month, Blue emailed with bad news. In fact, it was horrible, tragic news. He had taken the bike apart to restore it, turned over numerous irreplaceable parts to an electroplater to have them renickeled, and then the electroplater disappeared. This was too much to believe. The ghost electroplater had made shop calls, so Blue didn’t even have an address to go to for answers, just a phone number. Blue finally gave up hope and started hunting for replacement parts. The last picture here is a "before" shot of the crank assembly on Blue's Racycle. Had it and the other parts truly vanished?

Good News

But now there is good news. The electroplater showed up again at Blue’s shop. He had all of Blue’s parts, and they were all re-nickeled as promised. The plater apologized for the delay, and for not returning phone calls. In fact, he was so sorry that he gave Blue his parts for free.

Of course, Blue is as happy as a clam at high tide. He is reassembling his Racycle, and I hope I can share photos of it here soon. Blue also gave the Racycle Crank some credit for his good fortune, saying that the next time his luck runs out, he’s going to email me and wait for things to magically improve! Seems to me that that’s stretching it a little, but I suppose it’s as likely as getting your parts plated for free.

Re-Tiring Procedure for Ordinary Bicycles (“High Wheelers”) and Wheel Toys

2010-02-10T22:14:00.000-08:00

Have the tires worn thin on your 130-year-old ordinary bicycle? Does your pedal car need new shoes? Vintage tricycle got a flat? Here is one way to replace those old solid-rubber tires.
This is the first time I’ve offered a how-to article. In researching this very old process on the Web, I found only two detailed sources: they were from Dave Toppin and Rideable Bicycle Replicas. My process is a combination of both those I found, revised through trial and error. If you’re seriously considering replacing solid-rubber tires, you would do well also read the processes described by Mr. Toppin and RBR.

Summary Description

The solid-rubber tire material, which is almost solid except for a small-diameter hole through the center just big enough to slide in a 1/8-inch-diameter steel wire, is cut to length slightly oversize, and the wire is threaded through and pulled taught around the wheel while the ends of the rubber tire are held apart so that the wire can be brazed together.

Materials

Tire material from Holmes Wheel Shop or Ray Rittenhouse.
PVC tubing cutter to achieve accurate, square cuts through the tire material.
1/8” diameter (9 gauge) solid, steel wire from your local hardware or home-improvement store.
Fine sandpaper for removing corrosion-preventative coating from the wire where it will be brazed.
Silicone lubricant to help get the wire threaded into the rubber tire material.
Fabricated tool to keep ends of rubber tire material apart when tensioning the wire and brazing together its ends. See photos to get an idea of the one I made out of 1.5” steel tube and a couple of thick washers with slots cut in them. (The slots in the washers are necessary to allow the tool to be removed once you're done!)
Cable clamps to allow you to form a loop in each end of the wire so that it can be attached to a sturdy rack or other fixture and the come-along.
Come-along (hand winch) or other device to tension the wire.

Sturdy rack or other fixture to hook come-along to for tensioning wire. This may have to be able to withstand up to 150 or 200 lbs of pulling force depending on the size of the wheel you are re-tiring and the thickness of the tire. (Less pulling force may be sufficient for larger wheels). I used an over-built steel work bench. A towing ball on the back of your truck would work well for one end of your fixture.
Two pair of needle-nose Vice Grip pliers to clamp tensioned wire while excess wire is cut away and ends are brazed together.
Die grinder with cut-off wheel and rotary-file bit for cutting away excess wire and profiling the brazed joint so the tire material will close over the joint.
Oxy-acetylene torch kit and brazing rod.
Small piece of scrap sheet metal for use as a heat shield to protect the wheel when brazing.
Wet rag to quench the brazed joint once the job is done.

Procedure
Cut tire material oversize. Add an extra inch of length for each 10 inches of wheel diameter. For instance, if you have a 10-inch wheel, the appropriate length of tire material will be enough to go around and overlap 1 inch. If re-tiring a 50-inch wheel on an ordinary bicycle, the overlap will be 5 inches. Ensure the cut ends are smooth and square. Use a PVC tubing cutter and practice. For small diameter wheels, you might try to put a very slight bevel in the cut so that the length of tire along the wheel is very slightly less than the length along the outer diameter.

Cut wire to size and prepare the wire to be brazed. The length of wire necessary will be enough to go around the wheel, between the legs of your sturdy rack or other fixture, plus enough for a loop at each end. Cut the wire to size, lay it over your cut-to-size piece of tire material, and mark the approximate area along its length where the wire will protrude from the ends of the rubber. This is where the brazing will occur. Use fine sandpaper to remove the corrosion-preventative coating from the wire over an area about 5 inches either side of where you figure you’ll be brazing together the two ends. You can use a permanent marker to identify the ends of the area that you have prepared.

Install the wire. Use a file or die grinder to round off one end of the wire so you can feed it into the tire material. Depending on the length of the material, you might have to use silicone lube to get it through. The spray silicone lube will run down inside the tire and so might help with particularly large or stubborn cases. Feed the wire through the tool so that the two protruding sections of the wire cross one another. Wrap one end of the wire around a leg of your sturdy rack or other fixture, and secure it with one or two cable clamps. Put a loop in the other end that is big enough to put the come-along hook through, and secure it also with one or two cable clamps.

Tension the wire. Hook up the come-along, and fit the wheel into the tire. The wheel will have to be held in place with tape or light spring clamps until there is enough tension on the wire to compress the tire to hold the wheel. Consider laying towels or other soft material under the wheel to catch it in case there is a sudden loss of tension (wire breaks, fixture breaks, etc.). Crank the come-along until the tire material is snug against the wheel, then give it a little more additional tension to ensure that the ends will close over the gap and touch each other once the tool is removed. It should not need a lot more tension to ensure the joint closes when you are finished.

Prepare for brazing. Clamp the wire with needle-nose Vice Grip pliers at the point closest to where the wire emerges from the tire. Remove the come-along. Cut the wire with the die grinder so that there is about 1 inch of overlap. Bend the ends so that they touch along the length of their overlap. Clean the ends well, removing any silicone or other oils or dirt that might contaminate the brazed joint. Slip a suitably-sized piece of scrap sheet metal under the wire joint to act as a heat shield.

Braze ends. Use a small, hot, oxy-acetylene flame to braze together the two ends of the wire. Immediately quench the joint with a wet rag to prevent the hot wire from burning the rubber tire.

Finish the joint. Use a die grinder with a rotary-file bit to bevel the brazed joint along its length so that it is not substantially wider than the rest of the length of wire or the hole in the tire material. Use needle-nose pliers to twist the joint slightly so that it aligns straight with the rest of the wire. Clean out the grinder chips and any other debris, and remove the heat shield. Remove the tool by pulling it or levering it out with screwdrivers.

The compressed tire material should close over the brazed joint, with maybe a little help from you working the rubber to help it slip along the wheel and over the joint.
Roll away!

I hope that this post is helpful. This process worked for me, and I hope it'll work for you, too. As always, work safely. Fire and stored mechanical energy can be dangerous, so please try to anticipate what could go wrong before it does. I cannot be liable for things going wrong on your project.
If nothing else, my procedure sheds some light on how the Racycle Crank can turn the seemingly simple into an involved exercise. It might get simpler with practice.

2009 Retrospective: Garton Delivery Cycle

2010-01-10T22:10:00.000-08:00

2009 was a very unusual year for me—it was my first year of fatherhood. With a different set of responsibilities and priorities, it made sense to embark on a different sort of restoration project.

Enter one dilapidated old tricycle. It will be gift for my child, when he’s big enough. This particular item was an eBay find. Once I’d seen it I had to have it, as I’m a sucker for old trucks, and I had children on the brain at the time. Why not put the two together?

At first I thought it was a Hettrick Pedal Wagon, but then I deduced that it is a Garton Delivery Cycle. The chief piece of evidence in its identification was the name “Delivery Cycle” under a sloppy coat of green paint on either side of its wood pickup bed.

The Garton Toy Company of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, started business in 1879. Garton is probably most famous for its pedal cars, but they made a wide variety of wagons, scooters, and tricycles, too. I have not been able to determine when the first Delivery Cycles were produced, but they were certainly in production by 1950. The historical photo is from TricycleFetish.com.

The tricycle came from a nice man in Indiana who had bought it in Kentucky. It arrived carefully packaged, but from its poor condition it probably wasn’t worth the shipping charges. The first photos I took of it were after the restoration was well along, when it was beginning to look more worthwhile.

The fender took less than an hour to hammer straight, partly because it’s made of very thin steel, probably 22 gauge. To help it maintain its shape and to repair the fender’s rusted ends, I made up two doublers of 18 gauge steel, formed them to exactly match the fender contours, and brazed them in place on the underside at the front and back ends. The doublers made the flimsy fender rigid, and they took care of the material that had been eaten away by rust. A lot of balloon-tire bicycle fenders could probably be saved by similar treatment.

The fork was another victim of its own flimsiness. On any front-wheel-drive tricycle, the fork sees a lot of twisting torque as the pedals are pushed and the driver counters this with force at the handlebars to keep the machine going straight. You would expect the fork would be made strong to resist this constant twisting, but it was not. I suspect the tricycle makers all knew that their products had to last only a year or two. Thus, the fork steerer tube is not actually a tube at all. It’s just heavy-gauge rolled sheet metal brazed to the top of the fork; there’s still an open seam running the length of it. The fork itself is also just sheet steel formed in a U-channel—not a tube—and bent to fit over the front wheel.

Fork repairs were limited to welding up a tear at the fork bridge (such as it is in a single piece of formed sheet metal) and then welding shut the seam along the length of the fork’s steerer tube. I contemplated strengthening the fork itself, either by boxing closed the U-channel shape with welded-in sheet steel or by brazing steel rod into the recess of the U-channel. In the end I decided I’d cross that bridge another day when it actually starts to fail again from use.

Repair work on the handlebars focused on eliminating corrosion pitting so that the bars could be re-plated. The material appeared very thick, so I carefully ground down the handlebars with a small, right-angle die grinder. Then I used a fine-tooth flat file to laboriously block out the grinder marks so that the handlebars were true again (round and straight). The remaining file marks were taken out by hand sanding with #180 and #320-grit sandpaper. Then it was off to the electroplater’s shop.

Originally the frame tube was attached to the head tube by a big weld inside the head tube, such that on the outside there was still a seam showing where the two tubes joined. This joint had failed and someone had crudely reattached the parts with an arc welder by cobbling on big gobs of weld around the exterior of the joint. I ground out the arc weld and built up a decent-looking fillet weld using a MIG welder.

I also welded stops on the cranks and rear axles to limit the inward travel of the pedals and wheels. The original stops were just pinched and raised nubbins on the axles, but these had worn away almost entirely.

Painting was relatively straightforward, but the wheels took a lot of careful sanding of catalyzed filler primer to smooth out the effects of the surface rust. The colors are not quite true to the original Garton red, which was a metallic finish (with the metallic flake so fine that it looked almost like a candy apple red). Although I could have tried to match the original paint, remnants of which remained on the fork steerer tube, I could only guess at what paint designs and decals might have been on the frame, because it had already been thoroughly sandblasted long before I got it. Was the fender red or white? Was the head tube white? Were there contrasting pin stripes? Thus, I decided to go my own way with the paint scheme and colors.

Once the steel parts were painted, I set about making a new copy of the original wood box. The dimensions of the copy are precise down to the curved tops of the walls and the rabbets where the ends are inset into the sides. Even the nails are driven in at the exact same location as they were on the original, and the nail head diameter is identical to the originals. The only real deviation from the original box is that I used ¼-inch plywood for the floor instead of two 6-inch by ¼-inch oak planks nailed in side by side (“side by each” if you’re in Sheboygan, Wisconsin).

I painted the box with two coats of Rust-Oleum gloss black, which gave excellent results because it dried slowly enough that all of the brush marks flowed out. The Delivery Cycle would have originally had a red box to match the rest of the tricycle, but as I said I deviated somewhat from the original paint scheme. Red with a black box is the same color scheme that was on my first motor vehicle: a $50 1950 Dodge pickup. The purchase of that Dodge truck led to meeting my wife (a close friend of the seller’s sister), which ultimately led to this project.

The front wheel bearings I was able to clean out and reuse. They were made by a bearing manufacturer in Milwaukie. The rear wheels rode on Oilite bronze bushings of which little remained. They were each 7/16-inch inside diameter and ½-inch outside diameter. That’s right, the wall thickness was only 1/32 of an inch. Problem is, no one these days makes bushings that thin, so I bought bushings that were 7/16” ID by 9/16” OD and turned them down to fit.

But while doing all these other tasks, I was also working out how to replace the wire-secured solid-rubber tires. It took a long time to divine the process and sources for the materials. Basically, the solid-rubber tire material is almost solid except for a small-diameter hole through the center just big enough to slide a 1/8-inch-diameter steel wire. The tire material is cut to length slightly oversize, and the wire is threaded through and pulled taught around the wheel while the ends of the rubber tire are held apart so that the wire can be brazed together. The installation technique deserves its own post, but I’ll spare you unless someone requests it.

I bought tire material from Holmes Wheel Shop, an Ohio-based builder of wheels for Amish-style buggies. A come-along was used to tension the wire, and a tool of my own construction held apart the ends of the tire material while I brazed the wire together. It took a few attempts to work out the process, but in the end the results were great. If you want to know the details, leave a comment to this web post.

The last bridge to cross was painting the “Delivery Cycle” lettering on the sides of the box. I was able to take a pencil rubbing of the screened lettering off the original box. The rubbing was in turn scanned in to a computer, and I used Adobe Illustrator to trace it and convert the design to a digital file that I could take to a sign shop. At Fast Signs, they used the digital file to cut out self-adhesive vinyl lettering that I could use as a stencil.

For painting the lettering, I again chose Rust-Oleum for its slow-drying properties. An earlier attempt with spray paint had ended in failure when the paint came off with the stencil because it had dried too quickly to bond with the substrate paint. A little bit of yellow model paint added to the gloss white gave me the right tone of off-white. I puddled the paint on the stencil and used a razor blade to level it to match the thickness of the stencil. After about 15 minutes it had tacked up enough to hold itself together and not run, but it was still wet enough that I could peel up the stencil without taking the paint too. Simple!

I have extra “Delivery Cycle” stencils available for those who need them. In fact, they are both a stencil and the lettering too, so you could just stick on the vinyl letters if you wanted.

The license plate on the back came screwed to the original box on this tricycle. It had been painted over in green with the rest of box, so the plate must have been installed a long time ago—it might even be an original part. I scraped off the green paint to reveal black figures on a light yellow background. The colors are the same as those used on Wisconsin license plates in the early and middle 1940s, years that are consistent with the expected production date for this tricycle.

By a fair stretch, the Garton Delivery Cycle was the biggest project I took on in 2009. I hadn’t expected it to be such a challenge, but I like to learn new skills, and I’m happy with how it turned out. And, for once, I’m ahead of schedule. My son has at least another year and half of growing to do before he can reach the pedals.

2009 Retrospective: 1966 Honda CB450 Super Sport

2010-01-07T22:28:00.000-08:00

The 2009 holidays were a nice chance to re-connect with family, and not just a few asked what I’d been up to this past year. That recurring question got me thinking, and I realized that, although I accomplished less than I would have liked to, I was able to make some important improvements to a few ongoing projects.

For instance I conquered the last of the Honda Black Bomber’s mechanical maladies: an intermittent but lingering shifting fault. The symptom was false neutrals, usually when shifting from first to second. I had thought that it was a problem with the shifting mechanism or the gearbox, but those seemed fine when I took them apart. Finally I noticed that the fault was worst in stop-and-go traffic but was rare when the clutch was cold. This suggested that the clutch plates were hanging up when they got hot instead of disengaging like they should. A close inspection of the clutch basket revealed indentations where the steel driven and driving plates had dug in to the aluminum parts of the clutch basket. The cure involved some very careful grinding to take out the indentations, and then I used a fine-tooth flat file to take out the grinder marks and get the clutch basket parts true again. This repair work seems to have eliminated the problem almost entirely—I still manage to flub up a shift on occasion, but it’s so rare I think it’s likely operator error.

Also the Honda finally got to wear a good set of fenders and side covers for the first time in about 40 years. In September 2007, I bought a rusty set of fenders from a fellow member of a local motorcycle club. I eliminated the rust (by a combination of sandblasting and phosphoric acid treatment) and hammered out the dents in short order, but then they sat for another year and a half. In June 2009, I finally got them painted. At the same time I painted a set of old steel side covers for the Honda. These I had gotten from different sources (right from one state, and left from another) thanks to eBay. Both were terribly rusted and dented, but I welded them up and carefully knocked out the dents. I treated the fenders and side covers with a phosphoric-acid solution to neutralize the rust and keep further corrosion from forming.

I love the look of straightened sheet metal. I wanted to install the parts in bare steel—with hammer marks and all—but I figured that would only be cool until I got caught in the rain. Since I’m lazy and did not want to take them off again to clean and paint them, I went ahead and painted them first before installing them.

The painted fenders are a departure from originality, but I’m not bothered. When introduced in mid 1965, the CB450 was issued with silver-painted fenders. It appears that Honda switched to chrome fenders in late 1966. My bike had chrome fenders when I got it, and I assume they were original, but a prior owner had lopped off the ends—a bob job. Perhaps the idea was to make the bike look less heavy, or custom chopped, or something. Now I’ve back-dated its styling a few months to the silver-painted fenders of 1965-66.

I think the painted fenders and side covers make it look much better than it did. I’ve never been a fan of chromed fenders on any motorcycle—I think chrome looks chintzy because it’s too easy. To my eye paint looks better, and a big part of paint’s good looks is knowledge of the effort involved and care taken. For the same reason I’m not a fan of powder coating motorcycles.

The Flying Merkel and Miami Cycle

2009-12-18T21:48:00.000-08:00

My intent with this post is to share photos I’ve taken of Flying Merkels I’ve seen in the flesh during the past couple of years and, by way of introducing Flying Merkels, to provide some greater context to the story of Racycle bicycles.

Let me first state that I know only slightly more than nothing about Flying Merkel motorcycles, except that most were built by the same Miami Cycle and Manufacturing Company that built my favorite Racycle bicycle.

The most comprehensive Flying Merkel information I found is at theflyingmerkel.com. According to this web site, Joseph Merkel began producing motorcycles in 1902 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (I tried to contact the web site administrator for permission to use a few photos, but the email connection appears dead. Hence, the historical photos and catalog pictures reproduced here from theflyingmerkel.com are borrowed temporarily until official permission can be obtained.) The first machines were single-cylinder jobs, but Merkel vee-twins were also produced. In 1909, Merkel sold his motorcycle company to Light Manufacturing, and production was moved to Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The machines were re-named from Merkel to Light-Merkel and finally The Flying Merkel. With the Model T Ford coming on the scene, 1909 would have been a good year to sell a motorcycle company. Two years later, the company was sold again, this time to the Miami Cycle and Manufacturing Company, and production was moved from Pennsylvania to the Home of the Racycle in Middletown, Ohio. Production of single and twin-cylinder models continued into the late teens. Most sources cite 1918 as the final year of Flying Merkel production.

Several years before buying the Merkel line, the Miami Cycle and Manufacturing Company had built its own motorcycles. In about 1905 or 1906 they introduced a Racycle motorcycle equipped with a Thor single-cylinder engine. During this same period, Racycle bicycles used mostly Thor hubs. By 1910, the Racycle motorcycle was using a very similar-looking engine but now with “Racycle” cast into the crankcase. The earliest machines used the engine cylinder as the frame’s seat tube.
Miami Cycle must have been familiar with Merkel as a competitor—and an imposing competitor at that—long before purchasing the company. Merkel motorcycles were technologically advanced with chain drive (on many models) instead of a belt, front and rear suspension, and a relatively stout frame that did not use the engine as the seat tube. I have found no information about Racycle motorcycles being actively raced, but my sources agree that Merkel’s machines were renowned for their competition successes. In the end, Miami Cycle abandoned Racycle motorcycles in favor of the Flying Merkel in 1911.
So it was that, from about 1906 to about the end of the teens, motorcycles were being constructed in the Middletown factory known as the Home of the Racycle. A review of advertising from the early teens suggests the company lost enthusiasm for its Racycle bicycles. After 1913, little to no advertizing championed the Racycle in particular. Instead, ads were taken out singing the virtues of the entire line of Miami Cycle’s bicycles: Racycle, Miami, Hudson, and, surprisingly, the Flying Merkel! (ca. 1916.) It appears that the Flying Merkel name was used on a bicycle as well as single- and twin-cylinder motorcycles. One could speculate that the absence of Racycle-specific advertizing indicates that the motorcycle business was taking center stage from the Racycle bicycle line.

The three Flying Merkels I have seen recently have all been orange, and all three were constructed in 1913. The most recent sighting was at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum (see indoor shots) in Birmingham, Alabama. The example on display there is truly stunning. The display card notes that it might be the best original Flying Merkel. If I’m reading things correctly, this machine is also one of the most expensive motorcycles to have been purchased at auction. Prior sightings included one in the paddock at the Northwest Historic Races at Pacific Raceways in Kent, Washington, in the summer of 2008, and one that earned a class win at the Legend of the Motorcycle concours d’elegance (Half Moon Bay, California) in May 2008.

Racycle Pacemaker Restored!

2009-10-22T22:22:00.000-07:00

Back in May I was contacted by Mark from St Louis. Mark had recently bought a Model 170 Pacemaker, but it needed to be restored. Mark was lucky that his Pacemaker had its model number badge, which made it possible to deduce that the machine was built in 1912. (It seems that most but not all Racycles carried a model number badge. Read more about Racycle model numbers in my post "Racycle Models".) But Mark’s real luck was finding a few remnants of the bike’s original blue paint job.
If you click on the accompanying image from the 1912 Racycle catalog (second image), you can see that the standard color offered on the Pacemaker that year was black, but the optional colors included gun blue, Racycle blue, Racycle red, and French gray.
Mark asked what color I would paint it. I replied that I have never seen a Pacemaker painted in any color other than black or orange, which might be faded Racycle red, but I do not know. As such I thought it would be great if he returned the Pacemaker to its original blue livery, but I emphasized that the decision should be entirely his own.
Just three weeks after his first message to me, Mark sent along photos of the finished product. (Three weeks! I can't get parts back from the platers that fast, let alone prep them or do the rest of the job!) He admitted that he still needs to re-nickel the hubs and spokes, but “maybe next year,” he said.

Regarding the striking blue paint, this blog post had previously reported that Mark thought the color match was a little light. Mark wrote to correct me. “The blue that was on it was almost black, which I would guess was gun blue, but I had no idea it was blue until I stripped it…. I could probably match (the original gun blue) pretty close because I saved some of it on a piece of paper to color match later if I wanted.” But instead of gun blue Mark clarified that he selected a shade of blue that “was close to the one out of the catalog, and I thought it would look nicer than the almost black color—that was just my choice. I know there are purist out there (I'm one of them), in fact I don’t even like to repaint them, but this one was bad. I love the blue I picked.”
I am grateful to Mark for providing this clarification and additional information about his restoration. His comment that the original color was “almost black” is the closest thing I’ve found to a color chip for Racycle gun blue. While other restorers should not try to match the color of this Pacemaker if they want one that is gun blue, they should be grateful for Mark’s willingness to share his work. I think it’s an outstanding job. The Racycle name was lettered by hand by a painter local to the St. Louis area.
Although I’m sure there must be a few restored Pacemakers out there, Mark’s is the first that I have seen. And it’s the first I’ve seen in blue. If you have or know of a Pacemaker that is restored or under restoration, send along a description and some photos to share. There is an unusual early Pacemaker undergoing restoration in New York City (http://www.bikecult.com/works/archive/09bicycles/pacer40.html). What else is out there?

First Rides and the Dangerous Learning Curve

2009-08-26T22:31:00.000-07:00

I suspect that, like me, a lot of folks riding motorcycles today did so first on a Honda. I learned to ride on a 1966 Honda Super Hawk—and I still have the bike—but it’s not the first motorbike that I rode. No, my first motorized ride was as a youngster on a Honda Monkey Bike, and I recollect that I had only recently learned to ride two wheels of the manual sort. And before then I had been content with three-wheeled pedal travel only to discover the two-wheeled variety when my older brother, Shawn, crashed into me and my tricycle after he had removed the training wheels from his red Schwinn. We lay in a heap tangled in our ‘cycles with me stunned and Shawn laughing his head off. Shawn still rides a red bike (a 1939 Ariel Red Hunter), but his current machine has mechanicals that are heavier and slightly (just slightly) more advanced than his Schwinn.
It is completely irrelevant that my first two-wheeled voyage happened on Shawn’s red Schwinn and that the event was captured on film. My movie-camera-toting grandparents were in town, and they wanted to film me learning to ride a bike. Since I was too small to reach the ground, Dad agreed to get me started if Mom and the grandparents caught me. I had no previous experience with coaster brakes, nor brakes of any kind. My fate was sealed when I was told that, in order to stay upright, I had to keep pedaling. The home movie shows me wobbling down the sidewalk, picking up speed and getting steadier, riding past the Super-8 camera crew, riding off the curb at the end of the block, crossing the dead-end street, and disappearing into the blackberry bushes on the other side.
It was not too long after this incident that I rode the Monkey Bike. The machine belonged to the eldest child of one of my dad’s co-workers, whom our family went to visit one summer evening. While the grown-ups were in the house, Shawn and I were regaled with speed demonstrations as the Monkey Bike’s owner flogged his steed along the pock-marked dirt driveway, out to the road, and back. These folks lived in the country, so the driveway was long enough to let the Monkey Bike generate all the speed and noise it could.
Shawn was offered and accepted a ride, and, before I knew it, my turn came. I was instructed that to make the machine go I should twist the grip one way, and to make it slow down I should twist it again, or the other way, or more, or the other one, or something. Whatever.
I climbed aboard and the Monkey Bike shot off down the driveway, hitting every pothole, and splashing the mud out of the puddles. I held on for my dear, short life while the rest of me flew out behind like a pennant, occasionally coming down as the Monkey Bike bounded up. I couldn’t see clearly for all the bouncing, but somehow--and this is the strange part--I was able to stop, turn around, and tear back toward the kids, who were doubled over in hysterics. I bore in on them like a dive bomber, trusting that one of them would figure out how to stop this crazy thing before someone got hurt.
The Monkey Bike slowed, and Shawn and the others grabbed me as I went by. I didn’t kill any of the kids, and I didn’t put a Monkey-Bike shaped hole in the garage door. I also didn’t ride another motorbike for about two dozen years.
In 1994, I came across a very dead ’66 Honda Super Hawk. It was stored under some junk that was behind the pinball machine in a shop that I still rent with several friends. We were clearing out the shop one day, and someone decided that we should no longer be storing this forlorn motorcycle for Coast Guard Dave, the old cabinet maker across the street. In a fit of cleanliness, we marched over to Dave’s shop and told him that the bike was going to be wheeled out to the phone pole for the scrap hauler to collect. Coast Guard Dave didn’t seem too bothered. He turned to me and told me I could have it if I got it running. (That still seems like a bizarre offer. What if I tried but failed? Would he take it back and give it to the scrap hauler?) Puzzled, I accepted.
Dave was the second owner of the Super Hawk, but he had known it from new because a close friend was the original owner. In the late 1970s, Dave bought it from his friend thinking it would make a good bike for his wife. Not too long afterwards the engine locked up, and Dave’s wife divorced him. I assume the events were unrelated. By the time Dave had given the seized Honda to me, it was partly disassembled, the speedometer was stove in, as were the chrome panels on the gas tank, and all the chrome was orange with rust.
Over the summer I took it apart, cleaned and repaired it, got the necessary machine work done, and put it back together. The engine had locked when a wrist pin welded itself to a connecting rod (there are no bronze bushes in the small ends of Super Hawk con rods), and this was likely the result of a worn out oil pump.
Once work was underway, Dave told me his opinion of the problem with the Super Hawk. I was expecting stories of electrical faults or poor-quality parts. Instead, the problem was that, up to 60 mph, it would beat his 650 Triumph in a stop-light drag race. For me, this problem was easily cured by simply avoiding Dave’s perspective on the matter. The teardown revealed that Dave's friend had fitted the Honda with high-compression pistons and a smaller drive sprocket off the transmission to make it quick.
By the time the Super Hawk was ready to ride, I was intimately familiar with its mechanicals, but I still had never ridden a proper motorcycle. I climbed on and clumsily operated the controls, trying to mix how to drive a car with how various parts of the motorcycle work.
I was not smooth. Once underway I was as mechanical as the bike. Shifting required all my concentration: roll on throttle, reduce slightly, pull in clutch lever, tip left foot up to change gear, roll on throttle and let out clutch lever. I rode around and around the block. Coast Guard Dave stood in the doorway of his shop and shook his head in disgust. But I was triumphant—the machine worked! Looking out over the flat ‘bars there was just a headlight and the road rushing past. I felt like I was flying! I felt like a kid again.

The Major’s Story: A Racycle Odyssey 100 Years Ago

2009-08-02T01:22:00.000-07:00

These days most antique bicycles are ridden only rarely. A terrific exception is the Wheelmen’s century in which Wheelmen ride 100 miles in a day on bicycles built in 1918 or earlier.
But those same antique bicycles were once new and modern conveniences of transportation. As such they were ridden plenty, but typically just for local trips; long-distance bicycle touring was never commonplace.
One of those rare and adventurous early bicycle tourists was the intrepid Major Edward Augustus Weed, who rode out of New York City on a Racycle Pacemaker in 1908 bound for Estrella, California. For his coast-to-coast journey, the major took his time to take in the sights. In all he rode 8,145 miles “on a Racycle Pacemaker in 18 months and 25 days, in 25 states…across uncle Sam’s big ranch….” The major might not have realized it, but during his trip the world had changed with the introduction of the Model T Ford.
We know of the major’s adventure because in 1910 he self published a brief description of his Racycle travels in a booklet entitled The Major’s Story. The Miami Cycle & Manufacturing Company offered in its advertisements to send a copy of the booklet, along with a current Racycle catalog and other promotional goods, to anyone writing to the factory and sending along a two-cent stamp to cover return postage. The quoted excerpts in this post are reprinted with the kind permission of the copyright holder, who is the great grandson of Major Weed.
The Route
Major E.A. Weed was not one to take the direct route when there were interesting places to go and things to see. Starting from New York, he traveled up to Maine, then back south again along the eastern seaboard to Virginia before turning inland. He meandered westward through West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, then turned south through states along the mighty Mississippi until he got to Arkansas. He then continued roughly westward again through Oklahoma and Texas and the American Southwest to California. The major reached Estrella, California, on December 23, 1909.
About his route, Major Weed wrote, “My intention has not been to make any records for distance or speed, for I have often gone hundreds of miles out of my way to see any interesting locality or wonder of nature. Hence, the distance I have traveled is more than enough to have gone direct from Portland, Maine, to Los Angeles and back again…. No grander and more comprehensive way of seeing the vastness of our country can be obtained than by riding a wheel [bicycle] leisurely and taking in every point of interest.”
The Racycle
A transcontinental bicycle trip is still a significant undertaking today even with paved roads and good maps. The fact that the major undertook his journey 100 years ago on a Racycle Pacemaker is nothing short of heroic. The rider had to be self reliant because the route was only very sparsely populated, and the few roads that existed were bad. “…But don’t think it was a boulevard, for much of the way is rough.”
The Racycle Pacemaker seems an unlikely choice for the trip because its front sprocket was so large (40 teeth, 1-inch pitch chain) that it typically resulted in tall gearing despite the range of rear sprockets available. (The actual gearing of the major's Pacemaker is not given in the story.) Nevertheless, the major was enthusiastic about his Racycle. For instance, when “poor Racy Pacy was ground to pieces on a trestle bridge by an express train, (the only thing that can smash a Racycle),” the major waited for a replacement Racycle to arrive rather than continue his journey on an inferior bicycle. He described the train incident thus:
“On the 12th of April, 1909, on a trestle bridge near Algodones, New Mexico, where I was walking across, I was suddenly overtaken by a California Limited on the Santa Fe and saved my life by jumping 15 feet to the dry sand below, but my wheel fell on the track and was crushed to pieces. The saddle, handlebars, pump, and my watch were uninjured and are still in use on the second wheel the Miami Co. sent to Albuquerque. The broken wheel I had ridden over 10 months in 23 states, 5,955 miles, and it was in perfect order, and would have been all right now had it not been demolished by the train.”
Express trains notwithstanding, the major had prepared his Pacemaker to survive the predictable hazards of the journey. He wrote that he used heavier gauge spokes and wider tires typical of tandem bicycles. The wider tires may have helped on the miles of sandy tracks that passed for roads.
His Pacemaker had a 24-inch frame and was equipped with a Musselman coaster brake, which was built in-house at the Miami Cycle & Manufacturing Company. When coaster brakes were still something of a novelty in 1908 and 1909 (most bicycles had fixed hubs), the Musselman brake was reported to work better than most and was simpler to maintain and repair. The Musselman was unusual in that it had no brake arm strapped to the chain stay but relied on an elegant design feature whereby the braking action was instead imparted into a lug that fit neatly into the rear dropout of the frame. For this reason, the makers termed it the “armless wonder.” Major Weed was of the opinion that it was a fine piece of equipment. “In descending mountains for several miles, I found that my Musselman brake would hold the wheel all right, and it was really marvelous to see the tremendous strength of the little ‘Armless Wonder’ not to mention the feeling of safety and security in coasting down those perilous grades.” The performance of the coaster brake is all the more surprising considering that the major claimed the loaded weight of his Pacemaker was over 90 pounds, “and over 100 pounds when canteens are full of water.”
The Rider
Reading The Major’s Story one is impressed as much by the author’s character as by his physical achievement. Major Weed seems to have been a free spirit in the sense that he had a singular passion for travel, but he also understood that satisfying this passion was his means to a contented and healthful life. In this respect, one could compare him with John Muir, who also appreciated nature for its own sake and for its transcendental qualities. Coincidently, Muir (born 1838) and Weed (born circa 1842) were nearly the same age, but Muir had already travelled and published widely by the time the major began his journey. Major Weed wrote, “I most heartily commend bicycle riding and Racycle riding in particular as one of the very best means to see our grand country and come in closer touch with God and nature.” The accompanying photo of John Muir is from the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir).
Despite the major’s age and the hardships he endured, he logged “not a sick day on the whole trip, but perfect health all the time, for you see I am a healthy, hearty young fellow, and only 68 years young…. Though thoroughly drenched with rain by night and day on numerous occasions, I was not injured in anyway, not even taking cold.”
The Major’s Story is entertaining reading if only for its insights into its author’s attitude toward life. As stated above, he knew what made him a happy and healthy man, and at several occasions in the booklet he takes care to fill in the rest of us as to the secrets of his success. “Good food and plenty of it, as much sleep as convenient, entire abstinence from liquor and tobacco in every form, an even disposition, and an avoidance of fret, worry, and anger have been largely instrumental in contributing to my health and happiness…. When short of food or water I make my mind control my appetite and never allow myself to think about it, so I never suffer with hunger or thirst. We can overcome much of our trouble or sorrow if our mind is under proper management. God has given us the ability to be peaceful and happy under nearly all conditions and amid nearly all environments.”
Consistent with his independent spirit, the major wanted his readers to understand that he was not in the pocket of the Miami Cycle Company, and they certainly were not holding his hand as he meandered across the US. Major E.A. Weed concluded his self-published travelogue with the following statement:
“I want it distinctly understood that I have had no salary or expense allowance from the Miami Cycle & Mfg. Co. of Middletown, Ohio, the makers of the Racycle, but rode that wheel because I believed it the best, and my long and hard ride has fully confirmed my former belief, that though there are possibly other good wheels, there cannot be any that compare with the easy riding, sturdily built Racycle Pacemaker.”
That was a century ago this year.

(Please note: The quoted contents of this post are protected by copyright and may only be reproduced with permission. The rest of this web blog post can be reproduced for educational purposes (no profit) without needing to secure permission.)

Racycle Frames

2009-04-30T22:59:00.000-07:00

“There are two things in the make up of every Racycle frame that are not always considered in the manufacture of bicycles—honesty and common sense.” --Racycle catalog, 1901.
The following discussion of Racycle frames is offered as an example of the high quality build of Racycle bicycles and as a means to summarize some of the production changes and unique features of Racycle frames.
Frame Tubing and Construction
Racycle frames appear almost svelte compared to the heavy frames of most bicycles of the late 1800s. The catalog illustration at the top of this post is a cut-away view showing the method of pinning the frame tubes to the intersecting joints, which reach far down the inside of the frame tubes. The joints were then brazed.
To illustrate the effort and fine materials that went into constructing a Racycle, a narrative description of the manufacturing process was included in the 1905 catalog. The frame department occupied an area 200’ by 50’ in the basement of the three-story Miami Cycle & Manufacturing Company factory in Middletown, Ohio. “We shall start in at the further end of the basement on Grand Avenue where peculiar machines cut the 1-inch, 20-gauge seamless tubing into proper lengths. Proceeding along the north side of the building, we pass a long row of benches where busy workmen are putting the head, seat post, and other connections into the tubing, which, when rough shaped, are carried over to the forming machines to be drilled, wired, riveted, and made ready for the noisy, sputtering brazing tables on the south side of the room. Here brawny artisans ladle molten brass around the red-hot joints, turning and twisting their work to make sure that the brass penetrates to the end of each reinforcement.”
In 1897, a wide variety of frame configurations and styles were offered. By 1901 the line was standardized with respect to frame geometry (only the Racer and the ladies’ models were obviously different), and the tandems had been discontinued. The frame geometry of the 1901 models was described by the maker as “practically the same as they were last season, with not quite so much drop to the crank hanger.”
The Miami Cycle & Manufacturing Company continually improved the Racycle frame. The 1901 catalog lists 1 and 1/8-inch (1.125”) diameter, 22-gauge tubing on all models except the Racycle Racer, which was built of 1-inch, 20 gauge tubing. By 1904, all Racycle frames were constructed of the smaller-diameter (1 inch) and thicker-walled (20-gauge) tubing that had first been introduced on the Racer. At some point between 1905 and 1908, slightly thicker 19-gauge tubing was introduced throughout the Racycle range, but the diameter remained at 1 inch.
Seamless English tubing was introduced in top-end models in 1908 but appears to have been quietly dropped in favor of tubing that retained the same specifications without the cache or expense of English tubing. The 1908 sales literature described “weldless English steel tubing and drop-forged heads, fork crowns, and seat-post clusters.” As testimony to the strength of its frames, the same brochure includes photos of ten men on a single Racycle and America’s heaviest bicycle rider with his Racycle roadster, which was a standard production model.
Catalogs from 1910 and later do not mention English tubing. For instance, the 1913 catalog describes the frame material as “19-gauge cold-rolled seamless steel tubing. All joints are heavily reinforced with extra long reinforcements of the fishmouth design and are carefully brazed together by the immersion process, which unites the frame as nearly as possible into one piece.” “Frame connections are made of extra-heavy gauge stock.” The Miami Cycle & Manufacturing Company claimed that the use of these materials in the manufacture of Racycle frames “…Represents a new era in bicycle frame construction that has never before been approached.”
Frame Colors
We usually see Racycles in black, which was the standard color for most all of the production run, but it appears that they started out much more colorful. For instance, black paint was not mentioned in the 1897 advertising. Instead Racycles were supplied in carmine (red), with royal blue supplied on a couple of the lower end Racycles. By 1901 (and perhaps a couple of years earlier) black was the standard color.
The 1901 catalog mentions that other colors and striping were subject to a two-week delay. However, custom colors were available on only the top-end Racycles; the Roadster (Model 64) and the Taper-Head Chainless (Model 67) were available in black only. (Yes, there was a shaft-drive Racycle for a few years around the turn of the century.) Similarly, the 1905 catalog indicates that you could order your Racycle in whatever color you wanted if you were willing to wait an additional two weeks and if you sent in “a piece of silk in the desired shade…attached to each order as a guide for our enamellers.” It seems there was no extra charge for the custom color, but an extra charge would be levied for “full nickel frames, combination colors, (on Model 105 only) gun barrel blue, or rims enameled to match.” This seems to have been the company policy from about 1900 to 1910, after which catalogs did not refer to custom colors but instead offered one or two selected color options.
From about 1908, the Pacemaker and other top-end models were standard in “gun blue” or black. Catalog descriptions suggest that “gun blue” was probably a paint color that looked similar to a gun-blue metal finish like on firearms. For instance, the 1913 catalog description for the Pacemaker lists color “No. 1 translucent gun blue” as the standard color on this top-of-the-line machine. An option was No. 4 black.
From 1910, a few colors followed translucent gun blue onto the Racycle pallet, but black endured as the standard color. Garnet and blue were listed as options on the Tourist and the ladies’ Pacemaker, and color options on the Rideabout and the Roadster were limited to blue and garnet, respectively.
Conclusion
To its credit, the Miami Cycle & Manufacturing Company made a real effort to build high-quality frames for the Racycle line. The design, materials, and construction techniques were first rate for the day and probably did much to help legitimize the maker's claim, “buy the Racycle and you will have the best; there are no cheap Racycles.”

Norton Model 7 Restoration Part 2: Return of the Dominator

2009-04-10T22:02:00.000-07:00

The story is set in a steel industrial building, a shop I share with friends next to Seattle’s Interbay rail yard….
Restoration Plan
My 1950 Norton “Dominator” is only my second motorcycle, and it was my first attempt at restoring a motorcycle. So I’m in no position to offer advice about how to undertake such a project, but I have read that you should have a restoration plan. My plan was not to restore the bike at all. I just wanted to get it running but could not.
Once it was obvious that Plan A had failed, I resorted to Plan B, which was to restore the machine as a number of major assemblies so that I wouldn’t have too much of it apart at any one time. First up was to finish a rolling frame including the suspension, wheels and brakes. Next would be the engine and gearbox, then the sheet metal, and then everything else.
It might have been quicker to restore the whole thing at once, but it would have been significantly more difficult to afford. Parsed out over three years, the cost of the restoration was easier to take. Plus it would have driven me nuts to have the bike completely apart all at once. The world already has too many boxes of greasy parts that would be viable machines if not for their well-meaning owners having disassembled them into their constituent molecules.
For the most part, I followed my secondary plan of restoring the machine as a series of major assemblies, but there were plenty of excursions. For instance, I started restoring the fuel tank (part of step three) long before even disassembling the engine (step two). In the end, my timing was good; I started the engine the day after I got the tank back from the plating shop. But that coincidence says more about the slowness of the plating shop than it says for my ability to see the future or plan for it. The second picture here is from the night we first lit it off. The drain pan was needed to catch oil from the crankcase breather as the bike had wet sumped a bit in the two weeks or so since I had installed the oil tank.
A Few Mod Cons
I restored the old Norton to ride it. So, with reliability an issue, a few modern conveniences crept into the restoration. For instance, I installed a solid-state voltage regulator for the charging system, figuring that the solid-state unit would be less apt to melt the generator or boil acid out of the battery. I upgraded the crankshaft main bearings to a Commando-type roller bearing on the drive side and a ten-ball main bearing (replacing the original eight-ball bearing) on the timing side. But I really cheated when I installed a belt primary drive inside the “Norton Oil Bath” primary-chain case. It’s quiet, will seldom need adjustment, and eliminates one oil leak. There’s no oil under it because there’s no oil in it.
Sport
There were other items that I returned to their original specification for the sake of what I consider the sport of the restoration. It might be easier to buy a wiring harness than it is to make your own, but it’s a sporting challenge to research what were the original materials, procure them, and build the whole thing yourself. Plus, only you can make it all fit just so. I even fitted the unusual KLG spark-plug leads and spring-wire retaining clips that Norton used to supply. The brass ends of the high-tension leads are clipped to the plugs—completely exposed—like a Frankenstein motoring accessory. There is no provision for keeping out rain or any other source of incidental shorting. Returning after the inaugural ride, I reached down to shut off the fuel, fumbled around, and mistakenly found one of the KLG terminals—I nearly jumped right off!
It would have been simple enough to use later parts to improve performance with greater engine displacement, an alloy cylinder head, and bigger brakes, but that approach would have subverted one of my goals, which was to learn what this motorcycle was like in 1950, small brakes and all. So the old Dominator still has only 500 c.c.s and 6.7:1 compression under its original cast-iron head, and it still relies on 7-inch single-sided brakes. Surprise, it gets along just fine.
I suppose that with any British bike, fasteners are a challenge. Not only is the Dominator held together with the usual mixed bag of thread pitches (Whitworth, British Standard Fine, British Association, and British Standard Cycle), but they were all originally finished in satin chrome, not cadmium. It took me ages to research what the metal finish was, how to replicate it, and to finally prepare all the parts for plating. I suspect that Norton used satin chrome because it’s almost bullet proof (if done correctly), and since wrenches don’t mark up the fasteners, they are less likely to corrode than if they were cad plated.

Fixing the chrome-plated fuel tank actually went fairly smoothly once I figured out how to start. I cut it in two along the welded seam where the bulbous outer skin joins the rest of the tank. With the tank cut apart, I had complete access to the rust and dents. I was able to sandblast the interior and weld up some cracked seams in the lower portion that forms a saddle over the top tube of the frame. I spent evenings and several weekends (perhaps six) knocking out the dents. Dents in curves are relatively easy to make look good; the difficult ones are those in the flatter areas.
After a friend TIG welded it back together, I filled most of the rust pits with silver solder, then sent it off for plating. I should have spent more time soldering the rust pits; in the end, I had the tank nickel plated four times (wet sanding each time with 400-grit paper) before the last of the pits was filled and it could finally be chromed.
I try to do my own work, but I also know to pick my battles. I turned to specialists for straightening the frame, rebuilding the generator and magneto, welding aluminum and cast iron, machining, and pin striping. I had the engine’s reciprocating parts dynamically balanced at Hill Machine in Ballard. Also, I bought a new reproduction of the original carburetor, instead of trying to repair the cobbled-together mess that came with the bike.
Setbacks
Every project has its setbacks. The first time I got it on its wheels, I wanted to test the patented Roadholder forks. So I leaned on them good, but they didn’t compress. Finally I leaned forward and pulled on the front rim while pressing my chest against the steering damper knob. That did the trick—the Roadholders gave suddenly, but I lost my balance and the bike and I went to the floor. I resolved to never again work past 1:00 AM. The forks were apart the next day to repair damage to the sheet metal gaiters, and when I put them back together I made certain the fork legs were parallel so they would not bind.
A few months later, the finished frame and suspension were on a rolling table when the Nisqually earthquake sent everything to the floor. On the way down, the Norton left a pretty good reminder of itself on the back of my friend’s Ducati Elite, narrowly missed his Facel Vega, and only nicked my old Sunbeam sports car. By the time I got to the shop to check out the damage, one of my fellow tenants had placed the frame assembly on a blanket on the floor. The bike was laid on its side in case there were any aftershocks. I’m sure that was the kindest treatment the bike had ever received. The forks had sustained cosmetic damage that was similar to what I had done to them earlier. They came apart again for repeat work on the sheet metal gaiters.
And then, from across the street, there was the old cabinetmaker: Coast Guard Dave. This was the character who had given me my first motorcycle, but the gift was contingent upon me getting it running. (There’s something about that deal that still seems strange.) The bike was a ’66 Honda Super Hawk that had been left under a bench for 12 years with a seized engine. Dave rode mostly Triumph, AJS, and Harley. The Honda was something he had bought for his wife, but that was before the divorce.
Coast Guard Dave figures into the Norton restoration for two reasons. First, Dave was a walking repository of archaic knowledge, which he shared freely. For instance, as soon as he saw the old Norton, he insisted that I borrow his 1953 edition of Nicholson’s Modern Motorcycle Mechanics, certainly one of the world’s great literary works and a true asset to the project. He also insisted that I balance my wheels the old-school way by wrapping the spokes with solder. Dave was emphatic that I immediately drop everything and go over to his shop where he gave me the sacred remnants of a small roll of all-lead (no tin) wheel-balancing solder. To my untrained eye it looked just like any other old roll of solder.
Another time, after setting up his metal lathe to let me turn some half-inch rivets that would secure the rear brake drum to the hub, Dave proudly produced (and insisted that I use) an assortment of rivet mandrels and strangely-shaped bucking bars to finish the job. When Dave wanted to help, you had to let him. As it turned out, Dave’s strange rivet mandrels and bucking bars were just the thing, which was typical.
The second reason Dave figures into the restoration is because he would always come into the shop, pull up a chair, and proceed to distract me. Often several times a day. Whatever you had, Dave used to have two of them, only his were works racers. Blah, blah, blah. He told me about the time he crashed his Triumph Tiger, got the kick-starter through his leg, and how the muscle tissue looked like cooked vermicelli. Then there was the one about his alky-burning Matchless that would have been stolen if it hadn’t broken the leg of the poor bastard who tried to start it. In the lifeless world of the Interbay industrial area, Coast Guard Dave was omnipresent, whether you liked it or not—kind of like the help he offered.
Dave died a few years ago at the ripe old age of 53. Dave’s death was a tremendous blow. For a long time I could not take apart anything without leaving behind enough information for someone else to put it back together. And the solitude of the shop definitely has its down sides. Without Dave’s distractions and interruptions (“come over to my shop for a minute—I’ve got something to show you”) weekends at the shop became very, very, long indeed. The second half of the Dominator project felt very different from the first half.

Once the bike was together, I rolled it across the street and took a few photos of it in front of Coast Guard Dave's old cabinet shop. Now the building is gone too, but two of my shop mates salvaged some of the timbers as it was being demolished. And so the past lives on.

Norton Model 7 Restoration Part 1: Postmortem

2009-03-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

The machine was long dead when I rolled it off the delivery truck and into a cold Seattle rain. I pushed it across the broken street to the workshop space I rent, and, as it sat dripping, I went over it assessing what I had just gotten myself into.
It was a 1950 Norton Model 7, a specimen of the first multi-cylinder engine Norton had ever produced. (A Peugeot engine had propelled the Norton twin that won its class in the inaugural Isle of Man TT in 1907.) Although it was not strictly a sporting motorcycle, Norton advertising of the period made all the hay it could of the firm’s myriad racing successes, and so Nortons gave their new twin the name “Dominator.” The model debuted at the 1948 Earl’s Court show, and production commenced for the 1949 model year.
The Norton Owners Club in England reviewed its copy of the factory records and told me that this particular machine was dispatched from the Bracebridge Street works in Birmingham on March 20, 1950. It and two consecutive Model 7s had been purchased by Brockhouse Limited and were destined for the United States. Brockhouse had purchased Indian Moto Cycles in the late 1940s and by 1950 was actively using the Indian dealership network in America to sell various British bikes. Norton ads in American motorcycle magazines proclaimed “Sold by Indian.”
The seller in Cincinnati had told me the bike was last licensed in 1974 in Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. But as I looked over the bike in 1998, it was another 24 years on; by now the bike had been off the road for as long as it had been on it.
By all appearances this was a machine that had suffered from what I call “Volkswagen Syndrome”—a sad mechanical fate that befalls obsolete vehicles that refuse to die. They are hardly worth repairing, and they certainly are not worth maintaining, but they soldier on with everything about to give up the ghost, yet not enough things do. Whatever the aesthetic reality, cases of Volkswagen Syndrome are often interesting if only for their extraordinarily bodged repairs and extremely worn parts.
Most of the bike was there, but it was in generally shabby condition. The gas tank and fenders were in gray primer, which told me they weren’t good enough to tolerate either bare or painted. Sheet metal parts were dented, fatigue cracked, and repaired badly. Short strands of wire stuck out of the few electrical components on board; someone had re-wired the plot completely with brown wire only to have someone else come along and snip off all of it. The drive chain was one size too wide and had carved a path out of the back of the primary-chain cover. The sprocket teeth were worn hook shaped. Happily the frame and engine numbers did indeed match, just as I had been told. But when I removed the gas tank it was obvious that the frame was bent at the head tube.
The original owner must have lost the tool kit on his way out of the Indian dealership. Water-pump pliers and pipe wrenches had chewed up bolt heads, nuts, and even the carburetor. Some bolts had been removed from non-critical areas to serve where the original fasteners had left the scene. Unable to remove the fork-top bolts, someone had drilled them, tapped them, and installed a bolt in one and a stud and nut in the other so that fork oil could be added without having to borrow a really big wrench.
In the tradition of those before me, I tried to piece the Dominator together enough to get it running. I would restore it as I rode it. The problem was, everything I touched came apart in my hands. I finally gave up and tore it down for a complete rebuild.
The machine had apparently been driven two-up for a fair distance. Once the primer was stripped from the rear fender, it was obvious that a pillion saddle had been bolted on and used long enough to severely fatigue and tear the top of the fender. One of the original Norton pillion footrests was received with the bike, but the other was a well-worn replacement. Disassembling the plunger-sprung rear suspension revealed that one of the coil springs was broken. Its two broken halves had wound past each other to form one very short, incompressible spring.
From the bent frame and fork yokes it was obvious that the bike had been crashed. At the moment of impact, the forks sprung back so far that the front fender got caved in from behind when it smacked into the frame tube. The steering had then whipped right hard enough to strike a sharp dent in the front of the bulbous, chrome, gas tank. Twenty-two smaller dents balanced out the tank damage. The 21-inch front wheel, when rolled across the shop floor, wobbled badly over its repaired spots and fell immediately upon reaching a grizzly warp that was probably the collision site. Regardless of the damage, someone had continued to ride the bike after rounding out the front rim as best they could and straightening the dent in the back of the fender. It was an old repair—they had used lead instead of Bondo on the fender.
Unscrewing the timing cover revealed that the phenolic generator-drive gear was missing. But even disconnected, the generator would not turn. It turned out that a commutator segment had escaped from the spinning armature, snagged the brushes, twisted the brush holders, and stopped the generator cold. This might have been enough to destroy the fiber drive gear, but inside the engine there wasn’t even the tiniest trace of phenolic shrapnel. Someone had already cleaned out the remains and put the bike back into operation without any electrics except the magneto. That explained the snipped-off wiring.
When splitting the crankcases I discovered that the best secrets were those hidden deepest. The left crankcase bore evidence of having been pierced by a broken connecting rod. The hole had been expertly welded shut, but the welder had also addressed the left piston, welding in place the broken pieces of piston skirt that had been cleaved off by the flailing remains of the broken con rod. The welds had been crudely ground off and the piston re-installed in its bore, connected to a replacement rod that was obviously a different casting from its neighbor to the right. The right con rod had suffered a giant gouge from the event but was retained. And this despite the fact that Norton twins use aluminum rods, so re-use was tantamount to a postponed death sentence.
The big-end shell bearings had also been re-used, and, when one had checked out lose, a piece of paper had been stuck behind the bearing to take up the slack. Because the paper used was a piece of blank shop receipt, I assumed the whole mess was a professional job. By the time the rod failed, the bike had already lived a long life; the pistons that they repaired and reused were 0.020” oversize.
In the end, the most surprising thing I found was the absence of any obvious cause of death, except perhaps for an indifferent magneto. Despite the laundry list of ailments, it looked like it might have continued to limp along had someone not started to disassemble it to paint a few parts.
Even so, it is all better now, and I am happy to say it is mostly an amateur job. In late September 2001, the engine fired for the first time in a long time, and by May 2002 I had the machine assembled, wired, and on the road. Since then it has covered more than 10,000 miles from sea level to 7,000 feet. Its greatest feat was a 1,200-mile trip from Seattle to the International Norton Owners Association (INOA) rally in southwest Oregon in 2005. My brother (1939 Ariel Red Hunter!) and I rode there down the Pacific Coast Highway and rode back along the Cascade Mountains. The Model 7 Dominator is such a wonderful machine to ride that I can see why prior owners had tried to keep it on the road despite its various incidents and the mounting toll of bodged repairs.

Racycle Chain: Another Unusual Feature

2009-03-15T00:07:00.001-07:00

The Racycle’s maker, the Miami Cycle and Manufacturing Company, often stated that “a Racycle differs from a bicycle.” Its chain was one of the more subtle ways in which this statement was true.
In 1897, Racycle’s second year of production, large, 30-tooth (1-inch pitch) front sprockets were introduced on two of the eight models offered. Miami Cycle had reasoned that the larger sprockets were preferable because they imparted less strain on the drive chain. Thus, with larger sprockets a neater, narrower chain could be used.
So it was that from 1897 on through 1913 (and perhaps later) Racycles carried unusually narrow chains on their unusually large sprockets. Perhaps the narrow chain also helped cement the notion in the mind of the customer that superior engineering and high-quality materials and construction made the Racycle more efficient and easier to pedal--how else could they get by with such a delicate chain? The second photo shows an elaborate Racycle display complete with weights and spring scales (left) to demonstrate Racycle efficiency. Future posts to this web log will evaluate at least a couple of Racycle's engineering conclusions, so check back for fascinating stuff!
When typical bicycles carried chains that were ¼-inch wide, the first large-sprocket Racycles (1897) carried chains that were only 3/16-inch wide. In 1900, the width was reduced further to 1/8 inch. The 1/8-inch wide chain was used through 1913 (as late as my sources go) and perhaps later.
Interestingly, in 1905 Miami Cycle introduced shiny nickel-plated chain on the high-end Racycles: the Pacemaker (Model 100), Racer (Model 101), and Roadster (Model 102). (These are the same models, with addition of the Roadster Model 104, that also received the improved crank hanger in 1905.) This arrangement of fitting plated chain to the top three models was continued through 1908. In the first and third photographs is a length of nickel-plated Racycle chain (circa 1905-1908) next to a standard 3/16-inch block chain for comparison.
Through 1909, only block chain was used regardless of width. Roller chain was first offered on Racycles in 1910 but only on selected models: the Pacemaker (Model 150) and Rideabout (Model 152). Both models used Diamond 1/8-inch roller chain. Diamond roller chain was also an option on The Racycle Yellow Flyer (Model 151-R) and Roadster Model 154, but only block chain (also 1/8-inch) was available on the lower-tier models: the Ladies’ Pacemaker (Model 153) and Roadster Model 155. The catalog text makes no mention of whether the chains were nickel plated. Diamond chains continued to be used on all Racycles through 1913 (as late as my collection of catalogs can take us), and by that year roller chains were standard throughout the Racycle range.
The only use, so far as I am aware, of ½-inch-pitch chain was on the Racycle Rideabout, mentioned above. The Rideabout was introduced in 1909 and continued through at least 1913, perhaps later. In addition to the chain pitch, the Rideabout was unusual in that it carried an intermediate-sized 70-tooth front sprocket that was sized half way between the Pacemaker and the roadster sprockets.

Racycle Rumors #1: Racycles Were Racers

2009-02-28T21:20:00.000-08:00

These days a surprising number of supposed board-track racing bicycles are coming out of the woodwork. The owners seldom (if ever) offer any conclusive evidence of their machine’s competition career, but at least their assertions are supported by a lack of evidence to the contrary!
Thanks to Racycle’s use of large sprockets and reversible handle bars, the bicycles from Middletown, Ohio, certainly cut a dashing figure that could be mistaken for a racing bicycle. Were Racycles all racers? To help shed light on the matter, here is what the manufacturer wrote in a 1901 promotional publication under the heading “Racycle’s Growth.”
“The name ‘RACYCLE’ was coined from the words ‘Ray’ and ‘Cycle,’ as a compliment to F.H. Ray, the original president of the company, to emphasize its distinctive feature when compared with all other bicycles.
“Many people labor under the false impression that it is called the RACYCLE because it is a racing machine. To correct this impression we do not employ a racing team….
“In the spring of 1896, after a great deal of experimenting with thorough practical tests, larger sprockets were advocated. No doubt many will remember the ridicule evoked by the ’97 Models exhibited at the cycle show of 1897, which were equipped with 30-tooth front sprockets.
“A great cry of ‘Freak! Freak!’ was raised. Columns pro and con were written in the cycle journals, but before the season was over all bicycle concerns were compelled to adopt this ‘freak’ feature, for the public realized that the 17-tooth sprockets not only looked badly [sic], but put so much strain on the chain that they caused a wheel to push harder than when equipped with a larger sprocket. Today a 17-tooth sprocket would elicit as much ridicule as our 30-tooth did at the ’97 show….”
So now we know the source of the name and the maker's rationale for using large sprockets, and it was not because all Racycles were racers. However, the maker may have seen the sales advantage of aping the competition machines. Today, this is commonplace. What is not altogether clear is how they concluded that larger sprockets reduced chain strain and made the Racycle easier to pedal. And was there really an industry-wide movement toward large sprockets, or was this only wishful thinking on the part of Racycle hoping to be a trendsetter? More on these questions in future posts—stay tuned!
Although the factory might not have employed a racing team (or, at least not in 1901), Racycle included a racing model in their catalog from 1897 through 1910. (Illustrations from 1897 and 1908 are included above as the second and third images.) I have incomplete information for 1911 and 1912, but the 1913 Racycle catalog does not include a racing bicycle, indicating that Racycle had by then decided to leave the competition market to other makers.
This photo collage (above) is from a promotional publication printed in 1904 and features several images that the maker had received from proud privateer Racycle racers. Elsewhere in the same publication other Racycle racers are mentioned including M. Sunada, the 1903 Japanese national champion, and Frederico Arredondo, the Mexican road champion.

Clearly a few Racycles saw competition, but the vast majority got more ordinary use.

1965 Sunbeam Tiger 260

2009-02-12T22:59:00.000-08:00

According to the owner’s handbook, this is a Rootes Sunbeam 260, but everyone knows it as a Sunbeam Tiger. I bought this one in May 1984 (coincidently, I paid $3,500, which was the car’s original list price in 1965). It was in rather poor condition at the time, but I had a job in autobody repair, so I immediately set to getting it road worthy.
The following summer I raced it with the Vintage Racing Club (VRC) of British Columbia at Westwood (second photo), a track in the hills above Port Coquitlam, B.C. I continued to vintage race it in 1986 (twice) and 1987 (four events). From late ’85 through ‘88, it was my only car, so I could race it as hard as I dared, so long as I could still drive it to work on Monday.
From Seattle, I’ve driven it twice to Monterey, Ca, to watch the vintage races at Laguna Seca, and once to Baja California, Mexico, to race in La Carrera Classic (1987). The trip to Mexico was a terrific coup: my brother and I drove my daily-driver “race car” to Mexico, started the race 33rd out of 90-plus cars, and finished 16th at an average speed of over 91 mph over the 120-mile course across the Baja Peninsula (third photo). And then we drove it back to Seattle. It was a great adventure. There are more photos from the '87 La Carrra Classic (most with the mapped locations at which they were taken) at http://picasaweb.google.com/RacycleCrank/LaCarreraClassic1987#.
In 1988 I restored the body, promptly crashed it, then re-restored it again in 1990. In 1992 I returned the Tiger to the track for four events. This would be the last season that I’d risk the car in this way; I knew I didn’t have the gumption to fix it up a third time.
I still have the car, and it’s still a blast to drive. We just don’t get out so much anymore. Really must rectify that.

Racycle Production Years

2009-01-31T23:41:00.000-08:00

When were Racycles built? It’s a valid question given how long they have been out of production, the dearth of Racycle information, and the confusing later introduction by Westfield of normal-looking bicycles with a Racycle head badge.
Racycles were built by the Miami Cycle Company of Middleton, Ohio. The company identified 1896 as the first year of Racycle production. That much is certain and is consistent in a variety of the factory’s own publications.
But determining when Racycle production stopped is more difficult. I have seen Racycles and Racycle catalogs from 1913, so it is safe to say that they were in production that late. But the trail would seem to go cold at the end of 1913.
Enter Fred Fisk, who wrote a brief history of the Miami Cycle Co for the May 1989 issue of “The Wheelmen.” For his history, Mr. Fisk’s research included the resources of the Middletown Public Library, at least one collection of ephemera, as well as information from a Middletown historian who had written about the town's industrial history and the Miami Cycle Co. in particular. Mr. Fisk’s article included a photograph of catalogs from Miami and Racycle for 1916 and 1918, so maybe production continued through 1918 and perhaps even later. Mr. Fisk concluded that Racycle production ceased in 1924, but he did not cite his source for this conclusion.
Even if there is some uncertainty about how late the Miami Cycle Co. produced the Racyle, what is certain is that they had given up by 1925. In that year, Westfield Manufacturing Co., makers of Columbia bicycles, published a catalog advertizing “Racycle” bicycles built in their Springfield, Massachusetts, factory. The Racycles in Westfield’s catalog illustrations look like standard bicycles without the large sprockets and widely-spaced crank-hanger bearings that had characterized the Ohio-built Racycles. I will leave it to others to research and report on the Westfield-built Racycles, but various sources suggest that Westfield used the Racycle name periodically from 1925 into the 1950s.
If I had to keep it short, and it pains me to do that, I’d say that Racycles were built from 1896 to about the early 1920s, perhaps as late as 1924. By 1925, it appears that Westfield Manufacturing had bought the Racycle name and was using it to sell their products, which had no obvious connection to the original Racycles built by the Miami Cycle Co. in Ohio. These conclusions are subject to change as more information becomes available. Stay tuned!

Shelby "Cadillac" circa 1938, Pt. II

2009-01-24T17:23:00.001-08:00

In an earlier post about this same bicycle, I introduced it and mentioned the various influences for the color scheme and paint pattern. This is my artful project, and it was very refreshing after so many projects where the main objective was to make a machine look factory fresh with all the original parts, finishes, and colors. The only objective here was to produce something interesting using influences and parts that were contemporary to the bicycle. I'm posting this little story because I hope it might inspire someone to build a road-worthy mongrel out of a bunch of disused parts.
This project took shape over the cold months of 1998 and '99 from a series of swap-meet finds. It started with the pre-war Shelby frame, which came with a seat post and crank set and a long history of abuse and neglect. Rust was blistering an old coat of grass-green house paint, and the middle frame tube had broken free from the seat tube. Clearly no one would complain about what I might do to this mechanical corpse. The fork was also a pre-war Shelby item, but had come off a girl's bike, so it had a longer steerer tube than would fit in this boy's frame, but I could cut it down to size. The wheels came complete with an old (circa 1940s or '50s) set of Western Auto middleweight tires. Compared to typical balloon tires, middleweight tires are narrower (1.75-inch wide) and run at higher pressure (45 psi), so they roll easily and make for a much faster bike.
I tried to keep the total purchase price as close as I could to $100. Even after the pedals and stem, I wasn't too far over until I had to have those very cool flat handlebars.
The repair work was fairly straight forward. To repair the broken frame, I ground out all of the brass and welded the joint. It wasn't pretty, but it was nothing that some time with a grinder wouldn't fix. The stem was rusty and gouged from crashes and pipe wrenches, but what I couldn't grind or file out I was able to fill with silver solder. A fabricated brass bushing took up the wear in the horizontal pivot of the sprung fork.
Compared to other sprung forks, Shelby's "Shock-Ease" hardly looks like a sprung fork at all because the design hides the spring inside the steerer tube. It's an interesting solution that is visually elegant but not particularly good. To absorb impact, the lower portion of fork moves forward. This action compresses the hidden spring, which returns the fork to its original position, but it's like leaning into a punch. When assembling the contraption, I cinched the spring down nice and tight so there is minimal easing of the shocks. That suits me fine.
The finish on the fasteners is dull chrome. From what I know about electroplating, this is essentially hard chrome applied like decorative chrome but at a higher temperature and amperage. The appearance has a dull sheen like you see on micrometers, and it makes for a very tough surface that wrenches don't mar like they will cadmium or zinc plating. This was the fastener finish used by Norton on its motorcycles from around the late 1930s until the early 1950s, and I thought its understated, function-over-form sophistication suited this project well.
The black-painted wheels and the absence of fenders are meant to give the impression of a light-weight machine built for performance, not glitz. But without fenders, where do you attach the pretty red rear reflector? (Irony intentional.) I tried out some arrangements at the seat-post clamp before settling on hanging it off a fabricated bracket that I attached to one of the original drop-stand pivot holes.
The cranks, sprocket, and seat post are gun blued. The only difficult part of the process is getting the metal clean and smooth enough for the process to work. Rust had already stripped the chrome, and sand blasting, grinding, and sanding took care of the rust. I bought a bottle of gun bluing solution for less than $10 from a gun store. The guy behind the counter (at the gun store) said he had yet to sell gun bluing to a gun owner--only hobbyists buy the stuff. I would have laughed, but I didn't want to make any sudden moves.
I found it can be cheap and fun to make a usable old bicycle from cast-off parts. I even learned some new skills.

How to Disassemble a Racycle Crank (1896 through 1910)

2009-01-21T00:07:00.000-08:00

The Racycle is one of those rare bicycles that warrants attention for its technical interest as well as its sleek looks. The principal technical feature of the Racycle is its unique bottom-bracket bearing and crank assembly. “The Racycle crank represents the only mechanically perfect crank construction that has ever been used on a bicycle….” So claimed the Miami Cycle Company in their 1908 Racycle catalog. Future posts will discuss what the perfection was all about, but here we are concerned with taking that mechanical perfection to bits to inspect or repair it.
Below are instructions directly from the Racycle catalog, in this case 1904, but the basic procedure appears to have been the same from 1896 through 1910. At the end of this post is a little bit about the thoroughly redesigned crank hanger that appears to have been first introduced in 1911.
Before you put this information to use, please read it at least twice and study the pictures, because the instructions are not entirely easy to follow, and there is the potential to get it very wrong and break an unobtainable piece: the connecting bolt. This square-headed bolt has a LEFT-HAND (reverse) thread, which means you have to turn it clockwise to loosen it. If you turn it counterclockwise like a conventional bolt (or if you know only digital clocks, so you are flipping a coin to see which way you’ll turn it), you are going to break the bolt. This will get the crank apart, but you’ll have to do some careful drilling and fabrication to get it back together.
Here are the manufacturer’s instructions, circa 1904:

DISSECTION OF HANGER
“The machine should be turned upside down, so that it will rest on the handle bars and saddle. In dissecting the crank hanger, insert the pointed end of the crank bolt wrench (from the tool box) into the two holes in the cover nut on the right hand side and turn to the left, the nut being screwed in with a right-hand thread; this will loosen the cover nut. After taking out this nut remove the lock-nut on the opposite side, in the same manner; then place the socket end of the wrench on the bolt which holds the cranks together and turn to the right (not left). This separates the two cranks and they can be removed without taking the chain apart or interfering with the ball cups.
IMPORTANT
“On all Racycles both the lock and the cover nuts must be taken out before the improved connecting bolt can be removed. This connecting bolt has a left-hand thread, and must be turned to the right, otherwise the head of the bolt may be twisted off and would have to be drilled out.
“To remove the ball cups, loosen the clamp bolts on the lugs of the bottom bracket, and then unscrew the cups; this will expose the copper oil tube and the cone sleeve.”
Regarding the 1911 and later crank hanger, it appears that the connecting bolt was done away with in favor of an axle shaft to which the crank arms were attached in more or less the post-modern conventional way. I have very little information about this late-production revision except this page from a 1912 catalog.

Each crank arm appears to have been located to the crank axle with two short pins. Each crank arm is retained with a lock nut that had a conventional right-hand thread. In the center of the lock nut is a lock screw that the catalog says is LEFT-hand (backwards) thread. Thus, it’s still possible to tighten the parts that you want to loosen. Viva la difference!

The 1913 catalog does not describe any backwards threads. Indeed, from the 1913 illustrations, it appears that a spring lock washer was used under each lock screw, and perhaps this was done in order to finally abandon left-hand threads.

1966 Honda CB450 Super Sport

2009-01-18T12:17:00.000-08:00

When I picked up this machine in 2006, it had not turned a wheel since about 1974. The seller told me that it had been given to his father, who had since passed away. The seller’s late father had been a heating-oil salesman in Bremerton, Washington. He spotted this Honda sheltered under the eaves of a customer’s garage, and when he asked about it the homeowner said he could have it.
Further discussion revealed that the bike was not exactly the homeowner’s property to give away, but the guy who DID own it, the guy who had crashed it in the intersection in front of the garage, the guy who had said he would come back and get it, never did come back, and now the bike had leaned against the garage for most of three years. The homeowner had had enough, so the heating-oil salesman took the CB450 home gratis. The seller remembered that his dad got it running once using the bike’s electric starter hooked up to a car battery, but it had not been ridden since it was dropped in the intersection and left for dead.
The years that this bike spent dormant had been relatively kind to the machine, because both parties had the presence of mind to store it out of the weather. However, whoever it was that walked away from the bike in 1974 had certainly thrashed his money’s worth out of it. On the rear tire, only traces of tread remained on its outer edges. The chain was so worn that it dragged on the swing-arm pivot, and one of the rollers had broken. Consistent with this treatment were the custom touches: lopped-off fenders, tall handle bars, and lots of road rash. This motorcycle had been thrown down the road more than once. Here is a photo of my friend Chris trying it on for size on the day he helped me bring it home.

Getting the engine running involved some disassembly and a lot of checking, adjusting, and cleaning, particularly the carburetors and fuel tank. It was running in a month.

Riding it around the block, I discovered that second gear was shot. It would not stay in gear because the gear-engagement dogs were worn. I bought a spare engine and gearbox assembly from a local wrecking yard (http://www.bikesalvage.com/) and swapped over the necessary transmission parts. Having the crankcase apart provided the opportunity to clean out the old oil sludge and bits of metal.
Finally it was back on the road and running well. I took it to a local race track (Pacific Raceways, Kent, Washington) to watch the vintage motorcycle races (Sounds of the Past racing series). At lunch time they let older bikes ride around the course following former AMA champion Gary Nixon, who was riding a vintage (and borrowed) Triumph triple. So it was that three days after the machine was licensed for the road, I was caning it around a road-race circuit. Foolhardy, yes, but terrific stuff.
Six weeks after that thrill, the CB450 was back where it started--crashed--when an elderly woman turned her Buick left in front of me.
That event put a damper on the rest of the season’s motorcycle riding. The woman’s insurance company was very good about the incident, and even compensated me for my new Arai helmet that got scratched up, but it took most of two months to get the settlement. During that time I had to leave the bike in its as-crashed condition. Once the settlement was reached, it was just a matter of a new headlight, a fork rebuild (with used fork stanchions from Bike Salvage), and a few evenings spent fixing the dented tank and the various bent up levers and foot rests.

The bike is up and running again. I have a good set of fenders and side covers that are ready to paint when the weather gets warmer.

Racycle Models

2009-01-17T01:42:00.000-08:00

The Miami Cycle Company typically produced six different Racycle models each year. The information I have suggests that the company denoted models with letters (for example Model P for the Pacemaker in 1898 and Model R for light road racer in 1899) before switching to numbers in 1900.
The Pacemaker was the top-of-the-line model from its introduction, which I believe to have been in 1898. The Pacemaker is instantly recognizable by its gigantic 40-tooth (1-inch pitch) front sprocket. A variety of rear sprocket sizes was offered, but the standard gearing was quite tall. (I intend to investigate Racycle efficiency claims and engineering in future posts.) Second in line in the catalogues was usually the Racycle racer, at least until about 1913.
In the product hierarchy, the Pacemaker and racer were followed by variants that all carried a 30-tooth (1-inch pitch) front sprocket and had apparently identical frame geometry. These other Racycles—that is, the other four models that were neither Pacemakers nor racers—were differentiated mainly on the basis of their equipment, such as hubs, handlebars, and saddle.
However, sometimes there were fairly significant differences among them. For instance, in 1904 an improved crank hanger was introduced, one that the catalogue noted was not available on the three lower-ranked Racycle models. Although the next year’s catalog announced that the company had decided to include the improved crank hanger across a broader range of models, it remained unavailable on the least-expensive model. Similarly, when the Pacemaker crank sets were forged from vanadium-steel alloy in 1908, the material was offered as an option in only the next two lower-priced models (the racer and the Racycle roadster). Vanadium-steel cranks were not available in the women’s model or the two least-expensive Racycles.
I have very little information about 19th century Racycles, so this next bit pertains only to those constructed in 1900 and later. Some Racycles had a model-number badge affixed to the head tube above the head badge, but it seems that others did not. The model numbers contained either two or three digits. The last digit denoted the position in the model hierarchy, with 0 (zero) the highest (the Pacemaker) and 5 the last in line. From my review of several catalogues, it appears that the preceding one or two digits of the model number denoted the year of manufacture—not the calendar year but the number of years since production commenced in 1896. Thus, the 1900 models (built in the fifth year of production) were numbered 50 through 55, the 1905 models were numbered 100 through 105, the 1910 models were 150 through 155, etc.
If you have information about Racycle model numbering prior to 1900, or can shed light on whether Pacemakers carried model number badges above the head badge, please feel free to share.

Disclaimer

2009-01-17T01:39:00.000-08:00

In researching the Racycle bicycles of the Miami Cycle Company, the information I have available to me is limited to advertisements, brochures, catalogues, one Racycle, an extra crank hanger, and a few photos of extant machines. It makes for a fair stack of stuff, but it is not entirely comprehensive. Thus, there are sure to be factual errors on this web log. I will try to minimize these errors, but they are bound to exist, however unintentional. I offer my apology now.
Where the printed sources have conclusive statements, I will usually take the company at their word and accept the statements as facts. Examples of such statements include when production started, how many Racycles they produced in a given year, when certain improvements were introduced, what materials were used, what accessories were provided with which models, etc.
Where I state conclusions that are based on my own research, I will qualify these as less than certain. An example is my conclusion that the model numbers correspond not only to the hierarchy within the product line but also to the specific year of manufacture. Since a conclusion like this is based on my review of my available sources, be aware that it might one day be overturned by new information or ideas.
Fair enough?

1950 Norton Model 7 Dominator: Introduction

2009-01-17T01:08:00.001-08:00

Not the flashiest machine, but a solid one that's well engineered and has good road manners and the excellent Norton pedigree.

This bike and two other Model 7s of consecutive serial numbers were dispatched from Norton's Bracebridge Street works, Birmingham, England, on March 20, 1950, and were sent to Brockhouse Indian Sales, USA. Brockhouse was an English holding company that had recently purchased Indian Moto Cycles and used the Indian dealership network in the US to distribute a number of English-built motorcycles, chiefly Norton but also Royal Enfield, Vincent, and AMC machines.
When I purchased the Dominator in 1998, it had last been licensed for the road in 1974 in Minnesota. From the machine’s thoroughly worn out condition, it was obvious that it had been kept in service by a dedicated owner despite several setbacks (repaired rod through the case and crash damage) and lingering ailments (badly stress-cracked sheet metal and a broken spring in the rear suspension). During the restoration I did most of the work myself except for electroplating, machining, and aluminium welding. When I was younger, I

worked in autobody repair; the other skills I learned as the Dominator project progressed.
I returned the bike to the road in 2002 and since then have ridden it more than 10,000 miles. Nortons of this vintage really are fantastic machines. They are simple, fast enough, and reliable, and they handle well if you’re fearless (like works-racer Harold Daniell) or reckless (like me). In my opinion, the original 6-volt electrics and magneto ignition are entirely adequate if you use a solid-state voltage regulator (for example a PODtronics unit) and have your magneto refurbished with new armature windings and a new condenser.

Shelby "Cadillac" circa 1938, Pt. I

2009-01-15T23:52:00.001-08:00

At a bicycle swap meet I bought a pair of old wheels and tires and this Shelby frame, crank set, and fork. Note the characteristic Shelby frame design splits the top tube in front of the seat tube. The fork is kind of cool; it's an internally-sprung device that Shelby called "Shock-Ease." The bike has a nice art-deco head badge that simply says Cadillac.

Although the finish is more art project than restoration, all the parts are old except the Brooks saddle and reproduction handlebar grips. The silver and orange I chose because the color scheme looked good on Lindberg's Lockheed Sirius float plane and the Pan Am Clipper flying boats, aircraft that spoke for all that was speed and adventure between the wars. The paint pattern itself was inspired by another airplane, the Travel Air Mystery Ship, which was a successful air racer in the late 1920s. The cranks, sprocket, and seat post I gun blued, which was an interesting process like photo developing on steel.

1908 Racycle Model 135

2009-01-15T23:19:00.000-08:00

Racycle had some interesting (or weird) ideas about how to engineer a more efficient bicycle. The large sprockets reduce the turning angle of the chain rollers, which is supposed to translate to less friction, and the crank bearings are spaced very far apart (actually in line with the crank arms themselves) in order to reduce the leverage on the bearings, and thus the friction, when pedaling. It all makes for an interesting machine, but it's not quite effortless. Note the very relaxed frame geometry and the unusual shape of the handlebars (both features typical of the period). All plating is nickel, not chrome. The rims are Lobdell brand steam-bent maple. It's a thrill to ride, but I really need to get a better brake in it; the New Departure Model A coaster brake is hopelessly feeble.

Racycle Introduction

2009-01-15T22:28:00.000-08:00

Racycle bicycles were built by the Miami Cycle Company of Middletown, Ohio, from 1896 to about the early 1920s, possibly as late as 1924. I hope to share here, in futute posts, some of the information I have about Racycles, so watch this space! This image is from the back cover of the 1904 catalog and features Racycle's top-of-the-line model, the Pacemaker. Future posts will describe the source of the Racycle name, whether these were racing bicycles, why the sprockets were so large, and the source of the claims "It's all in the crank hanger" and "Easiest running wheel built." Remember, "a Racycle differs from a bicycle."

Purpose

2009-01-15T22:17:00.000-08:00

This web blahg is a means to share and compare information about various old machines that are of interest to me. One day it also might include posts about subjects that are not old, or are not machines, or are neither.