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When it comes to clearing my desktop, I probably
should subscribe to ol' Floyd Clymer's method of filing:
When the papers got piled too high at Cycle
magazine, he'd simply shut down that office and move to
another desk. Unfortunately, we don't have that much
real estate at CW, so semi-annual excavations
have to do. Amazing what is unearthed.
Cool custom bikes, for example, sent in by “American
Flyer” hopefuls or just readers who know of my
predilection for weird-Harold machines of mixed
heritage. Buck Pilkenton's café-racer of a different
flavor could hardly be any better.
“The café-racers that were built in England in the
'60s have always been a personal favorite,” he wrote.
“The Triton has been legitimized and polished into its
own recognized breed, but then so has the cockapoo. Few
machines have rumpled the Queen's tarmac quite like the
Norvin, and here is my own take on the concept, the
“Nortley-Fartster” (NORTon harLEY FeAtheRbed sporTSTER),
a 1988 1200cc Sportster engine in a wideline Featherbed
frame.”
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| A kickstarter of which Rube
Goldberg would be proud. Hey, beats
bump-starting. |
Crossbred bike names do not get any better than
Nortley-Fartster, though our man Hoyer came close a few
years ago when he suggested that Indian Chief motors
installed in lightweight Scout 101 frames should not be
called “Chouts” as per usual, but “Schiefs” (pronounced
“Skweefs”) instead. Nomenclature aside, the Fartster is
backyard engineering at a very high zenith, evidenced by
its homebrewed kickstarter.
“Real '60s bikes have functional kickers and no
electric foot,” explains Buck. “One day I found a Yamaha
RD350 lower end in a junkpile. Playing with the gears I
found that some meshed with the Sportster starter gear.
The Nortley project was well under way at that time, but
all other work was suspended while I made the
kickstarter. The drive enters the engine where the old
electric starter did, so it is now kick-only. Sputhe
compression releases were fitted to the heads—one of the
very few jobs I farmed out in the entire project. These,
with ignition by Crane and Nology, a couple of squirts
from the S&S (the frame fouled the enrichener) and a
full, determined push on the pedal will usually fire the
engine in one try—unless, of course, there is an
audience.”
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| Brakes are vintage but get the
job done. “The drums are in keeping with the '60s
theme,” says builder Pilkenton, “and really aren't
any worse than the pathetic single disc H-D put on
the '88 Sportster.” |
Construction took place over a number of years: “I
built the whole thing, machined and welded all the
little widgets and doohickeys, plus adapted some
existing parts which were never intended to meet, all
done in my garage, a lot of it to the background noise
of a Honda generator as I didn't have electricity at my
place for much of the construction time.”
As opposed to choppers, café-racers should function
well on the road, and the N-F delivers, though it's been
very much a work-in-progress.
“It gives a very taut and stable ride, fine
cornering, satisfying acceleration and good noise,”
notes Buck “The last few years have seen little bugs
dealt with, and some improvements. It doesn't get a lot
of miles, but the end of every ride leaves me with face
cramps from grinning.”
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| Eccentric axles adjusters, not to
mention taillight arrangement, not to mention
owner-builder! |
Nice job and well done, Mr. P.
Next up, pix of a sweet Norton street-tracker sent in
by David Uden, a surveillance expert and specials
builder from Omaha, Nebraska. There's nothing remotely
undercover about his 750 “Urban Commando,” though.
He started with a 1972 Combat Commando motor and the
crash-damaged frame from a '73 850. The latter's bent
backbone was straightened and modified to serve as the
oil tank Then the frame had it sides narrowed, welds
cleaned up, was drilled where possible and the kickstand
lug was reinforced. A local plating company applied the
"bright nickel" finish to stay with the dirt-track
theme.
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| Pardon, do you know the way to
San Jose? The Mile, that is. As nice a Norton
street-tracker as we've seen.
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“I work alone in my basement shop,” explains David,
“but my high school buddy, Fred Cuba, has a custom shop
in Hastings, 150 miles away. So over the winter, when my
'real job' of investigations is slow, I'll go to Fred's
Speed and Sport and work on my projects. I cut, grind
and turn; he welds, mills and bitches when I get his
shop dirty.”
Uden turned over the motor work to Bill
Reimenschneider, a farmer/hillclimber who runs Super T
Engineering in Iowa and is the local guru when it comes
to British motorcycle engines, whether stock or racing.
Even with David and pal Fred doing the rest of the work,
building show-quality specials isn't a cheap
proposition, as anyone who's attempted it can
attest.
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| “I settled on later-style Amal
carbs, mostly out of necessity,” says builder
Uden. “The carbs have to be very close together
due to the Norton head design and our narrowed
frame, so Mikunis could not be used. Probably the
most practical choice would have been the stock
Amal Concentrics, but I had not come this far to
put stock carbs back on!”
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“I do the transmission work, wiring, blasting,
polishing, etc.,” says David. “But on some of these
projects, I feel like all I do is light $100 bills on
fire and throw them, one after the other, into the trash
can!”
Can't place the origin of some of the Norton's parts?
In typical specials fashion, Uden was non-denominational
when it came to adapting components. “It uses 19-inch
Suzuki wheels front and rear, 35mm Honda forks and front
disc brakes, and a Yamaha rear brake—all of which came
from a local salvage yard, all of which were then
turned, ground, milled and blasted beyond recognition,”
he says.
Custom triple-clamps come from Speed and Sport, which
makes them for the vintage dirt-track crowd so that they
can run the wide front tires. Fred's also made the
pipes, rear-sprocket adapter and 1.5-gallon
Trackmaster-style tank, “Which, while looking great, has
never made it past a gas station without stopping,”
David points out.
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| Most aluminum was blasted for a
low-maintenance, business-like appearance. Frame,
swingarm, mounts, pegs and brackets, etc. were
nickled. Claude Dericks of Hastings did the
paintwork, as well as the mods to the fiberglass
seat pan. |
What's she like out on the asphalt? “It handles well
and stops on a dime,” Uden says. “It borders on loud but
is not so obnoxious as to traumatize the public unless I
choose to, and let's face it, traumatizing the public is
just not as much fun as it used to be. Overall this bike
was an exercise in 'Can it be done?' and came out very
well. Most of my project bikes are 'done' within two
months, and 'really done' over the winter and early
spring, when it becomes time to ride, not build. This
one started in the fall of 2000 and was finished in the
winter of 2001. I guess I sort of had to stop and catch
my breath.”
Exactly my reaction, David.
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Other Notable Specials
Un-mellow Velo: Olav Hassel, long-time member
on the Velocette Owners Club, ran this
fire-engine-red Thruxtonized 500 café job, license
plate “REDVELO.” That's some kind of late-'70s
Suzuki front end topped by a Manx flyscreen. “It
was the most reliable Velocette I've ever had,”
says Hassel, crediting some of that to the spin-on
oil filter he fitted (the white cylinder visible
just behind the battery box). Olav rode the bike
on at least 12 of the club's 1000-plus-mile yearly
rallies before selling it to a satisfied Texan. “I
wish I still had it,” he says fondly.
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Clean in British Green: Another of Hassel's
specials, this one using a built Velocette motor
and Quaife five-speed gearbox in a nickel-plated
Rickman MRD frame. A recent engine rebuild left
Olav with killer power—“It's the fastest Velo I've
ridden,” he says—but one little problem: It's
almost impossible to kickstart! Help is on the way
from Canada in the form of an electric-start kit
from Cory Padula, apparently some kind of
Velocette engineering guru.
Philadelphia Flyer: Lori Weiniger wanted us to
know about her good friend Skip Chernoff's
artfully crafted Triumph café-racer, built from
scratch over the course of three years in his
suburban Philadelphia garage. A very tasty piece
it is, too, with alloy tank and rims, rearsets, an
oil-cooler mounted to the front downtube, a single
Mikuni carb and Norton-esque “peashooter”
mufflers. These days, some of the best bikes at
concours are specials like this. After all, how
many perfect Bonneville 650s can you look at in a
day?
The Editor's Ariel? When subscriber David
Alstott read of my recently purchased but
incomplete Ariel custom (see Blogs), he mailed
this photo, snapped at a dirt-track near
Indianapolis back in 1966, and wondered, “Could
this possibly be your referred-to Square Four
complete with seat and exhaust?” No, David, mine's
more of a bobber, but I bet this one sounded great
with those zoomy pipes—though crumpet catching
must have been a bit of a challenge…
—DE | |
