I stirred up a few comments last week with that photo of Emma Booton’s 1972 restomod Triumph Trident and its glorious purple color. This week, I visited the Buddy Stubbs Motorcycle Museum in Phoenix, Arizona (a wonderful place, and the subject of an upcoming ExNotes blog) when I happened to spot an original ’72 Trident 750cc triple. Its original purple paint was what Triumph called Regal Purple.
You know, Emma was right. Roto Rooter purple, the color you see on her bike in the photo atop this blog, is much nicer. That’s my opinion, and if you don’t agree with me, I am okay with you being wrong.
There are a lot of motorcycles in the Buddy Stubbs Museum, and each has a story. Watch for our upcoming blog on this Phoenix destination.It presents a regal appearance, don’t you think?
The original Triumph is a nice motorcycle, and it has the advantage of being original (including the original paint geometry, with Triumph’s familiar scallops). But given the choice, Emma’s Triumph gets the nod here.
The Dream is perched on the new Harbor Freight lift and slowly coming apart. I’ve been busy with other projects so don’t freak out if it seems like progress is slow. It’s not me. It’s the environment I work in.
This installment involves a bit of inventory control. I need a decent front rim but all the ones online look just as bad as the rim I have. The parts bike front rim is bad too. They are sturdy and run true but lots of surface rust makes them look bad. I can get new rims on eBay, sold in pairs for around $200 delivered, but I only need one rim. Anyone want to form a syndicate and go halvies on some 305 Dream rims?
$20 kickstand. Sometimes I do it the easy way.
Both of the Dreams were missing their side stands and I debated making one from scratch. Just for kicks I went on eBay and some hero had a side stand for $20 so I bought it. It’s kind of like cheating but It would take me two days to make a stand.
Hopefully these seals will work, keeping the oil inside where it belongs.
I’ve also ordered a set of engine seals. I’ll have the engine side covers off to free up the clutch plates and clean the centrifugal oil filter can. Also I need to remove the alternator to gain access to the starter clutch as it’s hit and miss. I figure it’s a good time to replace the seals. The only one leaking at the moment is the shift-shaft seal but you know how it goes with old rubber. Twenty miles down the road another seal will start leaking. Then another.
Deez Nuts were tight as hell. It took me two days to get them loose.
Getting the Dream’s steering stem apart was an Ossa. The top lock nut was knitted to the cone nut and the thing was tight as hell. Much hammering, heat and penetrating oil was used over the course of two days. The steering stem nuts finally unwed and spun off by hand. All the bearings and races look good with no divots or flat spots to cause erratic steering. There was even soft grease still inside! Impressive for a 63-year-old motorcycle.
The Dream on the maiden lift.
I’ve got the frame off the engine now. It’s a fairly lightweight sheet metal construction. Kind of like a monocoque Norton but with a separate fuel tank. Honda copied a lot of ideas from German and British sheet metal frame manufacturers.
The Dream frame is light. Easy to lift off the engine for an old man.
The frame has a few dings to fix and the Dream is made from pretty thick metal. The dents are hard to get behind to push out. I’ll try the painless/paintless dent remover but I don’t hold out much hope as the frame is twice as thick as gas tank metal. If that doesn’t work I’ll get a stud welder and pull the dents with a slide hammer.
Kind of Kawasaki green for the new paint on the stand. Almost safety vest green. I had a can in stock.
Since I have a new, shiny lift I decided to clean up the old, rusty engine stand to match. I’ve had this stand since the late 1970’s and it’s had everything from a 4-Cylinder Volvo marine engine, many Chevy small blocks and a big, heavy, Ford 427-inch OMC inboard strapped to the thing. The big Ford was pretty bouncy. With the cast iron, water-cooled exhaust manifolds the thing probably exceeded the stand’s weight rating by 300 pounds. I used a 2×4 in the front to help stabilize the engine.
A few aluminum tabs and the Dream engine bolted right up. I’m going to do this method on the next MC engine I work on.
In all those years this will be the first motorcycle engine I’ve had on the stand. It makes everything easy with the mill at hip level. You can rotate the engine 360 degrees by spinning the T-handle. Which begs the question: why didn’t I think of this before?
I’m thinking heavy metallic with candy-copper followed by 2K clear. What are the odds it won’t bubble?
I hear you: not much progress but I’m a bit lame right now and taking it easy for a week or so. What about a 3-part metallic orange for a color? Too much? Atomic Green? Black, red or white is boring.
The alarm rang early last week, and Sue and I were on the road at 5:00 a.m., pointed east on the 210 for the 5 1/2 hour trek to Phoenix and the Buddy Stubbs Motorcycle Museum. It was worth the drive out there.
There are more than a few dealers who have a handful of bikes tucked into a corner of their showrooms they call a museum. Not so with the Buddy Stubbs Motorcycle Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. It’s the largest motorcycle museum in the American Southwest, and it’s one of the best motorcycle museums of the many I’ve visited over the last 30 or 40 years. I don’t say that lightly. This place is spectacular.
Many marques are well represented. This colors on this early ’60 Noron twin work for me.
Sue and I visited the Buddy Stubbs Museum recently for an upcoming issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine, and I sure was glad we did. The Museum has 137 bikes (with 124 on display). You might think they’d all be Harleys, but you’d be wrong. All the cool stuff is there, and it’s all vintage. Harleys, Triumphs, BSAs, Vincents, BMWs, Excelsiors, Indians, and a bunch more. It seems like every motorcycle in the Museum has a story.
The 1913 Indian Buddy commuted on between dealership locations.
One of the stories is about the 1913 Indian in its original unrestored glory. You might recall that about 25 years ago Harley made their dealers build new and modern showrooms. Buddy Stubbs was one of those dealerships, and while the new location was under construction, Buddy rode between the old and new locations daily on that 1913 Indian. That’s cool.
Buddy’s Cannonball Excelsior. All the spares rode in the sidecar and there was no chase vehicle.
Another bike with a story is the 1915 Excelsior, with sidecar, that Buddy rode in the 2010 cross country Cannonball Run. Okay, you might be thinking a lot of guys did that. Yeah, but…and the “yeah, but” in his case is that a 70-year old Buddy Stubbs made the ride with no chase vehicle. He carried all the parts he thought he might need in the sidecar. Wow.
Yes, it’s the actual Electra-Glide in Blue. The real one that we all saw in the movie.
Remember the 1973 Electra-Glide in Blue movie? Buddy taught Robert Blake how to ride a motorcycle for that movie, and the motorcycle that Blake’s felonious motor officer buddy bought with stolen money (in the movie, not in real life) currently sits in the Buddy Stubbs showroom. Blake went on to a successful TV series (Baretta), and then he fell from grace when he murdered his wife (which he got away with in the criminal trial, although he was later found financially liable in a subsequent civil case). It’s tough to convict a movie star here in the Golden State.
The black T-Bird (second from right) was The Wild Ones backup bike.
Speaking of motorcycle movies, the grand-daddy of them all has to be Marlon Brando’s The Wild One. You will recall that Brando rode a Triumph Thunderbird in that movie. The producers kept a spare Triumph Thunderbird on set during the production. You know, just in case. That spare T-Bird is in the Buddy Stubbs Museum.
A four-cylinder Nimbus. It might have made it into our ¿Quantos Pistones? series had I seen it sooner.
There’s a whole section here on ExNotes focused on our dream bikes. Satisfyingly, several of those are in the Buddy Stubbs Museum, including lots of Triumph Bonnevilles, Harley Cafe Racers, and the Harley XR1000.
By any measure, Buddy Stubbs (who at age 85 is still with us) is an amazing man. You can even buy a book about Mr. Stubbs, which I did while visiting the dealership. I have a signed copy.
A chile relleno tamale. Muey bueno!
Hey, one more thing that I’d be remiss to not mention in this blog. Stop for lunch at the Tamale Factory, which is just 8/10ths of a mile up North Cave Creek Road from the dealership. I had the chile relleno tamale and Sue had the chicken version. Both were fantastic.
As the Sixes go, there have been a few: The Honda CBX, the Kawasaki KZ1300, the Honda Gold Wing, the Honda Valkyrie, the Benelli Sei, and the BMW K1600. This doesn’t include any custom engined bikes, and there have been a few. This blog is long enough already, so I’m leaving out things like bikes with three Triumph 650 Twin engines. All the bikes included here were factory offerings.
Honda CBX
The year was 1979, and I was riding a Triumph 750 Bonneville I bought new in Fort Worth, Texas. We had a Honda dealer in town that had a demo CBX, and I went over there as soon as I knew the dealer had the CBX in stock.
A 1971 Honda CBX, like the one I ruptured.
In those days, dealers of all kinds of bikes allowed unsupervised test rides. Very few dealers, if any, do that today, and for good reason. There are guys out there that will ride the snot out of them. I was one of them back in 1979. I picked up the CBX (a beautiful silver one that was essentially a naked bike; this was before Honda put the big fairing and bags on the CBX in 1981), and I headed out to Loop 820. Loop 820 (as the name implied) looped around Fort Worth. I lived on the west side of town out near the General Dynamics plant where I was an engineer on the F-16.
Loop 820 in those days way out on the west side of Fort Worth was a traffic-devoid area, and that made it a favored spot for top speed testing. My ’78 Bonneville would top out at an indicated 109 mph on Loop 820 (I think I’m past the statute of limitations on that moving violation, which is why I’m sharing this with you). Naturally, it was where I took the CBX. The bike had something like 6 miles on the odometer, but I didn’t care. The magic number? 131 mph. Yep. I was a speed demon back in the day.
When I brought the bike back to the dealer, I put it on the sidestand with the engine still running. It squirted oil arterially out the left side of the forward cam cover. It squirted in spurts, like it had a heart pumping it out. “How’d you like it?” the enthusiastic sales guy asked, and then he saw the oil orgasming out the top end.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I mean, look at it. It leaks worse than my Triumph…”
So I didn’t buy that CBX, but I never abandoned the idea of owning one.
My 1982 Honda CBX. Bone stock. Impressive. Fun to ride.
Maybe 20 years later I stopped at Bert’s, a huge local Honda/Suzuki/Yamaha/Kawasaki (and maybe a few other makes I can’t remember) dealer. He had a 1982 CBX on the floor. It was a used bike with just 4500 miles on the odometer, and he wanted $4,000 for it. It was beautiful. Completely stock, it was pearlescent white with turquoise and black accents. I stopped twice but couldn’t quite bring myself to pull the trigger. Then I stopped in a third time and it was gone. Rats. Missed it. He who hesitates is lost, and I had hesitated.
I asked about the bike and was told some rich guy from Japan had bought, and Bert’s was putting new seals in the forks, installing a new air filter, cleaning the carbs, and doing a general servicing on it. Lucky guy, I thought.
Then I stopped in a fourth time and the bike was back on the floor. The sales guy on duty in Bert’s used bike department was a nice old guy who told me he won the Daytona 200 in 1956. Did he really? Hell, I don’t know. We didn’t have the Internet yet. But none of that mattered. The ’82 CBX was back on the floor and it was now $4500. I could get my checkbook out fast enough.
Six pipes, six cylinders, six carbs, 24 valves, double overhead cams.
I had a lot of fun with the CBX, riding all over California, Nevada, and Arizona with it. I put 20,000 miles on the bike. I even road to the Laughlin River Run one year, where it drew more stares than any of the cookie-cutter wannabe rebel yuppie EVO-engined Harleys.
On the road near Bagdad. Bagdad, Arizona, that is. That’s my buddy Louis and his Gold Wing. Louis went into witness protection and has since taken to wearing a shirt.
I loved the bike, but I decided it was time to sell it a few years later. A friend offered me $4500, which is what I had paid for it and about what they were going for in those days, and I sold it. I wish I still had it.
The Honda Gold Wing
Somewhere in its history (actually, it was way back in 1988, which surprised me), the Honda Gold Wing became a flat six displacing 1520cc. I think they are up to something like 1800cc or maybe a million cubic centimeters by now. I never rode a Gold Wing Six and I never had a desire to own a Gold Wing (one short ride on Louis’ Wing, a Four, convinced me that Wings are crafted of boredominium).
A Wing Ding Six. I think there’s a bathroom with a shower somewhere in there.
None of the Wings in any denomination ever appealed to me. I know that modern Gold Wings are impressive and fast and handle well (for a battleship) and all that. The whole Wing thing just never appealed to me. Never has, and never will.
The Honda Valkyrie
The Honda Valkyrie used the Gold Wing engine and it was, I think, supposed to sort of compete with Harley. I liked the idea, and I thought I wanted one, so I went back to Bert’s and looked at one on the showroom floor. Fortunately for me and my wallet, I rode my ’92 Harley Heritage Softail there. The Valkyrie looked good, I thought, until I went back out to the parking lot and saw a new Valkyrie that someone had parked right next to my Softail. Both bikes had windshields and saddlebags, so it was a good side-by-side comparison.
The Honda Valkyrie. If you were wondering, a Valkyrie is a female warrior figure from Norse mythology. She worked for Odin and chose dead warriors on the battlefield, and then guided them to Valhalla
That visual comparison is what drove a silver stake through the Valkyrie’s heart for me. I couldn’t believe how big, porky, and bloated the Valkyrie looked next to my Softail (and the Softail was not a small machine). The Heritage Softail just looked way more svelte, nimble, and sexy. That killed it for me. No Valkyrie would ever live in my garage.
Like the Gold Wing, there were two iterations of the Valkyrie – a 1520cc initial offering and then later an 1832cc version. The Valkyries were known for their atrocious fuel economy, although I can’t imagine anyone who bought one worried about that. They were huge bikes.
The Kawasaki KZ1300
Shortly after Honda introduced the CBX, Kawasaki introduced a 1300cc, water-cooled monster they called the KZ1300 (I think that’s what they called it). Unlike the Honda CBX (whose production run lasted only from 1979 to 1982), the KZ1300 stayed in the Kawasaki lineup for several years. I don’t know why.
The KZ1300 fell from the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.
The Honda CBX (even though it was a Six displacing 1050cc) looked nimble, lean, and mean. The Kawasaki looked like a bus or maybe a dump truck to me. There was nothing elegant or graceful about it. I wanted no part of it. I’ve never ridden one.
Benelli Sei
Benelli jumped on the air-cooled inline 6 theme with their Sei models. They were good looking bikes, but they looked (at least to me) like a copy of the Honda CBX. As copies go, the CBX wasn’t a bad thing to use as a starting point, but to me, the CBX was a far more attractive motorcycle.
The Benelli Sei. It’s pretty, but I like the Honda CBX more.
The Sei was offered at first as a 750 and later as a 900. The Benellis were made from 1973 to 1978. I think I may have seen one or two Benelli Sei motorcycles, but I can’t remember where. I never rode one and I had no desire to. The CBX spoiled me.
As an interesting aside, Benelli is one of those interesting companies that made both guns and motorcycles. I have a rare Benelli 9mm handgun, a pistol that didn’t make it commercially but is delightfully complex and fun to shoot. Benelli also makes rifles and shotguns. Motorcycles marketed under the Benelli name are today manufactured in China.
BMW K1600
The BMW K1600 series of luxo-barges are (as the name implies) 1600cc motorcycles. They have inline (across the frame) six-cylinder engines, with the pistons at a steep forward angle.
BMW K1600. Where’s the engine?
There’s a K1600 GT and a K1600 GTL. I think the L stands for luxury. Or maybe it stands for loaded (which is what I’ve have to be to ever purchase one of these 750-pound land yachts). Like most BMW products, the K1600s are outrageously priced, a situation made worse by tariffs.
These bikes, I think, are unnecessarily laden with electronics and other silly features. A few years ago when the K1600 first hit the market, I was in a BMW dealer chatting with the marketing manager. He was multitasking during our conversation. The other thing he was doing? He was trying to figure out how to use a K1600’s electronic ignition key for a bike he had just sold. BMW North America was on the phone, and the guy on the other end was similarly perplexed. That made four of us who couldn’t break the code on how to use the key (BMW NA, the dealer’s sales manager, the bike’s new owner, and me). I was the only one of the four who didn’t care, as I wasn’t going to ride the bike. Ah, the good old days…when a key was just a piece of mechanically-notched steel that you stuck in the bike’s ignition lock and turned.
So there you have it: My take on the Sixes. So is this it? We’ve done singles, twins, triples, fours, Fives, and Sixes. Surely there can’t be more.
Hey, don’t call me Shirley. Stay tuned. Yep, there are 7-cylinder, 8-cylinder, 9-cylinder, and more cylinders coming up. Stay tuned.
Missed our other ¿Quantos Pistones? stories? Here they are:
