Long Beach International Motorcycle
Show
By
Dave Cook
Off to the beach for a swim and a
sail, not this time, I’m riding my Ariel
Square four, not a leaky old boat I have to
bail. It’s the annual International
Motorcycle Show. Great to see the tons of shiny new scooters
and accessories. I know I’m old school, but some of this stuff doesn’t
even look like a motorcycle any more. I can imagine it taking the better part
of the morning to just take off plastic or fiberglass in order to find the
adjustment screw. “Infused Modern” What ever that means.
I rode my polished up ‘59 Ariel to
the convention center in Long Beach
Thursday afternoon around 2:30. I was the first one there reporting to Steve
Sorensen, who ran the display of Antique M/C Club booth. I had shut off the
motor to talk to some one, went to start and my kick starter was GONE!! Just the bare shaft sticking out the side of the transmission.
Well, you can imagine I said a few choice words. What was really bothering me
was that, before leaving Torrance,
I had noticed it was loose and tightened it up. We can all learn a lesson here.
Inspect the clearance between the pinch bolt and shaft after you tighten. With this old stuff, sometimes the material
will stretch so that it will come together before the lever tightens on the
shaft. This can be corrected by increasing the clearance between the two
surfaces by running a hack saw blade or a thin cut off wheel between them. If
you have a spare kick starter lever for my Ariel, give me a call. I retraced
the route four times, no luck. I assume it was hit buy a car and went flying
over embankment to I know not where. A replacement is on order.
Our display booth looked good
sporting a new canopy proclaiming we are the SoCal Chapter of the Antique
Motorcycle Club of America with our logo of “Jim Fleet.” We had a real verity
of machines. A ‘59 Ariel Square Four - Dave Cook, a ‘56 BSA Scrambler, a ‘76
Maico 400 - The late Robert Elder, a 1913 Indian twin, a 1940 Harley Davidson -
Tim Graber, a 1947 Indian Chief - Gerry Unis, a ‘69 Triumph TR6 - Hokan
Mortenson, a ‘39 Indian Sport Scout - Hobo John, a 1925 JD Harley Davidson -
Marc Gallin, a 1939 Indian four, a 1949 Indian Vertical Twin - Max Brubeck, and
a 1946 Indian Chief - Larry Ramos.
Max Brubeck’s Indian four was a
real attention getter. Lots of questions came from a very large number of
people standing in line to check us out. We passed out our business cards and
did a lot of bench racing with some old racers from the District 37 AMA.
Steve Sorenson ran the project
again this year, assisted by Hobo John, Larry Ramos, Dick DeYoung, Tom Hart,
Tom Lovejoy and Gerry Unis. We encouraged several people to activate some old
scooters that are laying around in the back of their
garage. (You know, the ones they are going to get busy working on, someday) All
in all, it was a good show and a lot of people learned all about us.
Return to the SoCal Home Page