i'd shave my head with a cheese grater while chewing tin foil for any one
of those bikes. i clearly remember going to Lambs Recreation Co when
my dad picked out a bonanza bc1000 for me. it was like ralphie getting
his red rider range rifle, except better, it had an engine!!! did i want the
one with the gleaming hodaka engine and frame mounted gas tank? sure,
but what kid would refuse a bc1000 vs nothing??? besides; that was dads
cash limit on this life changing gift.
now i could ride instead of pedaling a mere bicycle! back then we lived
in the mesophase between suburbia and the farmlands which were still
vibrant and family run. fields, dirt roads, and trails invited exploration, and
the middle of summer a bunch of my friends got minibikes ranging from
boonies to rupp roadsters. my bc1000 didn't hold a candle to the rupps
or the bronco shifters.
in the spring the minibike gods looked upon us and gave us Suburban Sports,
this was a one room store that sold scrambler atv's, steen motorcycles, and
arctic cat minibikes, oh, and bicycles too. it was heaven with a crushed stone
parking lot. some how i managed to wangle a deal for a used hodaka engine
from one of the beat up steen bikes. it was perfect timing due to the H-30
dying an untimely death when the magneto screws backed out letting the
flywheel churn up my ignition system taking out the castings that held the
magneto.
it took a month or so to get the hodaka mounted on the bc1000. i had to
fabricate an expansion chamber, engine mounts, added a jackshaft, and had
to have some pieces and parts brazed on to correct the brake issue. i scavenged
a cylindrical gas tank off an old lawn mower and mounted it to the frame in
front of the seat with huge pipe clamps. i made all the parts in metal shop,
all the materials were free!!!! there was three impediments to going totally
steve mcqueen : no kick starter, had to push start in 5th gear, the quart
gas tank was good for a 1/2 hour of riding, first gear was useless except as
a brake which meant i had a 4 speed.
i rode the wheels off that bike, for the entire summer i was either sound asleep
in bed or riding my super-modified bc1000 4 speed! that was about the time
that NYS Route 481 was being built. It was 10 or so miles long drag strip that
ran from Clay, NY to North Syracuse. we learned to carry gas, masterlinks, and
tools with us as we road off into parts unknown, especially down 481 to those
foreign countries many miles away.
That was the best summer i ever had and 40+ years later when my old friends
get together we still talk about that summer, out of eight guys two are no longer,
and one moved to colorado shortly after starting high school and literally disappeared.
so those pictures of those cool hodaka's bring me back to a time when life was
good, no idea of responsibilities, just a whole summer to eat, sleep, and ride on
the fastest ever hodaka powered bc1000 minibike!