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It’s a kind of magic. 8/10/2006

Reading through my blogroll today, I noticed this item from the Kneeslider. I clicked on the link, which brought me to this site where this gentleman by the name of Paul Brodie is in the process of rebuilding a motorcycle. From scratch.

Mr Brodie started with 2 lower engine cases from a 1919 Excelsior motorcycle.

From these, and a set of old photographs,…

… Mr Brodie has worked his very special kind of magic in his machine shop. No doubt, having the correct tools in your garage helps, but more important is the skill to use them, and use them properly. Some people are machinists. Some machinists are magicians.  This man is a sorceror.

Starting with billet metal and bars, he has reconstructed the frame, rolling gear, and the thing that impressed me most, the entire engine. Let’s put this in terms that the layman can understand. A typical motorcycle company will employ a team of at least 100 engineers and other assorted bodies to put out a new motorcycle design. Along with lots of computers and number crunching. The most time consuming thing in motorcycle design is the engine, and the frame. Everything else is basically standard.

Mr Brodie started from nothing. Not even blueprints. No doubt, the motorcycle he is reconstructing isn’t that far removed from a bicycle. Which is what motorcycles first started out as a hundred years ago, a bicycle with an engine inserted into the frame, and a chain looped around the sprockets.

He had to design, engineer, and machine, a complete motorcycle, which no one had seen, or ridden, in decades.

I’ve done lots of things to motorcycles in my life. I’ve rebuilt engines beyond count. I’ve changed out more spark plugs than some of my readers have had hot dinners. But I have never tried building an entire engine out of nothing. Certainly, I’ve taken a basket case engine in bits, and machined the missing parts to bring the engine back to life again. A good example was a Triumph 3T that had been sitting in boxes for years in someone’s garage. A friend picked it up, and brought the various boxes over to me.

I took one look at the collection of rusty parts, and I wasn’t impressed. I suggested that my friend had the wrong address, when what he was really looking for was the local landfill. He managed to persuade me to help him rebuild the bike. He said that I had influenced him with my rebuild of a 1953 Triumph Speed Twin. We finally reached an agreement over how many crates of beer it was going cost him, and we carried all the boxes and bits in the garage.

One of the concessions we agreed upon was that he would be doing most of the work, with me providing the necessary advice and tools where and when required. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out the way I expected. A couple of weeks after the remains of the 3T were dumped in my garage, my friend found himself another distraction. I can’t remember what her name is now, but this twat was now spending more time in her company than in mine.

The boxes of parts sat there for a while, until I started getting pressure from my then significant other. She kept whinging that it was impossible for her to now put her car all the way into the garage and close the door. And things reached a point where I had to either get rid of the boxes, or go without any sugar for a long, long time.

So I started work on this bike. After a couple of weeks of very intense work, and lots of beer, cursing, swearing, blood, sweat, and lack of sugar, I managed to get this bike running again. It certainly wasn’t a concours standard rebuild, but it would pass for a Sunday morning ride. I called my friend, and said that his bike was ready, and could he please bring the previously agreed upon number of crates of beer over.

His answer to me made me immediately want to go over and whack him over the head with an exhaust pipe.

“Oh, she doesn’t want me to ride motorcycles.”

All pictures by Paul Brodie of Flashback Fabrications.

• Posted in : On the road
• Author : thesnark

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