Easy Rider and Chopperguy

For those of you who also have a deep seeded loathing for the Easy Rider Diet Pepsi Commercial, you don't have to feel alone. This ad makes me ill every time I see it. I can honestly say that I have NEVER purchased diet Pepsi and NEVER will. I also do not know any chopper riders or Easy Rider fans to whom this commercial would appeal. Someone care to prove me wrong?

I found this sweepstakes just in time. Enter to win a replica of the Captain America jacket.

Conservative pundit George F. Will writes Hog Heaven: Harley at 100 for Newsweek's "The Last Word". In it he gives a brief mention of Easy Rider with Fonda and Nicholson as bad boys on bikes. Sorry George, but Nicholson's character represents a regular sort of person. The rednecks kill one of their own for hanging out with hippies. Then again, his character also does a lot of work for the ACLU. Perhaps George Will refers to this when he calls Nicholson's character a "bad boy".

A fan sent this along to me, an authentic replica of the jacket worn by Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. It doesn't look totally authentic to me, but they did a very good job.

I broke the repair streak. I took the bike out Monday night and didn't have to repair anything on it. First time all year. Instead I had to fix my truck.

The crew down at Easyriders of Minneapolis finally got my chop working again. They didn't just get it working, they got it working better. If you want the full story on this, keep reading. If not, you best quit now and go explore something else.

I had originally taken the chop in for two things. I had never gotten the battery eliminator installed and I wanted to test that out. Also, the kicker had started slipping more often than not. It needed repairs so I could at least get her started. No fun if she don't run.

The shop ordered up the kicker parts and started tearing into the primary to get at the clutch. When they got back to the kicker, they discovered that someone had welded the kicker gear in place rather than riveting it. Not only that, but they had welded it slightly off center. I tracked down a used hub to replace the desicrated one. When the guys at the shop tried to install that one, they discovered that they needed a different spacer to get the hub in position with the kicker. The troubles didn't end there. By not using a puller on the clutch the last time I got it fixed, the works had gotten compacted to the right side of the bike. The shop pulled it out, fit a new spacer, and put the clutch back together. At this point everything seemed to work, so they tried to seal the bike back up. Anyone out there ever try to put a seal on an old tin primary cover? I've done it myself a few times. It requires a LOT of sealer. Applying it liberally seems like a good begining, but you will need more.

The shop got a practice run at it. When they sealed her up and tried to kick her over, it froze up again. This had them angry and confused. So they ripped the cover off again and took a look inside. So happens that the bolts for the primary chain tensioner stuck out into the hub. They fixed that up and sealed her again. This time it worked. The clutch now works better than it ever has and the kicker no longer misses. I guess one guy did get injured attempting to start my bike. Others simply refused to try.

They also did something to my kicker pedal. I think they threw some loctite on the bolt which the pedal swivels around. I had always just tightened it every so often to keep it in check. Their fix gives it an easy rotation with little fear of ever loosing the peg. I just hope I never have to change the pedal.

Lastly, I had them install the battery eliminator. This little device seems to work great. My lights no longer dim as I accelerate. A word of caution, this set-up will void the warranty on your regulator. Don't do it unless you have to. It seems to work fine for me, though.

So then we waited around for about an hour while the guys wrote up the bill. No one had filled out even a scrap of paper for the repairs. I tried to convince them that I won the motorcycle repair lotto. they eventually gave me a bill anyway.

Even with this major repair, I still have yet to take the bike out of the garage without something falling apart on it. On Friday I noticed a rattling noise up front. I looked down just in time to see the nut for the forward tank mount fly off, followed shortly by two washers. I stopped off at a Home Depot close by to get the parts I needed. I purchase a couple of 2¢ nuts and a washer. I had to buy a whole bag of lock washers since they didn't have those out in bins. The whole experience reminded me why I like neighborhood hardware stores. At a typical hardware store I go to the trays, grab what I need, and tell the guys at the counter how much each one costs. At Home Depot they can't ring it up unless it has a barcode. So the cashier flips through the book and first rings up the nuts as the 10¢ models. Normally I would have just paid the difference on this small purchase so I could get out the door. Thanks to having to purchase an entire bag of lock washers, I knew that I had barely enough cash in my pockets to cover the parts. I did not want to throw this on my credit card. So I have to wait while she finds the right ones in the pages of her book. All this hassle for a total purchase of $1.03 (and I still had a nickle and a dime left in my pocket).

I decided to run around town with her on Saturday as well since I needed to pick up a few small things. After picking up some jewelry at St. Sabrina's, I headed off to my next destination. While cruising down the highway I felt the brake pedal hit me in the ankle. I glanced down and saw that the rod connecting the forward control to the lever which actually pulls the brake had come detached in the rear. I took the first exit and pulled into a mall parking lot. I still had a front brake (which I installed just two years ago, lucky me) and figured that if I could tie up the rod I could get the bike home where I knew I had the hardware to fix it. Normally I carry zip strips with me for just such emergencies, but I had recently run out and hadn't replaced them yet. There at me feet, mere inches away from what I needed to tie up, sat a piece of wire. I grabbed the pliars from the tool bag and had the problem at least neutralized. When I got home, I grabbed one of the spare bolts I had for back there and tightened it up properly. I also went around the rest of the bike giving it a thorough tightening up.

I noticed something rather peculiar about my adventures this weekend. I had a full tank of oil, but I never left even a drip in the parking lots. The guys really sealed her up tight. Thanks to all those who worked on it, especially Jeff, Charlie, and Jay.

I SHOULD get my chop back this week. We've run into all sorts of problems with the kicker. It started when we took the outer hub off. Last time I had problems with the kicker, someone decided to attach the gear to the hub by welding it rather than riveting it. So we tried to track down a new hub. Not the easy to find little one in the center of the business but the extremely rare and hard to find bigger one that all of the clutch parts fit into. Then as the folks down at the shop try to stick it all together again, they realize that they don't have the proper spacer on hand. So now I sit around waiting for the part to get in.

The chop broke down on me almost a month ago. As stated earlier, even then I couldn't get her out on the road without a breakdown. I keep hoping that eventually we can get this thing tightened up. I need at least a good solid month of daily riding right now. I've started to go just a little nuts from the wait. Perhaps the time has come to really purge the demons from the old girl…

Building The Dream chronicles one man's efforts at building a Captain America replica. They haven't finished the series yet. A good site for all of you people who keep e-mailing me about replica building. -;-)

I had never heard this rumor as to the whereabouts of Captain America before.

The original Harley-Davidson Panhead chopper used in the film is now believed to be safely stored in the Oakland Hells Angels Clubhouse…

As it states in the Choppers section, someone stole three of the four bikes used in the film. The sources I have found on this all point to the bikes getting stripped for sale. No publicity had occured for the film and no one knew it would turn into a hit. The thieves most likely partsed-out the bikes with no idea of the potential value of what they had just destroyed.

Hmm, all this talk about partsing-out bikes reminds me of The Wild Angels. The film starts with Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda) riding out to tell The Loser (Bruce Dern) that they found his missing bike at a chop shop. I may need to watch that one again…

Happy Fourth of July to everyone. Hopefully I'll hit the road over the holiday. My chop still sits in a shop while a bunch of guys stand around it scratching their heads. We've gpt spacing issues with the kicker gear. But more on that when we finally get it done…

Take a look at these die-cast models of Captain America and the Billy Bike for sale through Franklin Mint. I had actually started looking for panheads, trying to see if someone else out there had built a good replica of either bikes. Somehow I stringed the search criteria together in a new enough way to get this model. I saw one some time ago at St. Paul Harley-Davidson. Not a bad little model. I thought they had stopped making them.