The Ones That Didn't Make It

I've owned something like 20 bikes over the years, but obviously not all of them stuck around. Lately I've been only hanging onto things I actually want (and I'm not looking to buy any new ones either, but we know how that goes). But back in the day when I was really dipping my feet into mechanicing/flipping shit, I went through a lot of wheels. This post is an abbreviated catch-all of the ones that didn't make the cut. The ones I can remember, anyway. 

 

 

Yamaha XT550

I think this was my second purchase after Rhonda if I remember right. I borrowed Kayla Gaszi's pickup truck and drove out to San Juan Capistrano for this. It costed nothing, I think it was $350. It was mostly complete, and had an extra frame, tins, etc. to make almost a second bike except for the engine, and 2 giant cardboard boxes full of millions of parts. I remember the guy I bought it from, he was living on a big country property in the hills and had a big barn full of all sort of weird projects, I think he even had an airplane or something. He was a long-haired, soft-spoken, kind of hippie guy that I could see hanging out in the vintage motocross circles. Kind of reminded me of my uncle. And of course he knew all about every part in every box.

Cool bike, and I was pretty excited about this one, but it was too much of a project for me at that time. No wiring, scratch built...I just wasn't at that level yet. But I got all the cosmetic stuff down pretty well, and I had a good vision for it. I learned a lot of tricks with this bike, such as using a serrated turkey knife to trim down the seat foam, and painting an exhaust with barbecue paint. Lots of stuff that would stick with me into other builds. I also always held on to the "National Park Brown" color scheme I came up with for this one to eventually make it into another enduro build, which so far hasn't happened. 

Around the time I needed to wire it I got too intimidated to go further, and I sold it to a really nice father and son that were looking for a project to do together. The kid was young, and I could tell that Dad was using this as a learning experience, asking all the "right" questions, helping him make a bill of sale with me, etc. etc. It was pretty cute. I'm pretty sure the guy was an electrical engineer or something, so I always had hope that they got the bike built up into something really cool. I left a note for them in the front page of the manual. 

Despite never hearing it run, I have a weirdly soft spot for these whenever I see them in the wild now, and I'm always a little jealous of guys that have them. The one that got away.   

1987 Honda XL350

I hated this bike. I found this on OfferUp while I was in Boise. It caught my eye largely because it had a Bixby Moto sticker on it in the photo. I thought that was a good sign. Turned out, it was a curse. This bike sucked. It was fkng impossible to start, first of all, which eventually made me want to get rid of it. I also never got the dual-carb setup to work. This was one of those absolutely maddening years that Honda was doing that ridiculous twin carb setup on their single-cylinder bikes and I pulled my hair out trying to get that shit to work. Spent probably dozens of hours with that carb linkage and fork. Fun to ride, but that was such a rare occurrence it almost didn't count. Then one night as I was cruising through a school zone the retaining spring on the vacuum slide broke and the throttle shot wide open, I did a wheelie and almost splattered on a brick wall before I could pull in the clutch and key it off and I never trusted it again after that. I hated this bike. I couldn't get rid of it fast enough. 

 

Honda Helix 250

I have no idea what year this was. I got it for $200 from a friend that got his hands on it from a dead guy and there was no title. I got it to run pretty good, but it was in rough cosmetic shape and these things are way bigger than they have any right to be, so because of those two things, it lived outside on the street. I didn't ride it much, but took it around town for a few months and generally enjoyed it, until I stopped at a 7-11 a block away from home on a spring morning to get a drink. I came outside to see a police officer standing over the bike with a clipboard, staring at the 20-year-old registration sticker on a license plate style that hadn't been produced in two decades, and when she told me she was going to have to impound it, I famously handed her the keys and said "take it, I've got 11 more" and walked home without looking back.   

Yamaha Virago 750 

I actually quite liked this one, or would have, if I knew more about what I was doing at the time. I was a college student riding my bicycle around town, this thing was posted for $500 and I went and checked it out. He was a nice, funny, friendly, fast-talking guy that had a little bit of a Brooklyn energy. 

The bike was crammed into a garage the size of a coffee table, so I couldn't see much of it at the time, but it had this really sweet single carb manifold which was basically worth the price by itself. I thought a V-twin would be fun, but I was a broke college student and legitimately couldn't make $500 for the next month. When I asked the guy if he would wait for a couple weeks for me to get the money, he just looked at me and said "dude, I'd take $200 if it meant you got it out of here", and I could do that. The guy worked me down on the price and then dropped it off in his truck, pretty sure that's the only time that's ever happened. He was definitely helping out a college kid and I'll always remember that.

Apart from the trick manifold, it had open pipes, a bobber spring seat and an absolutely disgusting hardtail job which absolutely would have broken on me eventually. All things that were extremely cool to 19-yo me. 

Anyway I never really did much with this one, I got it to run pretty decently but quickly ran into the issue of it melting rectifiers. 

I rode it when it worked and really enjoyed it, it's funny how it probably gave me the V-twin bug that wouldn't come full circle for another 10 years. It pulled like a monster and had a wicked stance that felt like riding a bronc. I felt pretty BA on this thing. I never found out if the forks had been extended or if they came that long, but judging by the craftsmanship on the rest of the bike, I find it hard to believe that anyone would have done a proper set of forks, so I'll assume they were stock.

Eventually, the rectifier thing became enough of a problem that I couldn't keep riding it. Looking back at it now, I'm positive it was a short somewhere on the wiring harness and probably wouldn't be hard for me to diagnose these days, but back then, I might not even have known how to use a crimp connector yet. But it's alright. When this bike left, it paved the way for better things to come along. 

I had a lot of projects at the time so decided not to hang on to it. It ended up selling to a guy a little older than me and his girlfriend, they were a little odd, but honest. Pretty sure I got $800-1000 for this one, which is nuts for something I took parts OFF of. I was pretty good at flipping shit back in those days. Brody sent me a picture of the same bike posted again on Craigslist like a week later. Probably still making the rounds to this day. It's funny how some of them just have that energy.  

 

Interestingly, the most lasting legacy of this bike was a spare sissy bar that came with it, which ended up on the Savage and has been there ever since.

 

Elite 150 

Total late night impulse buy. I had come out to CA for the winter one year and almost immediately saw this OfferUp posting for some ridiculously low price, I think it was $250. I needed a vehicle for my time there that season, so this fit the bill well enough. 

Fun as hell and did wheelies like an animal. It had a tendency to overheat because the radiator had a huge leak, but it was rarely a problem unless it was a hot day with a lot of traffic. I think it had a clean title, but I never registered it and I'm realizing now how common of a theme that is on this blog. 

Reggie pointed out that this was the same bike Linda Hamilton rides in the first Terminator movie, so we called it "The Sarah Connor Scooter" for the rest of its life, although I never took her on this one because I didn't trust it at all. It might not have had a front brake, I can't remember. I covered it in a bunch of 80s band stickers, which was the coolest part. Some of those were actually pretty rare, and I regret that.

I didn't have it long, and sold it at the end of that season to a couple of 17yo surfer kids. I knew it was going to the right home when I helped them load it sideways into the back of their mom's Suburban, pissing gas and oil all over the seats.

Kids after my own heart.

 

Not a ton of stories with this one, since it's time was so short. Probably its most standout memory is this stupid video me and Cameron did. 

 

Heritage 250 "Blue Velvet"

Ah, the big one. The only one on this list that got a name, because it was the only one that I really loved. This bike was left at the shop with us at Bixby Moto at the time, and the customer never came back for it. So we waited a year, and then I took it. I gave it a new clutch, weights and variateur belt and it ran, I used bench stock to get it going, traded 2 hours of shop time for it and took it home. I think the motor had a bad crankpin, piston slap, etc., so we knew it wasn't going to last forever. So I decided the best thing for me to do was not spend a penny on it and run it till it blew up and just enjoy it for however long it lasted, since it was totally free anyway.

Well turned out it lasted like 3 years. And hard riding at that. I couldn't kill or get rid of this thing. There's something to be said for the complete and utter detachment of just enjoying something you know isn't going to last and then being super surprised that it sticks around for as long as it does. There's probably a life lesson about relationships there somewhere. 

Me and Lisset terrorizing the town on a lunch break with our friends

I MIGHT have done an oil change on it ONCE during that time but otherwise I absolutely never spent a dime maintaining this bike and that includes registering it. I don't think it had a title at all, or if it did, it was on salvage. I never bothered. After surrendering the Helix I assumed this one was going to go out in a similar fashion, but I never got caught on this thing, and I rode it a LOT for a LONG time ALL OVER the place. I would split lanes at 50mph right past a cop car, mount the curb to skip traffic in a construction zone right in front of a cop car, run a red light laying on the horn right near a cop car, then park it on the sidewalk right in view of a cop car. Never got touched. Evidently I was invisible on this bike.

This thing was fkn fast and it was one of the nimblest bikes I've ever had. I wanted to make it look as stupid as possible so I did a handful of small cosmetic mods to it, most notably the totally weird idea of mounting a giant milk crate on springs on top of the topcase to be as visually intrusive as possible. This shit would whip around and make an obnoxious squeaking sound whenever I took off or stopped or went over a bump. I still have the milk crate and the springs, but so far I've never found an application like this again. 

 

I peeled the "Heritage 150" chrome lettering off so that both sides of the bike read "HER AGE 15" (now that I'm older, I probably wouldn't risk that prank anymore) and got a paint pen to scribble nasties all over the bodywork, including the sentiment "RUN IT TILL IT BLOWS UP!" down the rear panel. 

 

Eventually it started stalling on me when it got hot, and then finally one day, it seized. I'll never forget that last ride, Shell station by the Home Depot and the walk of shame pushing it on the sidewalk. Just about with tears in my eyes.  

The ending of it came about in a funny way. I was planning to take it out to the desert and blow it up. But I had this guy come over to buy the XL350 (thank God) and he for whatever reason was really taken with Blue Velvet. I was like, "you want this shit?" and he offered me $250 for it. LOL. 

So we put it and the XL in his delivery van and I ended up MAKING MONEY on a bike that I got for free, abused the hell out of, didn't spend a penny on, had the time of my LIFE riding for like 3 years and then said goodbye to a cool guy with money in my pocket. And hell, for all I know, he fixed it and still rides it. It was the most positive outcome I've ever had with anything on 2 wheels, I'll never forget this scooter.  

 

Nighthawk 450

This one was sort of like the Rebel, in that it showed up randomly while I was looking for something else (which I actually wanted) and I just sort of let it happen and then never got rid of it. It came from a lawyer in the suburbs that was selling it for his son, and I haggled it for $800. 

It was a quick and easy project, and I didn't put too much into it. I pulled off the EPA shit and charcoal canister, stripped off the signals and some redundant bodywork, new bars and grips, a new vinyl seat cover, and a KZR fairing. Otherwise it was basically stock.   

The paint was Plasti-Dip, and wasn't my best job at it. But it looked decent enough from far away and lasted the life of the bike. I slapped a really random assortment of "B Grade" stickers on this bike just to give it some personality, one of which randomly was a Kirby Ferris "no sharks allowed" decal. That ended up becoming the most recognizable part of the bike and that, coupled with the color, I guess gave it a vibe, because Regina started calling it "Sharknado", which I loosely started using too. Then, when I was at Taylor's house one evening I came out and someone had left this rubber toy shark sitting on the seat. 

 

I still have this as a reminder of the bike.   

 

It was the only real loaner bike I ever kept on hand, and most of my friends ended up taking it home at one time or another. Sean had it, Kevin had it, Brody had it, it slept around. I got it back from Alex Suarez and the handlebars were tweaked and I knew he dropped it. This was the only bike I ever had that I was actually OK with that sort of thing.  

I changed the gearing on it at one point and that did give it a little more usable power, but it was no Rebel 450, and never really did it for me, especially on the freeway. I would always joke to people that with the fairing it looked like the fastest bike I had, but I'm pretty sure the XL175 was faster. 

The Nighthawk always had a peculiar place in my fleet; it was mostly a commuter, but I had a tendency to use it for goofy shit more than you'd think, and looking back, I actually have a lot of really nerdy photos and videos of this one, so it went far in entertainment value. Andrew was so inspired by the style of this thing that he wanted to film an entire video around it, which I still get a great smile out of. 

 

This was one of those rides that was just solid through and through. I did very little maintenance on it over the years and it always looked and handled like the day I got it. It was simple and reliable and comfortable and easy. I never had a complaint about it, but for whatever reason, it never really transcended into  

Although I really enjoyed the hell out of this bike, it never really had much in way of personality, so it never transcended being much more than a commuter. Eventually, I did sell it, I think because I had just got the VN1500 and needed more room. It went for $2000 to a college student that was real excited about it. We ended up standing in the 7-11 parking lot for 20 minutes talking about what he was going to do with it and how he was getting into the culture. He reminded me a lot of myself maybe 10 years prior and I really felt good about the whole thing. I still kind of hope that I'll run into him riding it at a meet somewhere some day. 

As a reminder left behind, the bike originally came with a set of vinyl throwover saddlebags which I STILL use, to this day. The KZR fairing also got donated to Austin's CB900F, so I get to be reminded of it whenever I ride with him (he kept the Duran Duran sticker). 

 

 

KZ400

My friend Jeremy bought this as a commuter bike sometime around 2013 or 2014. I actually went with him to pick it up and rode it home for him, since he didn't have a license at the time. I remember opening it up on a freeway flyover and telling him he made a good choice. 

He rode it well for a lot of years, and took good care of it (he even gave it new rings at some point, which impressed me). But eventually, he found a good deal on a SCR950, and in his kindness decided that he'd rather not dick with trying to sell the bike to a scumbag when he knew I would actually want the thing. No Indian can resist making a good trade, so I had to try to offset the favor somehow, and gave him an expensive cafe racer jacket to go with his new Yamaha, which never really fit me right anyway.

The bike changed spots at the parent's house for many years with distant Cafe Racer dreams, and I still would have really liked to have made that happen, but eventually I had just accumulated far too many weird collectibles and this relatively common one just couldn't make the cut.