A bike enthusiast’s lifetime odyssey
SELF-TAUGHT: Vancouver-based Paul Brodie, a fan of all things two-wheeled, builds replica motorcycles
Nearly 100 years ago, famed engineer and motorcycle racer Bob Perry rolled his new Excelsior with an overhead cam motor onto the paved mile oval at Ascot Park in Los Angeles.
Determined to test the mettle of his Excelsior, Perry planned to set a lap record while simply qualifying for the race.
“He wanted to be timed,” says Paul Brodie of the events that occurred early in 1920. “According to reports, he was going faster than people had ever seen, but his machine went into a skid and he crashed and later died.”
Now Vancouver-based Brodie, an enthusiast of all things two-wheeled, has picked up where Perry left off as he races a hand-built motorcycle featuring a modern frame, brakes and forks, powered by a re-created 1919 Excelsior overhead cam engine he has built himself.
While Perry’s story is interesting, Canadians will find Brodie’s tale just as fascinating. A self-taught engineer and renowned metal craftsman, Brodie has spent his life following his passion, and that’s long been connected to motorcycles and bicycles. He has swung back and forth between the two since 1967, when he was 12 years old.
“The minibike craze had hit locally, but I didn’t have the $149 to buy a new one,” Brodie says. “My father wasn’t going to buy me one, either.”
At school, Brodie learned about a second-hand minibike frame that was available for $35. He could afford that, thanks to his newspaper route, but upon inspection Brodie saw the frame wasn’t worth the money and decided to build his own.
With help from his dad, Brodie bent the tubes to make up the frame and a welder friend helped join everything together. It took him a year to complete, but Brodie finally had a running minibike, and his passion for metal fully blossomed when he got into shop class during his first year of high school.
“I felt like I’d found my second home,” Brodie says.
Around this time Brodie also discovered 10-speed bicycles. Again, he couldn’t afford a good bike, but instead pieced one together. This was his introduction to pedal power, but motorized two-wheelers were always nearby.
After graduation from high school, Brodie found work in a machine shop, at first pushing a broom but progressing to more challenging engine rebuilding tasks, chores that later in life he would find invaluable.
After leaving the machine shop, Brodie drove a cab, drew cartoons and travelled. He was slowly finding his way, as h e says, and wound up one day at a bicycle shop looking for parts.
That led to a job that saw Brodie teaching himself how to paint bicycle frames, followed by making complete bicycle frames from scratch for Rocky Mountain bikes.
Brodie was in business for himself by 1986, constructing early mountain bike frames featuring a distinctive sloping top tube with the distinctive lowercase ‘b’ Brodie Bikes label. The design caught on and Brodie was travelling to bike shows and other events promoting his products while overseeing a growing workforce in a commercial location.
He’d been trying to sell the company in 1993 and finally struck a deal that saw his brand name on bicycles built offshore. He earned royalties for every bike sold, and his attention shifted to other metal work pursuits, even building a new golf putter.
By 1997, Brodie was looking to downsize from his commercial location. He purchased property in Langley and converted an old barn into a metal working studio. He was taking on various jobs, and had also begun restoring vintage motorcycles.
He specialized in Aermacchis, Italian-made
single cylinder machines. From spare parts, he built a 350-cc road racer, got his race licence, and became quite competitive until his van, complete with tools and bike, was stolen in the U.S.
Because of his connection to motorcycles, Brodie had clients bringing him antique engines from makers such as Curtiss and Orient. Around these power plants Brodie built frames, gas tanks, oil tanks
fenders and exhausts. This work led Brodie to consider building complete replica motorcycles, but didn’t want to upset the purists by copying a machine that already exists, such as a Cyclone.
That’s when he landed on the idea of re-creating the Excelsior overhead cam engine that ran in that company’s race machines. None of the handful of engines, originally built in 1919, were known to have The Vancouver-based restorer’s interesting life and stories have been documented in the book entitled Paul Brodie: The Man Behind Brodie Bikes.
survived, so he wouldn’t be stepping on anyone’s toes. Brodie made a full scale drawing of the Excelsior race bike and engine, working from only three photographs, and proceeded to build a mock-up machine.
Living off his line of credit in 2005, Brodie started what he calls his Excelsior Project. He set up a website called flashbackfab.com and designed all of the parts, had pieces cast and machined, and fully intends to build 10 of the replicas. He has sold four, and the fifth is now available.
With the loss of his Aermacchi, Brodie decided to build a race machine around one of his 1919 Excelsior engines. He designed and built a frame, basing it on the specifications of a Ducati 916 road racer, and installed his Excelsior replica motor. It has taken time to work out the bugs, but the 1,000-cc V-twin Excelsior-powered machine he’s dubbed Ruby Racer (and because of further developments, Ruby Racer 2.0) is now a race-winning machine.
Brodie is full of interesting stories and he has documented much of his life in a book entitled Paul Brodie: The Man Behind Brodie Bikes. This 270-page well-illustrated book is hard to put down. It’s like you’re sitting in the shop listening to Brodie recount his tales.
Available from his website flashbackfab.com and Amazon.ca, the book is worth the $29.95 plus shipping price tag.