MATCHLESS MAN!
At the remarkable age of 83 I signed up for a digital subscription of your fine publication, me, a mechanical dinosaur going all modern. My reasoning is that the US postal service is less than reliable, took 6 days to get a letter 9 miles, say no more. I must say the picture quality is great and the ink does not come off on my hands, excellent read too.
Back to AMC talk, there was one person who could get the horn/ dip switch on in record time. If he was out sick then they were left off til he got back. And then the broken taps in the handlebars… if only there were zip ties then!
With the demise of Norton in 1975, to feed family and habit I went to the huge Lucas depot in LA as motorcycle mangler. Lucas had a unique way of thinning inventory, every month we would get a computer printout of slow moving parts. These included car fog and spot lamps, usually overpriced items. These parts would be pulled and thrown in the dumpster as scrap! Any bike parts I would snag and I would have to make a contribution to the Christmas party fund. Anyway, I ended up with a huge box of the above mentioned switches, which I sold initially for 5 bucks a pop. As the numbers depleted I would raise the price accordingly, and as you would expect never considered keeping a few for a rainy day or a Frank W.
I have been riding a BMW 1200R to take me and the missis on day trips, the 2-3 week marathons are not on the cards now, but it gets very unwieldy at low speeds and moving it around. I just finished up a 73 850 Commando but I just can’t kick the thing anymore, very frustrating, and too cheap to spring for an electric starter kit so I will pass it on to another caretaker.
So, got me a 2015 Honda CRF250 adventure bike, weighs under 300lbs, and is perfect for cruising the country roads, not vintage but you gotta do what you have to do to keep going!
Keep safe and healthy, and in the words of old Mike Jackson, keep taking the tablets. Brian Slark, EX-AMC factory tester, Noted Expert and much more
Great to hear from you after all these years, Brian. If you have any tales you’d like to tell from your factory days, feel free! Back when I nailed together The Jampot I enjoyed long conversations with one Harry Winch, who told awesome tales from the factory floor. I could probably dig those out from old copies, but sadly the pics would be unusable. Keep on kicking, too. Frank W