Antique & Classic Cars Blog

On Saturday, I was lucky enough to get in on a vintage motorcycle enthusiasts outing to a private collection in Burnsville. WOW!

These are some of the most beautiful motorcycles I have ever seen. . . . wonderful examples from well-known marques like BSA, Triumph and Ariel, and then some rarer steeds, like a Brough Superior (the bike Lawrence of Arabia apparently rode), New Imperial, Rudge Ulster and a Vincent Black Knight.

There were delights in all areas, from the craftsmanship on the engine componentry, to the daring sweeps and shapes of the exhaust pipes, to the artistry in the faces of speedometers, tachometers and other gauges.

In recent years, hopping on a few modern bikes had moved my mind in that direction, prompting dreams of sprinter speed, acrobat agility and the confidence of sure starts and stops, every time. Humbug! This collection of bikes yanked my mind right back into the past–way back.

There must be a dozen bikes here that would make any classic motorcycle fan proud for life. The angles were not always ideal for a great photograph, but the subjects could not have been better. Rather than jabber on, I’ll let these iron horses speak for themselves.

New Old Stock parts are great–parts made at the same time as your classic but never fitted (and which sat on a shop or garage shelf for many years unused before surfacing to claim a high price from collectors). A 215 V8 bellhousing is a rare piece. I’ve had two for the four-speed gearbox over the years. One I sold–dumb–so I had to find another.

Bloodhound internet tactics led to the second but unlike the first I scored, from a junkyard on the West Coast, the second one did not have the clutch/flywheel inspection cover that bolts to the bottom. The stock piece was stamped steel. I hunted around a lot, including much lost sleep in eBay, without finding one.

Luckily, this rare part is back in circulation, thanks to Steve Schroeder of San Diego. He found a 215 posting on our site and got in touch. He told me he was planning to make a cast aluminum cover and now has done so. He also makes the four-speed bellhousing–including offset versions for Chevy gearboxes. When you can’t get new old stock, new “old” stuff will do.

The cast part looks great. The one I have could stand a little flat filing for a dead perfect fit against the bellhousing, but the stock stamped ones didn’t fit perfectly snug either–there’s no need, since this isn’t a fluid-filled chamber. And the best part about the new one is that you don’t have to clean 45 years’ worth of grime out of it. This part is so hard to find and Schroeder Enterprises as yet has no web page, so I offer the phone number here as a service to readers with 215 V8 cars. Because of this engine (and its Rover successor’s) light weight (320 pounds) and good horsepower (185 or so in stock, high-compression, 4-bbl form) it is a very popular swap still. Just look at the British V8 website.

People hunting 215 V8 4-speed bellhousings or the inspection cover can contact Schroeder Enterprises at 619-423-3523.

Back in the ’70s and ’80s there were cars everybody wanted to have–Camaro, Firebird, Mustang, Corvette, Charger, Challenger…. And then there were the cars that young people time actually did own, Gremlin, Pinto, Vega.

My wife’s family had Pintos when she was young, and so did one of my best friends growing up. His mom had a wagon, he had a coupe. Pinto was like the Beetle for non-import buyers. (We had a ’73 Beetle.)

Vega was a little more stylish, but like the Pinto, it didn’t make much of a statement with four-cylinder power other than, “no, I don’t want to race.”

Interestingly both of these cars—particularly the Vega—found a second more impressive life fitted with V8s. Swapping in a smallblock is so common with the Vega it’s hard to find one with its original engine. Seems most of the ones that survived got hopped up, many for use at the drag strip.

There 302 Pinto was also a popular hot rod of the time and a swap my friend Mark always wanted to make. Unfortunately his car got waterlogged during a torrential downpour at the Holland tunnel in New York City and he had to scrap it—water in the cylinders, whole lousy flood deal.

Rarest of the three, though equally unassuming, was AMC’s Gremlin, which sported 6-cylinder power, and actually had a V8 option from new beginning in ’72. I saw my first Gremlin as a gradeschooler and really liked the gas cap with its little namesake design. As years passed and I continued to check out Gremlins, the gas cap was often missing—maybe other kids who liked them weren’t hesitant to swipe one for themselves.

While nostalgia is a powerful force in car values, this modest trio hasn’t done much in the appreciation department. eBay has examples of all three for under two grand. If someone had fond memories of these models and wanted to a do a restoration by him- or herself, they wouldn’t be a bad place to start. A person could learn mechanicals, body work and painting and no matter how much you messed up any of it, it wouldn’t be a big loss in value—and any replacement parts would be cheap. (As would a replacement car.)

When the snow flies and the garage doors go down, it’s fun to pop into a shop and see what’s getting worked on out of sight. Here’s a couple goodies underway at Quality Coaches on 38th Street in Minneapolis. This is one of the few shops left that caters to British cars (among others). Owner Mark is a Moss distributor with old British parts kickin’ around, unused parts on shelves, and the same price for new ones that you’d get going to direct to Moss.

This Morgan has a long and interesting history. Its owner bought it when he was 16, decades ago. Rather than dump it when that was convenient, he held on, moving the car to many different parts of the country. It came to Quality in pieces (but not all of them)–and a little bent up from a front-end collision years ago. They had a body shop pull it straight; Lee Lawrence of Classic Iron Cars in Savage threw some beautiful British Racing Green paint on it and the motor’s been rebuilt too. This ‘53 uses a Jaguar gearbox–plenty strong for the 4-cylinder engine–so it was cleaned up but not rebuilt.

Here’s another fun little project–Subaru WRX turbo-four in the back of a Karmann Ghia. While the WRX is a world-beater rally car, the engine will push this VW (through a race transaxle) in straight lines: down the 1/4 mile.

This Mini Marcos is also an engine swapper. It originally had a Mini engine (old Mini, 1275 cc) up front, and now has a water-cooled motorcycle engine in the back. There’s a race class for bike-powered cars, for which this one was probably built.

And a final bit of tinkering for the day is this Yamaha moped, which my friend Randy is building as a pit vehicle. Randy runs an MG Midget in vintage racing–and has inspired a friend and me to try the same with a car I bought in ‘79, gave away in ‘04, and which has found its way back to me (more on that periodically).

Hope y’all got some fun stuff in the works.

Finally, a car** for this millennium that appeals to sci-fi, comic-book, art-deco sensibilities. In other words, a vehicle designed for economy that looks cool (in a cute-as-a-bug sort of way). This little sprite could easily have come from the props room for The Incredibles—a 3-D mockup for a security vehicle on Buddy’s island.

Or it could be kin to vehicles a team of stunt daredevils drove in an episode of Speed Racer. Could easily be tootling around in any illustrated sci-fi story, too, or maybe zooming underwater in an anime show.

While mainly designed for extremely stingy aerodynamic drag, the Aptera has a playful look. If left in 1/24th scale on someone’s desk, most guys I know would pick it up and either study it (more dignified) or drive it over some reports, ink blotter, and a laptop keyboard like a Hot Wheels (what I’d do).

It’s all electric and with its encased aeroplane-style wheels, it probably won’t make the short-list for MinnDOT plow drivers shopping for a good commuter. But you know a few people will have them for around the lakes in the summer. (About 4,000 people have put deposits on them.) And it’d make a great pick-up vehicle for guys who like the Judy Jetson type.

Will it make large scale production? (AutoblogGreen says they’ve delayed release from last October to next October.) Will it get market traction? Could a used one drop into the sub-$10,000 used-car price range I shop in? No clue. It’s way cool though, a modern microcar. If you get one, and I see you with it, I am shamelessly going to ask for a ride.

Had to shoot this picture of cat and apprentice mechanic (cook, writer, package wrapper, shoe-tier, dish washer…), Dean.

How much does this look like a guy with his elbow out the window of a car?

I was talking to my half brother last night, with whom my wife and I and cousins were supposed to have dinner. We canceled because of the snow—too hectic for driving . . .  Minnesotans nixing a family get-together because of a few inches of snow.

This got us laughing about how soft we all are in the 21st century. When our grandfather was little, kids rode to school in a horse-drawn sleigh. On one trip, the sleigh cornered fast and my grandfather, of earliest school age and wrapped in a bear-skin blanket, fell out. Nobody realized it until they got to school, so the driver looped around, backtracked and found him in a snow bank.

We had a relative who was blind. Year round, into her 90s, she followed a rope tied between the back of the house and the barn to milk cows.

Our mother’s grandfather did logging work. He’d ride the logs from Taylors Falls to Stillwater, buy a 50-pound sack of flour and walk back to Center City with it, using it as a pillow when he slept en route. Sure, he may have gotten a lift once in a while, but that doesn’t make his life easy.

So would our forebears, working with their hands, traveling by foot usually—by horse or open cart as a luxury, have skipped a family get-together because they’d have to sit a bit longer in their toasty, high-powered car with its miraculous dark-piercing headlights, sculpted form-fitting seats and concert-grade stereo?

—Probably, but only if they’d been in our time long enough to become as soft as we are.

Next time you’re out buying extraordinary classics overseas, make sure none of them is a national treasure….

I ran into similar trouble trying to sneak Brigitte Bardot out of Paris in 1969. Not sure if it was the femme fatale who caught French officials’ attention or the 5-year-old tugging her by the sleeve through the airport.

A few days ago, we looked at the start of a homemade gasket endeavor for the license-plate light on a TR6. Most people with sense and a roll of greenbacks would have binned the whole assembly and bought a new one, plus gasket: the pot metal base was bent up, broken off at both ends, the gasket was cracked and tattered and the chrome cover was bowed along the back edge.

But the sensible and this enthusiast part ways often. Plus, 250-odd dollars is more than I want to spend for something that bolts to the bumper. Besides, making and fixing things is more fun than clicking a mouse, opening a box, removing an imported reproduction part, and then trying to get all those statically charged styrofoam particles off your hands, shirt, floor, cat.

Stage one was straightening the metal (and calling pot metal, metal, is a compliment. As the name suggests, pot metal, a cheap automotive raw material, is part metal and part pot, or toilet. It distorts easily, straightens hardly, and cracks if you torque it anywhere near as much as you want to.) I used a vise, which worked some but it’s still a little warped. Once bolted down it should sit square. JB Weld, filed flat at the periphery to accommodate our gasket, now holds the mounting bolts on each end. I’ll bolt it down slowly and evenly with those bolts plus a couple sheet metal screws with a washer on them between the lights. The base just needs to be snug, not torqued down like a cylinder head.

The gasket itself is cut from cord-reinforced rubber mat from Amble’s Hardware–taken from outdoor shelves that house all kinds of secondhand goodies. Given the choice, I’d have preferred no cord, but it does make the rubber extremely tough and also helps prevent distortion.

Getting the outside edge right was a simple matter of outlining the chrome light cover, with a little apron for good measure. The rest of the cutting required a template. I used the lightweight cardstock cover of a law magazine sent to my wife that I had previously used under some parts I apparently painted silver. Mark, cut, fit, mark more, cut more, fit more and eventually you get about exactly what you need the gasket to look like. Cut too much and you can use masking tape to reshape the hole.

I used a utility knife to cut the rubber mat. This is slow going and requires a scoring pass, then successive passes till you cut through. I put a junk 1×6 plank under it and pulled carefully, never directly toward the hand holding the mat. (No matter how tough you think your hands are, a hard-pulled utility knife that slips will do ugly things instantly.) As with the template, there was some enlarging necessary to get a good fit. The final task on this piece was cutting grooves to accommodate a ridge in the pot metal base so that it will sit flush on the gasket. I had it darned-near esthetically perfect but I made one more pass before I took the photo, leaving that deeper cut in the middle. Dang.

The rubber-mat gasket was the tough one, lying between the light base and rear bumper. The stock gasket is cut out with internal lips that allow it to seal both between base and bumper, and base and chrome cover. I’m not that good with a utility knife. My homemade approach requires that gasket, then a second to go between base and cover. For this one I used an anti-slip stair tread from my local hardware store. It was the right thickness, is very pliable and, hallelujah, can be cut with scissors.

The template from the first gasket still had enough “meat” on it, so a little more marking and cutting and masking tape yielded the correct outline for the final piece. Trace onto raw material, cut and voila—or nearly voila. Because it’s a stair tread, it has ribs on it. I put these pointing up because the cover contacts the gasket with much less surface area than the base. Before I bolt it all together on the bumper, I’ll mark where the cover touches the gasket and then remove just enough rib with a sharp wood chisel for everything to sit flush.

Here are the pieces. They fit together well, but I’ll have to wait till bolt-up to show you because I couldn’t hold it all together and take a picture at the same time. The rubber mat cost six bucks; the stair tread was two bucks and change. I spent a couple hours and had fun.

(**This title is poached from a cool record store of my youth–Plastic Fantastic, in West Chester, PA.)

As is obvious to regulars here, there is a network of spies gathering information for this site that makes the KGB at its Cold War height look understaffed and poorly trained. The Motormouth Crew never sleeps; they maintain constant vigilance, eyes on the horizon, ears to the road–with a spotter making sure no one gets run over.

Here are some photos from the Alternative Vehicles Team, snapped with one of those tiny cameras that tucks into the end of a cigar.  —Wait, I accidentally destroyed that at a tailgate party. . . .

Point is, this vehicle is an amazing piece of work with a potentially bold future. Think of all the energy wasted, stationary, in those spinning classes at the gym. With a device like this, the same furious pedallers could go from Minneapolis to St. Paul and back, pollution free, seeing the world we live in instead of just the wall or the sweaty back of the person in front of you.

It’s the commuter vehicle that makes you fit. Chart your path so the strongest riders reach their destination last, riding farthest and with a declining number of assistants. Carries ten, parks in one spot, no bailout required. Everybody’s a winner.