2-Stroke
Race Dog
We've been featuring Ed Hertfelder in Offroad & Adventure SA for the past few months, and will be featuring him for the next few months. He is probably the most famous enduro columnist ever, publishing the Duct Tape journals in the 70s and 80s. Here is an article of his we published three months ago. There is another in the current December issue, on sale now:
Saturday night favour
By Ed Hertfelder
Ed Hertfelder is a legend among motorcycling journalists, a former columnist for Cycle Magazine in America and the author of the famously funny Duct Tape volumes. Offroad & Adventure SA will be featuring a few of his stories over the next few months that were originally featured in Bike SA during the mid-eighties.
Herewith the first one:
Woody called me on Friday evening and said, “Can you possibly do me a favour tomorrow night?”
The fact is that there is nothing I wouldn’t do for Woody with the possible exception of starting a nuclear holocaust. For eight long years Woody had wet-nursed both me and my motorcycles during sieges of depression and fiat tyres, bouts with congenital twisted knees and blown fork seals and intermittent periods of evelknievelism when I kept cracking the frame under my left footpeg. He had the stamina to drive his van home from enduros many miles distant, listening patiently to my sad account of a stunning 44th-place Mediumweight-B finish while trying to keep his second-place overall trophy under his seat when we stopped fast.
My motorcycles had stained half his garage floor thirty-weight-black, and I’d disenchanted his neighbours by running a concrete dyno test after midnight.
Woody asked only that I turn out the garage light when I left and not leave any plastic six-pack ring carriers around as they tended to strangle his cat.
His son Jimmie asked me to be a little more careful backing my trailer up the driveway, as he had to repaint the drainpipe every time I caved it in.
The favour Woody had requested was merely to pick up a Sunburst cylinderhead he’d ordered and install it on his motorcycle, a 15-minute job which shouldn’t take me more than an hour and a half. He would have done it himself, but he had promised to take his wife to a show and didn’t expect to get home before midnight.
I picked up Woody’s new head at seven o’clock and, just to be sociable, wandered into the back of the shop. Dave Knowles was filing away at something with the straight, dead-level strokes of someone who knows how to use the ‘hand reamer’ as Mr. Disston intended, and Bigoot Jefferson was torquing his backbone into loops drilling a series of mud drain holes in a skid plate. Every time the half-inch drill got a good bite the lights would dim and Bigfoot would make a quarter revolution around his belly button before he could take his finger off the trigger.
First thing I knew, somebody had sent out for pizza, somebody else had sprung for a couple six-packs and I was ready to stay forever - until the owner brought in his Doberman night watchman and I suddenly became very anxious to leave. I backed out of there throwing bits of pizza on the floor cheese-side-down, to slow the dog up.
I look forward to the day when dogs are on the endangered species list so I can take myself off it.
Woody’s garage was ice-cold, with a small pile of wind-driven snow in one corner where my old Bultaco waited patiently. The first thing I did was start the oil flowing into the heater; a sometimes lengthy process when the cold congeals the oil somewhere between molasses and toffie. Then I began the search for the parts I’d need. Most of us leave parts in a coffee can half-filled with black petrol and have had a problem with parts dissolving in the mixture. Woody washes everything, dries it, then wraps it in masking tape and leaves it in obvious places which might not necessarily be obvious to someone else. For instance, I spotted the compression release taped to the handle of the long water pump pliers, the only tool with jaws thin enough to reach between the fins to turn it. I needed the extension light to locate the bag of head bolts and washers, stuffed into the cylinder, the piston at bottom dead centre.
Working behind Woody had a lot in common with an egg hunt.
My fingers were too numb with cold to get a grip on the bag in the cylinder, so I gave the kick-starter a shove to raise the piston; it moved a few inches then jammed. I peered into the cylinder to see a corner of the bag caught on an intake port. I put the bike in gear and rolled it backwards to get the piston back down and heard a frightening sound, washers and nuts tinkling down the passage into the crankcase because the corner of the bag had torn.
“Fudge,” I said.
If it were my bike, I would follow the nuts and washers with a half-pint of enamel house paint then stand the thing up on its back wheel while it hardened, but with Woody’s I thought it would be a better idea to get them out of there. I had started to take the cylinder base nuts off when I reasoned that I might just as well take the engine out of the frame as I’d have to turn it upside down to shake the parts loose anyway. Off came the seat, fuel tank, exhaust pipe, skid plate, carburettor, clutch cable and engine mount bolts. I pried the engine out with a long screwdriver and the handle of a shop broom; every time to do this I have to stop to take the rear chain off. My exertions had been keeping me warm, but once I had the engine on the workbench I remembered I had forgotten to light the oil burner. I peered inside the burner and saw my reflection looking back at me, meaning it had about fifty times more oil than necessary for ignition. I wondered if the thing would blow up if I dropped a match in, so I uncoiled Woody’s garden hose from the side of the house and brought it into the garage with me.
The heater lit up magnificently and was soon roaring and groaning and throwing heat like a volcano.
Most of the nuts and washers shook loose easily, but a few of the tricky things ran and hid up inside the piston and once they get behind the piston pin they can become a real problem. Woody had a small screwdriver with a magnetic handle end and I thought it was just the ticket for the job until I dropped it into the case and it magnetized itself between the cheeks of the crankshaft.
I had to bend a wire coathanger into a piece of modern art to get it out. The heat from the oil burner soon became unbearable, and I pulled the stored lawn furniture away from it as the plastic was getting soft and taking a sag. Even with the fuel feed down to ‘simmer’, the heater was trying to drive me out. It had begun bleating like a distant fog horn and a red glow began to light the wall behind it. I kicked the seat and gas tank from Woody’s motorcycle a little further away from it as the heat began driving me further down the workbench. Woody had a pin-up on the wall near the heater, the kind that left everything to the imagination, along with a cutaway breakdown of an Ariel. Both of them were beginning to roll up like window shades from the heat. I removed them for I’m sure they have historical value. The entire heater barrel was glowing red now, and I was becoming less concerned with getting the motorcycle back together than I was with preventing the garage from burning down. The wall behind the heater was beginning to blister its paint and smoke a little, and I turned the hose on to a fine spray and began to sprinkle the wall, and the garage was soon filled with a swirling cloud of steam which almost blotted out the overhead light.
Then Woody walked in...
Saturday night favour
By Ed Hertfelder
Ed Hertfelder is a legend among motorcycling journalists, a former columnist for Cycle Magazine in America and the author of the famously funny Duct Tape volumes. Offroad & Adventure SA will be featuring a few of his stories over the next few months that were originally featured in Bike SA during the mid-eighties.
Herewith the first one:
Woody called me on Friday evening and said, “Can you possibly do me a favour tomorrow night?”
The fact is that there is nothing I wouldn’t do for Woody with the possible exception of starting a nuclear holocaust. For eight long years Woody had wet-nursed both me and my motorcycles during sieges of depression and fiat tyres, bouts with congenital twisted knees and blown fork seals and intermittent periods of evelknievelism when I kept cracking the frame under my left footpeg. He had the stamina to drive his van home from enduros many miles distant, listening patiently to my sad account of a stunning 44th-place Mediumweight-B finish while trying to keep his second-place overall trophy under his seat when we stopped fast.
My motorcycles had stained half his garage floor thirty-weight-black, and I’d disenchanted his neighbours by running a concrete dyno test after midnight.
Woody asked only that I turn out the garage light when I left and not leave any plastic six-pack ring carriers around as they tended to strangle his cat.
His son Jimmie asked me to be a little more careful backing my trailer up the driveway, as he had to repaint the drainpipe every time I caved it in.
The favour Woody had requested was merely to pick up a Sunburst cylinderhead he’d ordered and install it on his motorcycle, a 15-minute job which shouldn’t take me more than an hour and a half. He would have done it himself, but he had promised to take his wife to a show and didn’t expect to get home before midnight.
I picked up Woody’s new head at seven o’clock and, just to be sociable, wandered into the back of the shop. Dave Knowles was filing away at something with the straight, dead-level strokes of someone who knows how to use the ‘hand reamer’ as Mr. Disston intended, and Bigoot Jefferson was torquing his backbone into loops drilling a series of mud drain holes in a skid plate. Every time the half-inch drill got a good bite the lights would dim and Bigfoot would make a quarter revolution around his belly button before he could take his finger off the trigger.
First thing I knew, somebody had sent out for pizza, somebody else had sprung for a couple six-packs and I was ready to stay forever - until the owner brought in his Doberman night watchman and I suddenly became very anxious to leave. I backed out of there throwing bits of pizza on the floor cheese-side-down, to slow the dog up.
I look forward to the day when dogs are on the endangered species list so I can take myself off it.
Woody’s garage was ice-cold, with a small pile of wind-driven snow in one corner where my old Bultaco waited patiently. The first thing I did was start the oil flowing into the heater; a sometimes lengthy process when the cold congeals the oil somewhere between molasses and toffie. Then I began the search for the parts I’d need. Most of us leave parts in a coffee can half-filled with black petrol and have had a problem with parts dissolving in the mixture. Woody washes everything, dries it, then wraps it in masking tape and leaves it in obvious places which might not necessarily be obvious to someone else. For instance, I spotted the compression release taped to the handle of the long water pump pliers, the only tool with jaws thin enough to reach between the fins to turn it. I needed the extension light to locate the bag of head bolts and washers, stuffed into the cylinder, the piston at bottom dead centre.
Working behind Woody had a lot in common with an egg hunt.
My fingers were too numb with cold to get a grip on the bag in the cylinder, so I gave the kick-starter a shove to raise the piston; it moved a few inches then jammed. I peered into the cylinder to see a corner of the bag caught on an intake port. I put the bike in gear and rolled it backwards to get the piston back down and heard a frightening sound, washers and nuts tinkling down the passage into the crankcase because the corner of the bag had torn.
“Fudge,” I said.
If it were my bike, I would follow the nuts and washers with a half-pint of enamel house paint then stand the thing up on its back wheel while it hardened, but with Woody’s I thought it would be a better idea to get them out of there. I had started to take the cylinder base nuts off when I reasoned that I might just as well take the engine out of the frame as I’d have to turn it upside down to shake the parts loose anyway. Off came the seat, fuel tank, exhaust pipe, skid plate, carburettor, clutch cable and engine mount bolts. I pried the engine out with a long screwdriver and the handle of a shop broom; every time to do this I have to stop to take the rear chain off. My exertions had been keeping me warm, but once I had the engine on the workbench I remembered I had forgotten to light the oil burner. I peered inside the burner and saw my reflection looking back at me, meaning it had about fifty times more oil than necessary for ignition. I wondered if the thing would blow up if I dropped a match in, so I uncoiled Woody’s garden hose from the side of the house and brought it into the garage with me.
The heater lit up magnificently and was soon roaring and groaning and throwing heat like a volcano.
Most of the nuts and washers shook loose easily, but a few of the tricky things ran and hid up inside the piston and once they get behind the piston pin they can become a real problem. Woody had a small screwdriver with a magnetic handle end and I thought it was just the ticket for the job until I dropped it into the case and it magnetized itself between the cheeks of the crankshaft.
I had to bend a wire coathanger into a piece of modern art to get it out. The heat from the oil burner soon became unbearable, and I pulled the stored lawn furniture away from it as the plastic was getting soft and taking a sag. Even with the fuel feed down to ‘simmer’, the heater was trying to drive me out. It had begun bleating like a distant fog horn and a red glow began to light the wall behind it. I kicked the seat and gas tank from Woody’s motorcycle a little further away from it as the heat began driving me further down the workbench. Woody had a pin-up on the wall near the heater, the kind that left everything to the imagination, along with a cutaway breakdown of an Ariel. Both of them were beginning to roll up like window shades from the heat. I removed them for I’m sure they have historical value. The entire heater barrel was glowing red now, and I was becoming less concerned with getting the motorcycle back together than I was with preventing the garage from burning down. The wall behind the heater was beginning to blister its paint and smoke a little, and I turned the hose on to a fine spray and began to sprinkle the wall, and the garage was soon filled with a swirling cloud of steam which almost blotted out the overhead light.
Then Woody walked in...
