The Death Trap BSA 650
The first week that I owned my 1972 BSA 650 Thunderbolt it tried to kill me!
I had graduated from a Honda CL185 to a 650 British twin and I was in heaven...for a minute.
I had my girl on the back and we were blasting along a narrow tree lined road...no helmets of course, this was 1976. We were celebrating our independence from the same Britts who made my newly purchased machine. As I entered a tight corner the throttle stuck in the wide open position rocketing us toward the guard rail. There was about a foot wide space between the pavement and the rail and as the rear tire shot dirt behind us we magically navigated the corner and pulled to the side of the road and took a deep breath. This was the first time I almost died on that bike. I don't think it registered with Celeste how close we came to cashing it in that day!
I was 17 that summer and new to the San Francisco Bay area. I would fill up the tank and just ride around... getting lost most of the time.. This was before Google maps so you had to wing it.
Later on I lived on Idora Street in Vallejo and parked always my motorcycle in the living room...that's where they belong... Right? I came home at around 2;00 in the morning and decided to to do a burn out in the living room and almost launched it through the rear window. My neighbor Mike was not amused!
When I bought the bike it was a stock machine. I rode it stock for quite a while but I was out scrambling one day and fried the electrical system. I pushed it home and the next day took it down to bits and decided to build a chopper.
I was living in Vallejo and Ted Phelps had a chopper shop out on highway 37. Its a Hells Angels shop now but back then it was cool old bike shop. Originally my bike had an oil in tank frame so I looked around and found an earlier frame and had Ted weld on a hard tail section. Now I was cooking with gas. Not quite....it would be several years and several states before it ever ran again.
I moved to Wyoming and hauled it along with me. I moved to the hinterlands of Wyoming to work in construction. My girl Celeste came with me but we had an unpleasant surprise when we ended up living way out in the sticks by a fishing lake. It was a dumpy little cabin with no bathroom facilities! You had to walk about 100 feet to the restroom. She was not impressed. After a short time she went back to California and I don't blame her.
When winter hit the whole adventure turned a bit sour and I was looking for a way back to warmer climes. After work one day my boss was telling me how his divorce was a bitter one and he was stuck with a Chevy Corvette and would I be interested in taking his bright yellow car and make it disappear. He he said he would give me a 24 hour head start.....he didn't!
I secured the Corvette and went home that Friday to my dingy little cabin and removed the passenger seat and loaded everything I owned, including the BSA, into the car and headed West.
I hauled that bike back to California and put it in a friends closet. Later it went into my girlfriends car trunk where it stayed for a long time. I had other things to worry about....
Looking back on it I cant believe everything that happened myself.
It's too long of a story to tell now but I ended up back in Montana and was working construction. I had bought a 1953 Ford pickup and I decided that it was time to go get my BSA from my then ex-girlfriend. One fine day my brother Gil and I loaded up and headed out to California to get my bike.
The trip out was pretty uneventful but when we got to Vallejo it got interesting! My ex-girlfriends family had decided that they had just about enough of me and my antics but they had graciously stored my basket case chopper...thank you. I can't mention names here but you all were great!
Gil and I loaded up my bike in the Ford pickup and planned our trip back to Montana. I had to find him first. He had disappeared for about a week! My friends in Vallejo had changed since I was last there and they changed even more before I got back to good old Vallejo later on.
We finally headed back home and got as far as Sparks, Nevada. Remember that name, it will always live in infamy in my mind. I still cringe when I pass through there.
So here we are stuck in Sparks, Nevada with very little cash and my basket case motorcycle. This is a strange but true story....we sold the pickup and loaded the bike on an airplane where it sailed comfortably back to Billings while Gil and I hitch hike home. Oh yes..it was a fine trip indeed.
I put the bike mostly back together in Montana and got married to my wife Lori. We are still married but she sure put up with a lot, to put it very mildly!
After living in Montana I decided that I had enough of Montana and the cold and decided to head back to the coast. I had an old Ford Econo-Line van that I had fixed up. We loaded up everything in the van including the BSA and headed out. As we were coming into ...you guessed it! Sparks Nevada The engine blew up! Here we were stuck in Sparks...again! We finally made it to Vallejo but it was quite an ordeal. We ended up towing our van behind a U-Haul truck across the mountains all the way to Vallejo. I wouldn't sell The BSA even though we were in dire straits.
After a while I got the thing running but it was a death trap. I had little money and grand ideas!
It launched me into a block wall one day when my rear brake didn't work right. I bent my brand new 6 over fork tubes. I almost ate it that day..
The next time it tried to kill me a car stopped dead in front of me and I locked my front wheel under it's rear bumper.
I was a bit crazy back then and would split lanes at 100 mph with Lori on the back. When she was pregnant with our son she stopped riding with me for good. Again, I don't blame her. I wasn't even running a front brake because they didn't look righteous!
One summer my wife's family came out and visited us in Vallejo. We were going to go up to the lake and everyone was riding with her dad in his truck except her brother Sam and I . We were going to take the bike as it was a fine summer day. I did a pre-trip inspection and tightened everything up including the rear chain. We were heading up to the lake on Highway 80 in the fast lane...always the fast lane my friends! All of a sudden the bike started to whip violently back and forth across two lanes! I steered and countered steered and finally wrestled it to a stop. We didn't go down but it was a miracle . The guy who was behind us said it was something to behold as we went side ways back and forth across two lanes at around 70 mph ! The axle had come loose and the wheel was locked up in the frame Thank God the bolt hadn't come all the way out of the framed or life would have gotten a whole lot shorter that day!
The final attempt on my life was the most memorable. My friend Mike Dickerson and I were racing down Highway 29 headed for Napa. We were going around 80 mph when a car turned right out in front of us and stopped! I was in the right lane and nailed the throttle so I was going at least 90 when I missed his front bumper by a few inches. I had just gotten by him when I heard a horrible crash, Mike had tee boned the car at around 70 mph. He was almost killed that day. It was horrific........
The bizarre thing about it was that the man who turned out in front us... had the same exact thing happen to him and his wife on their honeymoon. He was a cool old guy and he felt horrible about it and later visited Mike in the hospital.
I rode home and parked it.
I later traded it for a K Model Harley Davidson basket case which I gave to Mike to try and get him interested in living again. It didn't work. He didn't die in the wreck when he hit the car but it did ultimately kill him! He ended it all himself after years of trying to heal from that horrible day.
What an adventure the BSA 650 Thunderbolt turned out to be! Hey , maybe it was me!
My beautiful wife on the BSA
Yep.. a true death trap chopper
