Something Blue

SOMETHING BLUE

Something old, something new, something borrowed... but most of this Ariel custom actually came from the attic

SOME PEOPLE ARE PROBlem solvers. Jim Schaeffer is one of those people. Particularly when the problem is not being able to obtain babbit engine bearings of a quality with which you are satisfied, and so decide to make your own.

That’s right, Mr. Schaeffer, owner of old Vincents and Ariel Square Fours, and builder of the unique blue custom pictured here, makes his own whitemetal engine bearings.

“You can get bearings in England, but I prefer to pour my own because I can make them to my own specs,” he says plainly. “And I can make them to the exact width I want so I don’t have to use shims.” Naturally...

He also makes his own valve guides. Machining is not his day job, though; working with antennas is. Not the kind that get you 13 channels of snow on the 20-inch in your den, but the kind that are used on spacecraft, the kind that have to work.

A lifelong motorcyclist, he got his two-wheeled start when a buddy let him ride his bike. “Then I heard an Ariel, and that started this insanity,” he says with a smile.

This blue slice of Schaeffer’s craziness was

born of a pile of parts in his attic. He buys Square Four bits when he sees them at swapmeets, and has a sizable inventory. As you can imagine, the man who pours his own bearings also does every other bit of work on the bike, save paint and chrome. The Californian even made his own exhaust pipes, with Volkswagen Beetle muffler tips grafted on, an old hotrodder’s trick.

“I saw that one back in the ’60s and thought it would be nice to try,” Schaeffer says.

The “Something Blue” he has dubbed the bike came from the famous wedding poem, a theme in this build. He also employs a modem Dell ’Orto carb, a Harley generator and an oil-cooler from Earl’s supply. The frame is a ’54 Ariel piece, the barrels and cases from the first year of the pushrod Mk. II Square Four, while the rest comes from the 1930s all the way up to late ’50s.

“Anything I could find that was blue and unusual,

I used it,” Schaeffer says. “The mirrors have a blue tint, ignition wires, fuel line...”

A simple marriage of skill, desire, and spare parts-and your own bearings, of course!'

Mark Hoyer