The Bridgestone Awakens
The Bridgestone Awakens
LEANINGS
PETER EGAN
NOT MANY PEOPLE WERE OUT RIDING last night.
Why?
Well, it was 35 degrees here in Wisconsin, with a light rain falling, and it was also midnight. In late November. But I had to ride.
More importantly still, I had to open the garage doors and let all the twostroke smoke out before I suffocated.
Last night, you see, I finally got my 50cc 1964 Bridgestone 7 Sportster running, after four intensive days of fiddling.
Turned on the fuel tap, pushed the choke lever down, hit the starter button and it fired instantly with a smooth and surprisingly quiet two-stroke purr.
Amazing. Years and years of sleep, and an engine just starts running. Settles down to a nice even idle and revs like a turbine. When was the last time that little cylinder had fired?
I don’t know the ownership history of this bike, or when it last ran. I bought it three years ago for $200 from a shop called Country Sports in Wisconsin Rapids, and I have no idea who traded it in or how long it had languished in the back of a barn before that. It had no battery, dead electrics, a tank lining of pure rust and a petcock filled with rock-hard silt. Also, the little carburetor was dangling loose on its worn-out intake manifold collar.
What else? The right footpeg was broken off—probably another victim of some high school kid who saw “The Great Escape” (as I did) at an impressionable age, tried to jump over something and got a groin-wallop for his trouble. The original red paint was faded and the taillight broken. John Montgomery, the dealer who took the bike in on trade, had found a brand-new OEM taillight assembly and also had the tattered seat reupholstered (quite expertly, I must say) with beautiful new red vinyl.
But clearly, the bike had not run in many years. It has 2891 miles on the odometer, and in my mind’s eye I can see some kid riding the hell out of it through the mid-Sixties, then running into terminal carb or footpeg problems and sticking the bike in a comer. Or maybe escalating (as I did) to a big Honda Super 90 and
CB160, then shipping off for Vietnam. It’s entirely possible the Bridgestone hadn’t run since, say, 1969. Forty years before I fired it up last night.
I sold my own Bridgestone 50 in 1966, right before I went off to college, because a) I needed the money for school and b) there was no place to park it except in a big snow-swept parking lot near my dorm, and you couldn’t ride on campus anyway. Sold it to a kid in a nearby town (Mauston, I think), and it got hauled away by his parents, never to be seen again.
Maybe.
I’ve often wondered if the Bridgestone now in my possession is, in fact, my original bike. It’s the right year and color, and John Montgomery’s shop is only about 50 miles from my home town. I still have the original 1964 registration card from my Bridgestone in a scrapbook of high-school memorabilia, and the vehicle ID number on that card—E02311—is the same as the engine number on the bike I have now.
But there’s also a chassis plate with a different serial number on it, so maybe all Bridgestone 50s have engine number E02311 and the dealer just recorded the wrong VIN onto the title.
Hard to say, but this Bridgestone might very well be my first motorcycle. Perhaps I should just believe it is and leave it at that.
Anyway, it took a little work to get this baby running. I filled the tank with old nuts and bolts and a caustic acid de-rusting chemical (twice) and shook it like a huge samba gourd to work the flaky stuff loose, then let it soak overnight. Bought a small 12-volt gel battery, hooked it up and...nothing worked. Cleaned the main fuse and ground connection and—voila!—the
lights came on like a Christmas tree and the starter cranked the engine over. No spark, though. A quick points filing and cleaning (through a hole in the flywheel), and the spark magically returned. Added gas (20:1 premix with some outboard oil I had on hand), hit the starter and the engine was running.
My ride last night was a short one, because of that missing right footpeg. I discovered you can ride only so long with your foot dangling out there in space (try it sometime). My friend Jim says it’s like crouching in a car and driving without a seat. Extreme Yoga.
The bike ran smoothly, though I had to re-learn the three-speed rotary gearbox, in which you start in neutral, shift downward until you hit third. Push downward once more and you’re in neutral again. Ad infinitum. The “Groundhog Day” of gearboxes. I’d almost forgotten...
When I got back to the garage, wet, happy and well-chilled, the petcock and carb needle and seat were both weeping fuel (new ones needed), so I drained the tank to keep my shop from blowing up during the night and then kicked back for a beer.
What a delightful little machine. Willing, quick and eerily smooth.
Before I bought my first one (which this may actually be), I took many detours on my way home from school so I could stare at it in the window of Lee’s Hardware in Elroy, Wisconsin. I was 15, and I thought, if I just had that bike, I could go anywhere on Earth.
And people did in those days, traveled the globe on 50s, 90s and small scooters. A cartoonist named Stan Mott went around the world in a go-kart, and my favorite book in high school, Peter S. Beagle’s “I See by My Outfit,” was about two guys who rode a pair of Lambrettas across the U.S.
The improbability of it all made it almost more fun than having a big bike. Maximum mobility through minimalism, with a bike that cost $279, brand-new.
Strangely, that’s almost exactly—to the dollar—what I’ve got in this one. Again.
These small bikes are a pretty good deal. I’ve had a great time this week, bringing the old Bridgestone back from the dead, and I honestly can’t remember when I’ve been so happy to hear an engine start and run. Or to ponder an exhaust note.
It’s the exact soundtrack music from an excellent old movie about the freedom to go almost anywhere. O
