Beaner quoted: One of my favorite things used to be to run one up to 100 and then kill the motor and throw it into neutral or get up on top of a mountain and just coast down and listen to the wind the rattles and the creatures. Hey Beaner I did that one time in my 50 chev vert with a 270 jimmy in it. This was back in 52 I was coming home late one night & the chev was heating up. It was 3 miles from the town center to our house on a small hill. I ran it up & shut it off & coasted just looking at the stars & listening to the wind. When I came to the hill the car came to a stop about 1/2 way up & maybe a couple of hundred yards from home. I tried to start it but was too hot and ran the battery down so just sat in the middle of rt 7,main hi-way in Ohio, & fell asleep gazing at the stars. I woke up about 5:30 & hit the start button & she fired off & I drove in the yard just as my dad was leaving for work. Boy that was a close one had he caught me napping in the middle of the road. We lived on a fram so it was out in the country. I eventually totaled the vert by wiping out 13 guard rails & a telephone pole. There was a 2x6 imbedded in the right front headlight & clear back to the firewall. I bought it back from the insurance co & had it rebuilt. Hell when I was a young idiot I never slept more than a couple of hours. I even fell asleep on my 48 harley one night going in & out between the white lines. Woke up going down the wide ditch lucky for me that it was wide as I didn't crash it but just guided it back on the road. When I had the 51 coupe de ville,after I got out of the army, I had a date out to a drive in movie & then took her home & went out to visit my buds & have a few boiler makers. Well on the way home I stopped @ a stop sign & fell asleep. I was woke up by a car horn blowing. Shit it was the girls' mother(coming back from taking her husband to work) that I had had out that night. She sez aren't you Bob Diegan & I answered no I'm his brother(there were 4 of us). She sez well you best not sleep in the road so I thanked her & took off. I didn't go more that a mile & stuck the caddy up an hugh oak tree 8 feet or so. I came to looking out the opening where the windshield used to be & the headlights shining thru the tree tops. That thing hit so hard the windshield popped out & scraped the paint off the top of the hood & buckled the top of the rear fenders where they were attached to the body next to the trunk. The insurance promptly & paid me off & cancelled me. I bought a 52 chev hdtp & headed to So Cal. to be where all the hotrod action was. Lived two blocks off the beach in Belmont shore, bought a 55 vette & another 48 harley. Life was good & then 4 years later I got married. So much for the good life. She got the gold mine & I got the shaft until the second time around. So far this one has lasted 44 years, I think it might work out this time. 1950 chev vert as I bought it in 53 50 chev after the wreck in 54 51coupe de ville as I bought it but do not have a after the wreck shot in 56 Drinking bud (hoodlums) veterans before leaving Ohio in 57 Friends in So Cal with the 55 vette behind us Old man Grimes & me taking care of Uncle Sams vehicles. The first hog when I bought it but soon had it stripped of the assessories
we used to get on a hill and shut it off, and coast and pump hell out of the gas pedal, then hit the key and a fierce explosion would usually blow the mufflers off! good destructive fun
@BURN OUT BOB I was on the road that goes from Austin toward Midland ( San Angelo?) back when I was a young man on my Harley. I don't know about now but there used to be pull outs with picnic tables along that road, I was pretty loopy, I had been to see a friend play at a little honky tonk, and I figured out I was not going to make it to the next picnic table so I found a wide(ish) shoulder and pulled of to take a nap. I woke up to this poke, poke, poke, on my forehead. When the fella get the light out of my eyes it was a Texas State trooper and he was asking me if I was alright. I told him I was fine just too drunk to ride and decided to pull off and sleep. he asked if I could start my bike and follow him about a mile up the road and I said sure I could. Well about a mile up the road was one of those picnic tables. He said, "nap here and I'll be back to check on you." he woke me up with coffee about the time the sun was coming up. I asked him if he wasn't going to give me a ticket, and to this day I remember his words, "Well hell no son, I wouldn't give a man a ticket for trying to do the right thing, even if it was in the wrong place." Texans have always treated me well, even the one's I am not supposed to get along with. I did fall asleep once driving a Ford pickup after I had been up way too long. I don't recall passing the ditch but I do remember the truck slowly coming to a stop out in the middle of a field. I got out walked around and figured I better wait 'til daylight, so I crawled back in and in the morning I went and found a farmer to give me a tug back onto the road.
Glad to hear you guys survived to live to a ripe old age! Anybody ever been way out in the country on a bright moon-lit night, and gone driving with the head lights off? I used to do this in a '59 Ford back in the mid '70's sometimes. This was in a rural county in the North Carolina mountains. One night I was on a straight stretch down by the river, maybe 35-40mph, enjoying the moon light, when I saw a dark something pass in front of a porch light about a half mile down. I waited a moment, then turned on my headlights. Another set of light came on coming towards me, we passed, and I saw their lights go out in my mirror as I shut mine off, too. Can't do that stuff living in town, too much traffic. K6
Did a bike trip from L B Cal up to Bishop Cal over a labor day weekend. Started after my friend & I got of work so by the time it got dark my friend I decided to pull over find a spot to sleep, we carried our sleeping bags on this trip. I woke up in morning & went to the stream to wash my face & when I finished I looked up only to see a BIG fat snake hanging on a tree branch. We continued on & went to visit Scottys castle in Death Valley. Some where along the way was a small gas station so we stopped to fill the bikes & get a soda as it was blistering hot. We never made it out to the other side as my bike ran out of gas & my friends 49 hydra glide was close to running out also so we went out in the dez & deployed our sleeping bags & went to sleep. Dumb newbies to desert life never thought about scorpions or rattlers. The next morning a guy came along in a 56 ford PU & gave us enough fuel to get one bike to a station & bring back fuel for mine. This guy would not let us pay him a dime & he had two 5gal jerry cans in the bed. He said he traveled that road a couple times a week & someone was always sitting by the side of the road out of gas. We continued on towards home hot & tired I had one boot over each mirror & riding side saddle as that aircooled engine was putting out plenty of heat. While we were in Bishop I noticed my front tire had white spot in the middle of the tire & looked like a string was showing. We could not find a replacement tire anywhere in town. It was mule days & most tire places were closed so I said screw it we continued on to Death Valley. On the way home while doing 60 or so I watched the white line on my tire tread get longer & longer. I often thought what would happen when that sucker blew or went flat but it held up. We made it back home tho tired & sunburnt & wind burnt. Many times I would sleep on my bike. Roll my jacket up for a pillow, place it on the handle bars & stick one foot in each saddle bag. Pretty comfortable if you are tired. One time in Tijuana ,Mex I didn't trust sleep on the bike or the ground so climbed up a tree found branch that was wide enough to rest on & spent the night.
Great stuff guys! Keep em commin' When I have a little more time, I'll have to scratch down a few from my crusin' & boozin' days. Well maybe just a quicky... Was howling down canyons on rt 1 in Calf. back in the 70's in my '69 GTX 440, backn' off the gas making small rocks fall off the hillsides (burnt out Walker glass pacs). Great fun till the CHP made me go to the local Midas and get 2 new mufflers...followed me there and cited me too. Oh well, fun while it lasted!
I have a tendency to say what I believe to be true. Most of the time I am right. Bob, I usually put my feet up on the bars and lay back on the fender. I have always owned a serape and when I was a young man it was always wrapped up somewhere on the bike, if it was cold or rainy I just threw it over me. I remember once when I was at a run in Nor Cal I decided that I needed to sleep, that was back when if you snooze you loose was a reality. I told one of the prospects to not let anyone get me and went to sleep on my bike. At the time I was using an old broken kick stand that I had welded back together (cheap was the name of the game ) that I had managed to rescue from someone's scrap pile. Well it broke and down I went. One of the old guys was walking by and just said in passing, "Get up benno." When I saw him later he mentioned that the old Econoline was for sleeping. Now there was a truck that needed to be scrapped out. The tires were always thread bare, and there were rust holes that you could see all the way through it from one side to the other, at gas stops you filled it with oil and gas was only about every third stop. But it was an old Ford and like Harleys they never really die, just get more decrepit with age. When I was in high school we used to drive this old Ford wagon I had on this stretch of rail road tracks out in the country. The train schedule was pretty easy to keep up with so even though it sounds pretty dangerous it really wasn't. it did take a little driving skill to keep the car up on the rails so that was always a worry. One night when we decided to initiate a new comer to the game, we rolled up on the tracks and figured that we would get off about 15 or 20 minutes before the train. Just enough to scare him a little if he wasn't paying much attention. Of course everyone was keeping up the train could come any time now deal going. About a 3rd of the way into the drive one of my buddies says, " hey turn your lights on the guy behind you has his on!!!" I looked into the mirror and discovered that the train was early or some fool was following me on a motor cycle. I figured out that motor cycle was not the answer to that conundrum. Where we were it was a big ol drop down to the highway or a little hill into an onion field, I was not going to out run the train so onion field it was. The farmer helped us get the ford out of the field, not too much worse for the wear, but it was really muddy and stunk for quite a while and we did have to help replant some onions and repair damage to the field. On inspection one of my buddies said, well we got plenty of time before the train comes and pointed to my dash clock. I guess I forgot to wind it.
Beaner that is too much. I heard of racing a train but tryin to outrun one is too far out for that matter even drivng on the tracks. You win I can't beat that one. heh heh he
Hey Bob, It sounds as though you have had a full life. The bike shown in your post is actually a 1947 Knucklehead. That was the last year of that series (1936-1947 ). If you had a 1948 model , it would have been a Panhead. View attachment 2901562 View attachment 2901562
I lived in Burghill Ohio on rt 7 & was only about 5/6 miles from Sharon, speedway & went to school in Hartford,Ohio I'm the good looking one without a shirt,& a rachet wrench in my paws & the dummy with the whit hat. Your are correct the 48 I had was when I was in So Cal. Your bikes are making me slobber all over myself. Just wonderful looking bikes you have there. I always preferred the buddy seat.
@redlineracer42 If you didn't get my answer PM me. Probably better to not clutter up the board with non car related BS. It is a knuck although it could have been registered as a '48 depending on where it was first registered. Some of the states registered the year of registry and not model year. Just mincing words here. Because I can. I *used to have a friend from Western Nebraska that lived in SE Kansas when I was in my early 20s. he used to drive to West Kansas then up to Nebraska when he went to see his folks. He had this ol boat of a grand prix, and in the winter after a big snow he liked to go "drift busting" on those west Kansas roads. That lasted until one time when we were going to see his folks for the holidays. he was hitting drifts @ about 60 or so and we were giggling like a couple of school girls. All at once he managed to hit a drift that threw us out into a field. he managed to wheel his Poncho back out into the road, but it was a little worse for wear. We found what was left of a beetle bug in the drift, but it didn't have any people in it. he left a note and we finished the drive a little more sane in his busted up old Pontiac. We came back in an old farm truck and his dad kept the grand prix. *actually we are still friends I just haven't seen him in a while. @BURN OUT BOB I left you a message.
Got your message Benno. The bike in my pic was bought in Pa & registered in Ohio many moons ago. Memory is pretty well washed out now because of my alcohol induced younger years & every once in a while I get a flash back.I finally realized they could make it faster than I could consume it so I gave up & just have A beer on occasion.
The Jalopy Journal
