Page 34 - PULSE-LS2-ISSUE 2_BIG-BOYS-TOYS

When did you first get into motorcycles and what sparked that interest?
In 1974-75, I lived in New York state and dirt bikes were pretty popular up there. At the time, motocross was just starting to take the scene here in America. I was fourteen or fifteen; a couple of kids from school had dirt bikes and it just caught on from there.
What’re some of your earliest memories on a motor- cycle?
My earliest memories were probably from twelve or thirteen years old when I had a Yamaha YL2C which was kind of an on-road, off-road enduro type trail bike. From there I had
-- oh gosh, Bridgestone 100s, the Yamahas, and then in the late summer of ‘75 I got my first real motocross bike which was a 1976 YZ125C (the first monoshock bike that came out.) I started racing in the spring after that, April of ‘76.
How long did you race for?
Not very long. I began racing in April of ‘76 and unfortunately on July 18th of that year, I fell at a race in New York. It was at the start of the race and I was kinda in front of the pack,
I fell and another rider hit me; his helmet went into my face and six teeth were knocked out. That was the end of my motocross racing as a kid, my parents put a stop to that. They didn’t stop me from riding but my racing days were over. I never really raced again after that until I started racing vintage bikes in 1999, so I did get back into racing again but
it was many years later.
Did the racing vintage bikes or the restoring vintage bikes come first?
Well, I always enjoyed old bikes, but the racing came first. I bought a CB250 in December of ‘96 or ‘97 and I didn’t really get a chance to race it until 1999. As that season ended, I took the bike apart as most guys do and kind of rebuilt it. With the internet, ebay, and things like that becoming preva- lent, I started buying a lot of bikes and restoring them for
34 THE PULSE • ISSUE TWO
myself. I guess it would be around 2002 or 2003 that I had a few people come to me and ask me to restore bikes for them, and that’s when it really began.
What were some of the first bikes you restored?
For myself, some of the first bikes were a ‘75 YZ360 Ya- maha, I had a Husky 400, a 1975 RM125M, a ‘74 KX125,
a Bultaco, a couple of Macos -- I began restoring bikes not so much for customers, but for myself before the customers started paying me to do it in 2003. I began restoring bikes for myself that I wanted in my youth, you know. I began restoring bikes to collect and it was just something that I did for myself.
Do you have a favorite bike that you’ve owned?
The ‘75 RM125M was a bike that I wanted as a kid. At the time I had gotten a ‘76 YZ125, but the RM was second
in line; that bike always stayed in my head. It’s just that I thought the YZ was a better bike and I bought it at the time, but the ‘75 RM125M was always something that I wanted to restore, and I did get to it eventually.
What’s the coolest bike that you’ve had the opportunity to restore?
I would say....a couple years ago for a customer of mine down in Los Angeles, he had a 1977 Suzuki RM370. After re- storing several other bikes for him, I said “You know, this is a bike I’ve always wanted to restore and I’ve got some ideas in mind that I’d really like to do if you would consider letting me do that for you.” It was kind of a blank check project, a replica of the ‘76 RHRM Factory bikes that were made popular by Roger DeCoster, Tony DeStefano, and other Team Suzuki riders at that time. I had a custom aluminium swing arm made for it, triple clamps were custom, and I had factory KYB forks on it. It was really one of my favorite projects ‘cause I didn’t have to limit myself to returning it to a stock-looking bike and I could make something a little bit different that was a little more eye-catching, and resembled the factory bikes at the time.
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