writer: D. William Denish
photographer: D. William Denish
80ci AA/Gas Sportster drag bike at Atco. (Circa 10/26/69)
Growing up in the '50s, my friends and I were the more adventurous types. Baseball and football were our games of passion.
We built model airplanes and learned how to fly them-and crash them. We also rode and worked on our Schwinn bicycles a bunch. The local bicycle store just happened to sell Whizzer motorbikes, and up the street from them was a Cushman dealer selling Cushman motor scooters. And a few miles down the road in the next town was a long-time Harley-Davidson dealer where bikers would congregate every Friday night before their weekly ride. As kids, we often made a point of riding our bicycles to the Harley dealer on Friday night to check out the Knuckle and Panhead "dressers" with big seats, fringed saddle bags, megaphoned exhausts, and blue-dot taillights. When buying parts at our local Schwinn dealer, we also enjoyed admiring the new Whizzer motorbikes, especially the kick-start Sportsman model-the one without pedals. Most of my friends and I planned to get a motor scooter as soon as we turned 14. At that time, a 14-year-old could get a scooter license as long as the motor wasn't over five horsepower.
Shown is Leo Payne's Turnip Eater, photographed by the author in '93 at the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum in Pickerington, Ohio. Courtesy Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum
It seemed to take forever, but eventually we all turned 14 and got a scooter-Cushman, Whizzer, Lambretta, Mustang, Vespa, Zundapp...the choices were plentiful. The Mustangs were 10 horsepower, but some of us got one anyway. I eventually ended up getting a Cushman and then a Mustang. The older brother of my close friend Marty owned a beautiful custom two-tone metallic green Whizzer Sportsman, but then he got into hot rodding his '32 Ford 3-window coupe, so he gave the Whizzer to his brother, Marty.
Just as my friends and I worked on our Schwinn bicycles, we worked on our scooters, boring them out, upping compression, gutting mufflers, installing big Amal carbs, and testing long odd-looking tuned intake manifolds.
Here's the author's street Sportster in early '68 with a 74ci engine, Dytch big-bore cylinders, 12:1 compression pistons, S&S 4-5/8 inch stroke flywheels, bored Linkert DC carb, Sifton cams, magneto ignition, and kick-start.
One morning I stopped by my friend's house to see if he wanted to go riding. I found Danny in his garage on his knees with his father's acetylene torches fired up. He wanted a hot cam, so he was brazing his Cushman's camshaft lobes. He finished off his piece of mechanical genius by using a bench grinder to finish-shape the cam lobes. By evening, Danny had his Cushman back together and we went riding. After a couple of hours, Danny's engine quit running, and I towed him home with a piece of rope. When he dismantled the engine, the cam lobes were completely worn away. Surprise! Fourteen-year-olds don't know that brass is soft and cam lobes must be heat-treated steel.