Our Latest Project

Our Latest Project

Hey Ya’ll,

Pig here,  got a project here I wanted to show you. 

Like I said before, we’re not “all work and no play” at RBCD.  In our spare time we like to work on different things and try to have a little fun doing so. What we have here is an old 1968 BSA Starfire 250 that we are refurbishing.  Ray found the bike at the Motorcycle Shop over on

Austin Highway

.  They had purchased it from someone who was cleaning out their garage and decided to get rid of it.  First look at the bike, you can tell it had been sitting in storage for several years.  It was full of dried up grease, dirt and an abandoned mud-dobber nest. The tires on the bike look as though they have been on it since 1968.  The last current registration was in 1975, so who knows how long it has been since it was last run.  I don’t remember Ray saying anything about the bike coming with a warranty.

Ray bought the bike as a fix up project with a mind set of “I can do this, and it will be easy”  When I took one look at the bike I turned and asked him when was the last time he saw a shrink.  He’s nuts if he thinks that hunk of junk will every ride again.  But you know Ray, he believes anything is possible.  OK, now when Ray got the bike home, he started pittilling with it, we found the engine was locked up, wouldn’t even turn over.  He removed the spark plug and filled the cylinder with oil for a week and let it sit.  He also filled the crankcase up too.  Trying again, the engine started to move.  He continued to soak it in more oil and move the engine a little bit more until it finally began to move freely.

The compression started to come back and the bearings were rolling pretty good.  Had to flush out the engine oil 3 times since there was a lot of condensation and rusty looking stuff in the oil.  The carburetor was all corroded and plugged up which required an extended dunk in the cleaner vat to get it clean and working.  Ray borrowed the battery out of his other bike and hooked up the Starfire.  The spark plug showed some signs of life when the he kicked over the engine and that little blue spark popped across the electrode.  After Ray was sure he had everything moving freely inside the engine, he decided it was time to give that engine a go.  If he could get the motor to start and run he was hoping there was a chance he may not have to rebuild the engine.  Maybe he would be lucky with a little cleaning up, maybe a little seal swell additive and some STP in the oil.  To this day I just don’t know what he was thinking.  Now some men believe in the impossible and some men know a worthless cause when they see it.  Would you care to guess which one of those men was Ray and which one of those men was me. 

A little gasoline in the tank, a hot shot of fuel in the carb throat, turn on the key and let the kicking begin. Ray kept a fire extinguisher next to the bike (just in case). It took about 10 kicks and there was a “pop” from the engine.  A ha, another sign of life.  Add another hot shot of fuel in the throat and one more kick of the engine.  And it started.  All spitting and sputtering, gasping for more air and fuel, the whole bike was shaking like a leaf.  That old piece of crap was actually running.  I was amazed!  Ray gave the throttle a little crack to give it more gas and the engine began to respond with more RPM’s. Fighting to live once more the engine was beginning to sound a little better as it warmed up.  Not spitting as much, the backfires began to lessen and starting to sound like it could breath on its own, the patient was brought back from the grave. At that moment, I thought I heard the heavens open and angels singing “it’s alive, it’s alive, what a miracle”.  But then it happened.  The stars in the sky aligned, the seas began to rise and thunder began to roll.  And just as sure as God made little apples, a small squeal began to develop from deep inside and grow louder when all of a sudden that rusty bucket of bolts of an engine let out a snap with a loud bang.  As smoke formed in a lung coughing cloud of blue and gray around the bike, it was over. Deaths cold icy grip descended down over the bike, life had ceased in the engine.

I watched in horror as Ray tried to kick that engine over again.  But it was no use; that motor was more froze up than a Christmas turkey in the deep freeze.  I could see the heart break in Ray’s eyes as he rolled that bike into the garage and pulled the door down.  The medical examiner had pulled the sheet over the patients head.  Personally I think he had his hopes up way too high in assuming the engine could have been saved without first rebuilding it. 

Over the next few weeks Ray had opened up that old bucket of bolts. He found that the primary chain had snapped and wrapped itself into a jumbled ball of rusty steel inside the case, which in turn caused the connecting rod to snap in half.  A closer examination of the connecting rod showed that most likely it had cracked the last time the engine was run and that was the reason why the bike was just stored away in that garage as it was for all those years.  Ray faced the facts and that he would need a whole new motor for the bike and that getting a new one would prove next to impossible. Just finding parts alone for the bike was very deflating.  Ray eventually boxed up all of the remaining pieces of the bike and again it was stored away in a garage.  That was May of 2004.

R.I.P. you old hunk of juck. Maybe we will sell you for scrap.

Pig