What a great thread, its hard not to smile / grimace as the memories flood back. I can remember my father showing me how to repair the clutch on my BSA and lying the bike on a pile of sticks while doing it ( so that i could do the same or similar if it happened on the road) and it did, frequently. Man we carried some tools back then..... now its a cell phone and a breakdown number......

 

Yup!! Me and a bud left southern NY state for a week long ride up to Canada. Sleeping bags and toilet paper tied to our sissy bars! All the comforts of home.

 

Two of us left for a four day ride back in 1980 with sleeping bags, a sheet of plastic and one change of jeans and a t-shirt. We got back home 93 days later and had logged just over 27,000 miles. We slept in roadside rests, ditches, abandoned buildings, truck stop parking lots, well, all kinds of parking lots and several other creative places ......... Does that count?

 

Add to these memories, never throwing away anything without first removing every bolt and screw. I needed several boxes of bolts and screws to replace the ones that fell out. Someone else mentioned a tap and die set. That was neede to repair all of those stripped out casing holes.

 

Riding side by side, even with folks you didn't know. Nobody said eew, ride stagered it's dangerous to ride like that.

When you meet a bike coming the other way you held up your fist in the brother sign. Not this low 5 crap.

Yep....I remember when men road bikes.

 

Carrying a masterlink by the buckle on my engineer boots and making first sissy bar using rebar. Anybody remember "cable-savers"?

 

All of the above. Now y'all make me feel really old. Thanks a lot.

 

The sanding the drums reminded me of what I did last week. Hated drum brakes. Front disc rotor had a small high spot---probably a water splash on a hot rotor. When I checked it it was just enough where I could hear a low chirp when turning the front wheel while cleaning. I had to break out the extra fine grit and just hand polish that chirp out.

 

Firing your chopper for the very first time after 6 months of eating top raman and scrounging parts which half of them were "on loan", damn near giving you a woody as it idled..Carrying a big washer in your wallet for a three finger clutch, carrying a couple of stainless roll pins and flyweight springs for the advance plate on your cone motor, using your Buck knife for opening cans of Valvoline 60 weight, being able to fix damn near anything on the side of the road with a couple of screw drivers, some channel locks and electric tape, puting a spot of weld on the back of your kickstart peddle so it would stick out straight again, having cops follow you from one end of town to the other.....actually having hair on my head.....

Those were the days alright, new bikes are nice but it just seems like there's something missing sometimes.

 

Heck, my '97 does that if I don't put in some Sea Foam ever so often.