I can make sparks and stick metal together, but I’m no welder. My welds, performed with a hardware store wire-feed MIG, is like an old East German hooker. Hairy armpits and ugly, and may need some covering up with Soviet-era pancake makeup, but they get the job done.
The gentleman pictured is an old redneck hippy I’ve known since the days we spent smoking surreptitious joints in the high school parking lot, between mind-numbing indoctrination sessions in the Jerkwater Central Public School System. Here he’s puzzling out some electrical demons plaguing his ‘70 Honda 750 four (never did get it figured out.) He is a rum-drinking eater of fish heads and spends his weekends scraping the scales off of mud carp with the edge of hubcaps and riding quads at a retired meth lab in the scenic southern hills of our great state.
On top of all these accomplishments, he’s also a fine welder of titanium bicycle frames and top secret government aircraft parts. I finally got all the pieces tacked on to the river rat rigid and brought it to this wild man for some proper, tender loving TIG beads.
Cool Old Ride! Outstanding Tig Work in a Talent above a Skill when you can lay the Bead's Flat, Even and Smooooooth. I do it everyday (In an Aircraft Shop too) and have done it for years but there are times I look at the work and say... WTF? It is what it is.
ReplyDeleteTwo old potheads hangin out and getting fucked up surrounded by cool motorsickles, doesn't get mush better, Jerkwater or elsewhere . . . nice lookin K1 too. I can barely use super glue let alone weld, although I did make a man out of plasticine when i was a kid but his arms fell off.
ReplyDeleteYeah Paul, there is no substitute for experience. I repair and fab some stuff for my construction equipment, but it ain't pretty. My buddy lets me fart around with his TIG some, but I can tell it would take years to become a true craftsmen.
ReplyDeleteAs for you Whitey, I'm glad you're not a surgeon!
It's funny. The old 750's probably cost about $2500.00 brand new. In the seventies It was rare to see a Harley, old guys on dressers or the occasional chopped bike, but the Japanese bikes were everywhere, and were ridiculed. Whenever I ride with Jerome on this bike, and we stop for beers or gas, people walk past all the twenty thousand dollar Harleys to oooh and aaah over his old Honda! He tried to find a stock exhaust and found they were selling for $1500.00 on eBay.
ReplyDeleteMake me wonder about all the old stock Harley pipes I either pitched or sold for next to nothing. By the time I'm ninety the may be worth something.
Man I must be old...almost had a 69 CB 750 for 1295.00 ...till my mother got wind of what my old man and I were up to....that wouldn't even buy a set of pipes
ReplyDeletenow you say. The 175 twin I ended up with was about 640.00...might be able to buy a decent helmet and a pair of boots I suppose for that these days. Nice looking Honda there...looks nice and stock...unmolested. Not to sound like an expert...a lot of my older Hondas have suffered corrosion within the wiring harnesses and also suffered poor grounding issues. Course your redneck/hippie welding friend probably knows a thing or two about electrickery....
Picked up the frame over the weekend, he says he'll resume work on the wiring issues after he gets his garage cleaned out. Might be a while. It's good to know I'm not the only procrastinator.
DeleteThe frame looks good.