Chapter 5

Although dad had said that apart from costs, he had given me basically all the money we had made. I found out he had also kept a small portion as an emergency fund.

After a couple of years, we never needed the fund, so Mom persuaded Dad to fulfill one of his lifelong dreams.

Dad wanted a Harley Davidson, but he didn’t want to buy a new one. He wanted to rebuild one, so he had more of a connection with it.

He searched for several months before finding the one he wanted. It was a 1990 Softail, after locating one had been in an accident. There was quite a bit of damage to it, but dad reckoned he knew how to fix it all. Due to its poor condition the guy selling it only wanted $500 for it. Depending on how much it cost to fix, it would probably be worth a lot more than the price of getting it back on the road.

We got it into Dad’s truck, when we got it home and in the garage. Dad took off to see a friend of his who had done a rebuild of his own years before.

I wanted to see what was going to need to be done, so I looked up some television programs which had done bike rebuilds.

For the next six months, whenever dad needed to get away from things, he would head out to the garage to work on the bike.

I tended to tag along to watch. I wouldn’t say anything, sometimes I don’t think dad even knew I was there.

The front forks had been too badly damaged to salvage, so dad had got some off another Harley which had been scrapped.

For the rest, dad stripped the engine right back to the basics. Cleaning up what was dirty, removing any rust that had occurred.

That was when dad revealed his surprise to me. Knowing how I watched everything he had been doing, and wanted me to be a part of what he was doing. He had bought a broken down fifty cc dirt bike, in comparison it was going to be simple to reconstruct. It also meant I wouldn’t be tempted to tinker with his Harley.

Now I was able to mimic what dad did in a much easier format.

Once he had everything stripped out of the frame, he sanded it back to the bare metal. He then put an anti corrosive undercoat on the frame, before spraying the whole thing a glossy black.

I had done the same, but my bike was a bright red.

Week by week, dad worked on his Harley, while I was learning all about mechanics. I didn’t look at any dirt bike refit programs, so I didn’t have the knowledge prior to watching dad do his bike.

Once the frame was done, that was when the hard work really started. Putting the engine, gearbox and everything else back in correctly.

Dad took his time making sure each part was put into the correct position. He would do one part at a time, making sure that was done correctly and was complete before moving on to the next section.

I was doing the same with the dirt bike, being much more basic I was able to do everything myself. Yes Dad did check over my work to ensure I had done it correctly, but he was letting me do all the work myself.

Like Dad, I couldn’t spend a lot of time on the bike. I could only progress after watching Dad doing a certain area, as if we were doing it as a joint project. Letting Dad explain the way to do it on his bike, I would then do the same on mine, just in a more basic format. So I was only able to do something when Dad had time himself to do some work on the Harley.

This was actually a good learning tool for me. Helping me learn to curb my enthusiasm and holding back on doing everything as fast as I could.

Once the engines were back in, it was time to reattach the fuel tank. Then put in all new fuel lines as well as all the other minor work which would mean the bikes were back in working order, hopefully.

It was a great day when we had the two engines refurbished and reinstalled. Everything else which had come off the motorcycles, were put back onto it in the right place. Dad even joked that we must have done it right, since we didn’t have any leftover bits lying about.

Dad was the first to do a test on his engine, it started up alright. But he shut it back down almost instantly, saying that something wasn’t right. He would need to do some tweaking here and there to get it running smoothly.

I was up next, unlike Dad’s bike which had an electric start I would need to use the kick start. Although I had grown a bit, it was still a struggle to push the kick start hard enough to make the engine turn over and catch.

Though I was finally able to give it a hard enough shove down to get the engine running. It sounded great to me to hear it running, but dad had a screwdriver ready. He used it to make some adjustments to the carburetor, the sound changed from a throaty warble to a more even roaring sound.

I gave Dad a big face breaking smile, I was in heaven, listening to the bike which I had stripped down and rebuilt roar.

Dad instructed me to shut it off. When I had, he made me promise not to start it again unless he was present.

I promised straight away, still so happy I hadn’t considered why he had asked me to do that.

It was only that weekend that I discovered what dad had really meant.

Mom and Dad sat me down and laid down some ground rules.

I wasn’t allowed to start the bike without my Dad present. When he allowed me to start it, I wasn’t to attempt to ride it. They didn’t want me riding off without any safety equipment on, or going on the road without a license.

They told me when they thought I was ready, that they would take me to a shop to get boots, leathers and a helmet. Then they would take me to a dirt track where I could be taught to ride off-road by a professional rider.

That got me excited. I hadn’t even been thinking what I was going to do with the bike once I got it going. Having the chance to ride it properly around a track seemed like a lot of fun.

It took a couple of weeks till they found a local track and instructor they thought acceptable.

Then we were off shopping, I wasn’t the only one getting new gear though. Dad had sorted out the miss fire on his Harley, so he now needed all the same safety gear as me.

The boots were not a problem. We got those straight away.

I wasn’t happy with the limited range of leathers, but finally settled on a two piece black leather set that fit comfortably enough.