The Bike Klub: After-school Youth Program
Hey Mark,
I just wanted to send you guys a note on how things are going with the
Bike Klub: After-school Youth Program. You may not know but I was transferred
from my past school of Bernice MacNaughton High School to Riverview Middle
School, now I am still in Greater Moncton, Riverview is in the Greater
Moncton Area. I have, however, dropped Grade levels of who I teach. I now
teach Grade 6, 7 & 8 Technology and I run the program out of this school. I
am trying to get back into a high school for next year, keeping my fingers
crossed!!
I do still have some high school students that participate in
Bike Klub and I have younger students from the school I teach at, so it's a
mix now. We have been struggling, no doubt, with the increased number of
schools in the US doing the same thing I am and the economy the way it is,
sponsorship has dropped off significantly but I keep trying and keep going.
We are coming to end of two more builds, the kids have really taken to the
three British motorcycles we have worked on, we have, of course, the Phyllis
build [Editor's note: a 1969 BSA 650 Lightning bobber], the project that you donated the frame and parts for, this bike has
taken us a very long time to get to this point. We have been very fussy
about certain things, we wanted a certain look and certain features, this
took time and money. We need a throttle cable and clutch cable for that
Lightning drivetrain in her as well as petcocks and plugs for the tank you
donated for her as well. Once the plumbing is done, all we have left is
wiring and color!!
(continued below)
We had, for a short time, a 1967 Norton SS D "Milk Crate", apparently called
that because of it's ugly off white color, it was one of the military/Police
bikes built for Rhodesia or Indonesia in 1966 before the British embargo on
that country. A local older gentleman owns it and he asked us to restore it
for him, we got about 50% done when he decided to pull the plug on the resto.
(continued below)
However, our closest thing to the road is the 1967 BSA Lightning, all
matching numbers kind of a "survivor" bike, I found it in a barn in 2009, it
had been there since the fall of 1978. We have been "chipping" away at this
one for about 3 years now. The previous owner had removed the tank emblems
and filled the sides, did away with the stainless trim and painted it with
General Motors engine paint, orange!! It was dirty, ugly but I could see the
beautiful Beezer hiding under it all. It's been a lot of manual work on
this bike but it's been so worth it, we really didn't do a "restoration" on
this one, more of a "rescue", we wanted it to look and remain as stock as
possible.
At first we thought we were going to save the chrome on the tank
as the orange paint just scraped off with a plastic scraper but, he scuffed
up the chrome around the emblem indents and trashed the chrome, plus there
were dents in the tank as well. So we did the bodywork and primed it black
for now. we fixed the side covers and taught the kids about using fiberglass
and shaping. We cleaned out the bike of oil and gasoline, put all fresh
fluids in and tried to start her up, she started on first kick!!
We then
cleaned out the clutch plates and hopefully got them working good. We
"re-foamed" the seat and retained the original seat cover, replaced the
front and back tires with an Avon High Mileage and a Speedmaster. We took
all the brakes apart, cleaned the moving parts and lubed the cables and
adjusted the brake rods and levers. The CD's with parts diagrams that you
gave us have been very helpful in our rescue of this bike.
We really need this bike to be complete for this spring and summer season,
we want this bike out there to showcase what we can do but we still need
some parts to get it road worthy. I have included pictures of our projects so you can see we are working
towards the goal of educating youth about British bikes and completing
projects.
Marc-Rene Mazerolle
Technology Teacher/Manager Bike Klub: After-school Youth Program
http://bikeklub.weebly.com
