Barber Motorsports Park

For Metric riders, we have a new customizing book in the works. Written by Doug Mitchel with help from J&P Cycles, How to Customize Your Star documents the conversion of a certain Yamaha Road Star from stock to highly personalized motorcycle. Doug's new book covers all the relatively easy jobs, like changing the handle bars and the seat, and adding some nice chrome accessories. The book also delves into deeper water, as the Yamaha gets a custom paint job and a set of billet wheels and matching rotors from Performance Machine. Look for the new, How to Customize Your Star, book in April of 2009.

On The Road Again
Finishing up the Triumph Restoration, Pre-Unit book (mentioned in the last blog) meant another trip to Birmingham, Alabama. Master builder Garry Chitwood spent the week assembling the '59 Bonneville, which is the second complete restoration included in this new book. The other good thing about Birmingham is the presence of a certain famous motorcycle museum and road racing facility.

The Barber Motorsports Park, located about 20 minutes from the Birmingham airport, is simply so cool It's hard to accurately describe. Though the whole thing is about the bikes, the building itself is worthy of mention. The design allows you to stand on one floor and see parts of all the floors above and below. If walking in the front door and looking out at 5 floors of motorcycles doesn't make your heart rate jump, you've no right to call yourself a biker or motorcycle enthusiast.

The centerpiece of the building is the elevator, which is hydraulic and rides on a single, one-piece, 100 foot ram. There are bikes everywhere you look, from the bicycle-like cycles built early in the century, to the more exotic, and the more mundane. There are board trackers and recent race bikes and a BMW that's been ridden around the world.

Scattered among the bikes are a few cars, especially on the lower level, where former Formula One racers share space with a collection of Lotus cars. One of my favorite features at the Barber is the "Motorcycle Tree," the branches of which sprout from the main supports, as shown nearby. I was lucky enough to get a tour of the workshops as well, and can only say that the mechanics and restoration experts at the Barber seldom send parts out to have another shop do the work. From cad-plating to gasket manufacture and cylinder boring, the facility if very well equipped with the latest, state-of-the art machinery. More than just a museum, the Barber complex includes a road racecourse and sponsors a variety of events, like The Vintage Festival, complete with racing on the track and 400 vendors. In closing I will add only one comment, if you haven't been you gotta go.

Garry Chitwood looks down at the Formula cars on the Barber’s lowest level. The shelves behind him are bolted to the side of the elevator housing.

The bikes include rare and exotic bikes like these board tracers…

…as well as the more mundane, like some of the scooters seen on the “motorcycle tree.”

J Bird
As promised in the last blog, Rob Roehl did in fact make a tunnel for the rusty hot rod. So now, if I would just get off my ass and trim it to fit, maybe super-salesman Rick Thompson will come over and weld it in place. In the meantime I need to order a shift cable and find the throttle/kick-down linkage – parts that can be put in more easily now, before the tunnel is welded in.

Stay tuned, by the next time we meet two of the books will be heading off to the printer, and the J Bird might actually have a floor.

Rob bent up the tunnel using nothing more high-tech than a piece of pipe bolted to the work table.

Here you see Rob using my simple buck to check the shape of the tunnel.