Lapse in updates due to prepping for the Chadds Ford Auction - New Content coming all next week.

I've been busy assembling three bikes to sell at the Chadds Ford Classic Motorcycle Auction this Sunday (April 15th at Bunches Auction House). All proceeds go to getting me out of debt and into the rebuild of my dad's T140 Triumph Race Bike - which I will be taking to the track VERY soon. Check back for tons of new content in coming weeks.

65 Triumph T120C, 68 Bridgestone DT175, 1962 Norton Atlas for sale.

My bikes and a ton of others spanning a century will be for sale.

"Crazy" Albert Bold and his MV Agusta's

There are people, who along the way, have advised me that I cannot do everything on a motorcycle rebuild. Certain things, like fabricating and paint are better left to specialists. Albert Bold was once told that as well and he ignored them.

A highly modified MV Albert is currently working on for a customer.

When Albert got into vintage road racing, he needed some pipes and disk brakes. Some handrails from a pool ladder for the pipes and a few manhole covers machined down for disks did the trick - so well that his brake systems was banned from AHRMA as it was considered an unfair advantage after Al lapped the third place rider twice at Road Atlanta. "I didn't even use the brakes" defends Albert "it was full throttle all the way. I was running on three out of four cylinders and I was trying to catch Jesse Morris on his Rob North Trident. I had him in the corners, but with only three cylinders, he always pulled away on the straights".

Albert runs a machine shop in Kimberton PA, fittingly named Bold Precision. He makes bicycle parts (his other passion) and works on MV Agusta's for racers around the world. His specialty is fabricating repopped titanium and magnesium parts - though he really has no particular specialty as he can do it all.

some tools of the trade

Alberts infamous race bike waiting for rebuild. He also used it as a daily commuter!

Lightened and modified OHC drive

Extremely lightened gear selector using top secret metal

Just one of the many machines in Alberts shop

Albert shows us a bike he recently finished for another customer.

Below is an article written on Albert  a number of years ago. Read it, re read it and get inspired. Nothing is impossible. Australian Cycle NewsVol. 47 No 23, May 15-28, 1998 Crazy Albert's MV Racer Test By Alan Cathcart Albert Bold is one of those do-it-yourself engineers who borders on the edge of eccentricity. I wouldn't call Albert Bold eccentric, more just plain crazy. How else can you explain that messianic light shining in those deep, blue eyes - proof of his abiding love for all things red, loud and Made in Italy. A John-Boy Walton lookalike, some years on and thin on top, Albert's craziness manifests itself in all sorts of ways, and is mostly to do with two wheels. Not many people in the USA use the bike they go vintage racing with to commute to work on a daily basis, still less when it's a tricked-out four-cylinder MV Agusta special with open megaphones and a first gear high enough to break the speed limit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike without shifting up. Crazy Albert does. Equally few people are such committed street squirrels they'd rather ride everywhere at full tilt, even in a land like radar infested USA. Crazy Albert does. Still fewer people are skilled enough machinists to scorn the idea of buying hardware like brake discs or exhaust pipes off the shelf, preferring to manufacture them themselves - like Crazy Albert does. Which is how come the city of Philadelphia came to find itself short a few cast-iron manhole covers, which Albert gradually ground down into brake rotors for his MV. As for the MV's exhaust headers, they come courtesy of some tubular ladders from the local swimming pool. LARGER THAN LIFE When I first wrote about Albert Bold after testing his MV Agusta vintage racer more than a decade ago, I know many people who'd never met him were convinced I was exaggerating: "This guy's not for real, surely?!" Those who know him on the other hand thought the story rather understated - Albert is one of those genuinely larger than life characters America seems to produce. Well, some years on, Albert's moved onwards and upwards. He and his long-suffering partner no longer live on the wrong side of the tracks in one of the more questionable neighborhoods of Philly, complete with TIG-welder, tube-bender and other engineering equipment crammed into the basement. Albert has now relocated to a small farm in the rural Pennsylvania countryside, but he still produces metalwork that can only be described as an art form. He has earned a top reputation among that most demanding of engineering fraternities, the drag racing establishment - as well as amond many North American Superbike teams, and historic racing pacesetter Team Obsolete. He still has the remains of half-a-dozen late '60's MV 600cc fours littering his storeroom, including that unloved and unlovely square-headlamped model, which may well have been the first four-cylinder across-the-frame motorcycle to be offered in series production form for the street. GRAND PRIX ROOTS Underneath that ugly duckling exterior, though, lay some GP-class engineering. The mid-60's MV Agusta 600 was hand-built by the same team that brought Count Agusta so many race wins and world titles over a quarter-century of competition, and defeated Honda's best efforts to win the 500cc world title. Such heritage explains Bold's fanatical desire to go racing with a more modern MV - the same desire that drove Clausio Castiglioni and his brother to found the Cagiva operation 20 years ago and build their own red and silver 500cc racer after failing to acquire the defunct MV Agusta race team. "The MV has so much mystique attached to it," says Albert, whose passion for the marque first saw the construction of the 600-based MV Agusta special that took him to two successive Vintage racing titles in the mid-80's. "You can pull a stock MV out of the truck in any race paddock and people will flock to it, just because it's an MV. "After I built the first one and did some good with it, I always had the idea to go a stage further and build my own chassis, maybe a little more modern and a lot lighter. It's kind of like my own rolling calling card, to show the work in various metals that I can do. "Originally I was going to buy all the good stuff from Italy, but then people kept coming by and saying why didn't I make my own brake calipers and exhausts, stuff like that. So I did!" LONG TIME COMING "It took far longer than I intended - but I've had a real good time creating my own personal motorcycle around the engine I respect most in the world - an MV Agusta." His old title-winning racer scaled a massive 215kg dry, while the stock 600 MV frame it used kept cracking the front downtubes under the braking forces generated by the combination of modern sticky tyres and those manhole-sourced brakes. "This time I used 4130 chrome-moly steel tubing with as much triangulation as possible, and tried to run the frame tubes close to the engine to give it more rigidity," says Albert. "The frame doesn't flex like before and at 6.8kg it's a lot lighter." At the same time, he increased the wheelbase from the stubby 1370mm of the first bike to a longer-legged 1450mm, though without really improving the very cramped riding position - something I found for myself when I came to sample the Bold MV Agusta Superbike on only its second visit to a racetrack, at Loudon, New Hampshire. Considering Albert's even lankier than I am, I can't quite figure out how he gets all his limbs in the right places. However you do it you can't help but end up with your chin over the triple clamps and your knees up around your ears. EXOTIC MATERIALS The bike is very small and low compared to other four-cylinder MV roadster-derived bikes, but Albert's succeeded in putting his new creation on a diet compared to the old one - it weighs 151kg with a 50/50 weight distribution, a massive 40 percent lighter than the old bike. Slashing the weight has been achieved (in spite of the heavy sandcast crankcases and other tooroom components in the MV engine) thanks to Albert's use of some pretty exotic metallurgy for what is after all a home-built special. The rods and torque arms for the MV's mechanical anti-dive system - first used in the mid-'70s on the Geitl/Schuster BMW Superbike (and later copied by Kawasaki on its 500cc GP bike) - are made in titanium, as are the jackshafts driving the oil pump and Scintilla Vertex magneto, and the front and rear brake assemblies, including the self-made titanium calipers. It doesn't end there. Bold also painstakingly milled the clutch and brake levers, the brake master-cylinders and the 35mm Marzocchi forks' triple-clamps all from solid billets of aircraft alloy, as well as the front hubs, to which he laced a pair of 18-inch Akront rims, again to comply with Vintage racing rules. Albert also made and toothed his own range of rear wheel sprockets, and in spite of never having done any panel-bashing before, also made the alloy tank and seat. All that's before he even took a look at punching out the engine to somewhat more than the 600cc of the old bike. BORING WORK The stock five-speed gearbox is retained but with a Magni chain-drive conversion replacing the incongruous shaft final drive of the street MVs. The bottom-end of the engine is mainly untouched too, with standard conrods and six-bearing crank. The engine therefore retains the 600 MV's 56mm stroke, but combined with a set of MV 750 America cylinders bored out to 10 thou' first oversize and fitted with 67mm America pistons the capability is now 788cc. Albert then reshaped the combustion chambers and contoured the pistons to suit the larger bore. Honda racing valves and springs are used, with a Magni racing inlet camshaft and stock MV inlet used on the exhausts, thus offering more lift. The central gear train driving the camshafts has been substantially lightened, but compression ratio is very low - just 9.8:1 - as Bold can't skim the head with the gear cam drive. The Scintilla magneto replaces the original heavy and bulky coil ignition, though it too is rather weighty and could surely be replaced with something more modern and electronic. Every gear in the street gearbox has been painstakingly lightened, while the multiplate oil-mist clutch now consists of a 600 basket with 750 spline gear. The America has one more plate than the 600, which Albert has fitted (necessitating an alloy spacer on the side cover) to accept the tuned engine's extra power, estimated to be 95ps at the rear wheel, at 11,500rpm. A BOLD PHILOSOPHY The sheer amount of work entailed in creating this motorcycle - more than 2000 hours, according to a rough guess - is a tribute to Bold's philosophy of no bolt-on parts if he could do it himself. "About the only corner I cut was the brake discs," he said. "Those manhole covers worked great on the first bike, and the material was free - but I just couldn't face the 40 hours of machining work to make each one, so this time I compromised and used Mercedes-Benz' discs on the front, which I machined down to size, and a Subaru one from the local parts shop on the back. "However, I had figured on using Magni exhausts, with that upswept line modelled on the old GP bikes. But they were pretty much unobtainable, so I thought what the hell, I'll make them myself. So I used the swimming pool ladder tubing to make the downpipes, then rolled some cones up, packed them with sand and started working on bending them myself. They came out pretty good, considering it was my first time. "I learned a lot making this motorcycle, but most of all I learned there's nothing you can't do if you set yourself a goal and tell yourself you can achieve it." WEIRD SEATING At the time I rode the bike it was still very new and needed a lot more sorting. That riding position is so weird, it detracts from whatever benefits the chassis might offer, simply because it makes the bike so hard to steer. You can't ride it with any degree of confidence. Even Albert admits it's uncomfortable, so he needs at least to rework the relationship of seat, footrests and hand controls - then serious development can begin. At that point, the problems posed by having rock-hard suspension front and rear might be resolved, though to be fair there's not a lot he can do at the back because vintage racing rules require twin-shock rear ends. Still, I never cared much for the piggy-back Marzocchis when I used them on my V-twin Ducati racers two decades ago. The 35mm forks from the same company, though unsophisticated by modern standards, ought to work better than they do on the Bold MV. Some work needs to be done to dial them in, while at the rear a set of Hagon shocks would not only look more authentically period, but would also work better, too. Still, on smoother track sections the Bold bike steered well, with the Magni chain-drive conversion removing the weave and power understeer you get with MV shafties ridden hard on the racetrack. Really though, the imperfect suspension setup denied fair comment on the handling of the Bold chassis, especially as the brakes also felt rather unresponsive. EVOCATIVE SOUND Part of this is certainly due to the mechanical anti-dive system, which makes the MV brake very flat and eliminates much sensation of stopping, even though the Spanish Galfer pads fitted to the Bold calipers in fact pull the bike up quite sharply. I've ridden bikes fittted with this system before, which suffered from the same problem, and refining the anti-dive by adjusting its linkages would definitely improve this. But all this is subservient to the main feature of this motorcycle - that wonderful engine with its haunting, evocative exhaust note. Listening to Albert warming the unsilenced engine, with the basso profundo beat tromboning from the four open megaphones interspersed with the occasional high-pitched wail as he surfed the revs by blipping the throttle, sent shivers down my back in the bright New Hampshire sunshine. Close your eyes, and it's Monza '65 all over again, with Mike the Bike about to embark on another solo run to the chequered flag in another GP, pursued by a phalanx of British singles. Thanks to those open exhausts and the more extreme valve timing, the Bold MV won't run cleanly below 5800rpm, popping and banging like a Fiat with a burnt exhaust valve rather than howling like a two-wheel Latin thoroughbred. DEVELOPMENT CYCLE But then at just under 6000rpm - especially if you help it get there with a touch of the clutch lever - the MV clears its throat, spits one last time through the pipes, then takes off strongly in a glorious fanfare of sound from the exhausts and engine, which with all the straight-cut gears is far from silent, in best MV tradition. With the carburation of the four 28mm Dell'Ortos still not yet sorted, it wouldn't quite pull the 11,500rpm redline, but from 7000rpm to just under 11 grand there's truly impressive acceleration - even by the musclebike standards of the mid-'70s. Coaxing it even higher proved the power didn't fall off at peak revs. Just like the MV Agusta F4, finished only a couple of days before being unveiled at last year's Milan Show, Albert Bold had only done half the job by the time I rode his US-built MV. Still to be undertaken was the equally time-consuming and laborious process of development. But just as I'm sure Cagiva's R&D team will get the F4 in fine fettle by the time it enters hand-made production, so too Crazy Albert will have surely ironed out his MV's youthful inadequacies.

Triumphs T20 Tiger Cub 200cc plunger frame lightweight.

This January, myclassicmotorcycle.com's John Lawless and I went out to Vegas for the 3 major vintage motorcycle auctions - Bonhams featuring the DuPont collection which came from an estate just 15 minutes from my home. Most of the collection were high ticket items like the Norton Manx and the Vincent Black Shadow - as well as a slew of very early Indian Motorcycles (The DuPonts once owned the Indian Motorcycle company).

My interest lay more in the obtainable bikes, a 1956 Triumph T-20 Tiger cub in particular. In original paint, the only thing missing was the front pedestrian slicer license plate and the correct exhaust header. I bid and won.

After shipping the bike BACK to PA (ironically, just a few miles where it was stored for the last couple of decades) I inspected the bike and found that the motor was stuck and despite looking a bit rough (patina!) relatively unmolested.

I pulled the motor apart and found that the cylinder was completely rusted out due to water sitting in it for years. I ordered gaskets, a cylinder, a piston and cables from Greystone Tiger Cub Spares in the UK and scored some oil seals and bearings from local Cub guru, John Melniczuk at J and M Enterprises and the rebuild is under way. The pla: keep it simple, original but a decent runner for around town. obviously new tires will be fitted and somewhere down the road I may paint it.

The beauty of the early cubs (53-56) is the plunger frame (Triumphs only plunger model was this and its predecessor, the T15 Terrier), and the gorgeous lines of the bike which mimic a full size Triumph. While I love the later cub scramblers, they look like dirt bikes while the early ones look specifically designed for on road only. I love that it looks like a scaled down version of Marlon Brando's famous Thunderbird in the Wild One.

The bike will be running by this years Triumph Come Home Rally in Oley PA so keep an eye out for it there. Here are the before pictures. After pics coming soon...

1956 Triumph T-20 Tiger Cub (the duct tape residue came right off!)

The knee pads and tank badges are original

The high pipe was fitted later but I have the original low pipe for the bike.

The headlight nacelle is such a great touch. This should have a needle indicating gear postion.

The plunger is a bit rough, but I plan to rebuild it after I get it running

CONTEST! ID the riders and the race and win a Smoke & Throttle T Shirt!

First person to correctly ID these riders and the historic race wins their choice of one of the two Smoke and Throttle T Shirt designs. Hoarder shirt (s-xxl) or Triumph "Snuffy Smith" shirt (s-xxl). Bonus goodies included if you explain the significance of this race.

ID These Riders and race....

Win one of these shirts!

Triumph t140 ex Snuffy Smith race bike Rebuild pt 1

For those who missed the first post, I recently acquired one of my late fathers old race bikes from my cousin/bike builder, John McIlvaine. John was a Triumph/Honda mechanic for years and spent the better part of 1971 as a traveling wrencher for ex AMA Pro, Gary Fisher. His depth of knowledge is deep. Together we are rebuilding the racer and hopefully I will have it out on the track this year sometime.

Yesterday John came over to my shop to help me get a game plan for the engine rebuild. We are detuning the bike a bit as I have never raced but it's still a super hot motor with a lot of fine tuning done over the years. Goal? Make this Triumph go fast!

First we tore down the motor and split the cases, cleaned and evaluated everything. Adjustments were made as necessary. The number one priority is to rebuild the top end to suit my needs as a beginner.  John took measurements of the cylinder bore and pistons. We decided to go back to a stock cylinder for now with 9:1 compression pistons. The alloy cylinder/high compression pistons can be used later - once I get my feet wet. The head needs to have the valve seats re-dressed. John decided to take them up to the machinist who did the work originally. Cylinder is being sourced and will go straight to the machine shop for a bore and hone. Fresh pistons and oil seals will be fitted to what we have and the motor will go back together. Check back for frequent updates.

John McIlvaine takes a cylinder bore measurement

every bit of data has been recorded for this bike throughout it's life. john jots down more notes.

Cases split and inspected

modified head needs valve seats

John took the cylinder head with him to drop off to the machine shop.

Randy Hoffmans Velo-Manx KTT Ahrma racer.

Randy with his Velo-Manx at Roebling Road, 2012

One of the most intriguing motorcycles to hit the vintage racing circuit this year is without a doubt, Randy Hoffmans Featherbed framed 49 KTT Velocette. With a similar bevel-drive overhead-cam set up as the Manx, it seems like a perfect fit, though I haven't seen another one like this anywhere. While in Savanah Georgia for the AHRMA season opener I had a chance to hang out with Randy and shoot some pictures of his bike. After a couple laps he came in with clutch problems. If anyone is familiar with the Velo clutch, they'll know the 20 spring, oddly designed set up as a real tedious lesson in tinkering. Fortunately, Velo expert Dave Roper was on hand to help sort out the issues. Though he ended up not competing that weekend, Randy got a feel for what the bike needed after it's 20 some year hibernation. Little is known about the motorcycles origin other than who he bought it from (anonymous) and said seller knew little about the bikes history either. As info comes in, it will be posted to Smoke and Throttle. For now, check out these specs and drool over the pics!


Motor: 1949 Velocette KTT Mk V111
Frame: 1951 Norton wide line Featherbed
Front end: Shortened Road Holders
Front Brake: Grimeca
Rear Brake: Norton Commando
Gearbox: Velo Venom
Carb: Amal RN (Remote Needle - needle set apart from the choke area, so as not to obstruct the airflow)
Randy noted he only uses Castrol R oil in this bike. Wise choice.

The bike in all it's glory. Roebling Road 2012.

Randy and Dave Roper sorting out the clutch. 

Custom fabricated primary cover

exploded view of the KTT. Bevel drive OHC design similar to the Manx.

Good luck this season Randy! We'll be checking in for updates.

I am my fathers son.

I grew up going to the races with my father, the late Snuffy Smith. I always loved the hustle and bustle of the pit area. Rushing to get the jetting corrected before the next heat race, or trouble shooting timing issues with minutes left before the green flag drops. Multiple people tearing into a bike like doctors working on an accident victim after being wheeled into the E.R.. It excited me then - and as I've gotten back into going to races - it excites me even more now. I knew after last weekends trip to Roebling Road that wrenching on my own bike and competing was just something I HAD to experience.

I was aware of a motorcycle that my cousin John McIlvaine built for my dad to race back in the 90's. It was sitting in John's shop gathering dust. A few years ago, John offered it to me for next to nothing but I just wasn't ready. Last weekend, I realized that whether I was ready or not, it was time. I got home at 3:30 am Monday morning and shortly after lunch that same day, I was hauling the 1976 Triumph T140 back to my garage. The rebuild had begun.

Snuffy Smith (25) and Jesse Morris (295) Daytona 1996

My dad on THE bike.

The bike with the engine pulled.

Hand lettered tank

JGM= John G McIlvaine, RBO= Robin B Oswald

Lightened timing gears, nicely sorted

ARD CDI electronic Magneto.

Will I be a good racer? I have no idea. All I know is I haven't been this enthused about anything in a VERY long time. No matter what the outcome may be, I know I'm in for quite an adventure...