Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

• . ,. BY REX REESE One Sunday afternoon in 1967, Bud Ekins came home after winn ing his latest race, the Rams M.C. Hare and Hound - his last race. He tossed his leathers and gear out onto his patio where they stayed for a year. His Triumph-Metisse 650 gathered d ust in his shop for several months and was then sold. Many Sundays after his last race, Bud stayed in bed. Eventually, he sold his motorcycle shop and got out of the business altogether. Today Bud Ekins works in a whitewashed shop in North Hollywood where he officially operates a studio renta l service. But to him, it's an excuse to pursue his hobby restoring antique motorcycles; not fo r business or profit or for anybody else, but just for the heck of it. Bud's shop is a comp lete operation for restoring old bikes from the ground up. Bud does leather work, wheels, frames and paint jobs. His partner Kenny Von Dutch (the last of the 1950's beatniks) does all the fine details and machine work . Completed restorations sit in a shed nearby , while others are on display at the Cars of the Stars in nearby Buena Park, Californ ia. More relics are packed away, waiting for Bud and Von's skill to bring them back to life. The day I visited, Bud and Von had just finished restoring a 1913 Yale, and were celebrating the event with bottles of beer. Bud was relaxed enough to talk about his colorful past, present, and fut ure. .. 38 Were y ou getting slow, or wa s everybod y else getting fast? I was winn ing when I quit . Who was you r co mpetit ion t he n? IN Roberts, Charlie Ho ckie, Feets Mine rt . I don't re call now. Wha t ' s IN doing nowdays? He 's doing m o vie stu n twork, same as ] am . He 's got a bike and goes bunting with it . He still gots his m o t or cycl es ; lives wa y up in the mountains. He goes fishing an d stuff; th at 's about the limit. But he does movies. What w as raci n g like in the 1950's a nd ' 60's? Yo u m ea n compared to t o d ay ? I re ally don 't know , because I haven't been to a race sin ce [ q uit . From wh at I un de rsta nd , t he d iffe re nce between racing n ow and back then, is th at bac k in th ose days, yo u co uld leave y o ur helme t any where , yo ur tool box open, leave your m ot orcycl e lay ing any where, and nobod y would eve n to uc h anyth ing . T oday, I un derstand th at yo u 've go t t o tie everyt h ing do wn , o th erwise th ey'd ste al them. You won the 1952 Greenhorn Enduro. What d id you do it on? A Mat chless. You rem em ber wh at year it was ? Was it '52? Yea h . I lo oked on the trophy. You were the ma n to contend w ith, then. Did you race an y of t he Europeans when they came here in 1966? Yes. Beat any of them? Yeah. Some of them. Nob ody important , I 'm su re. I ro d e th e first motocross they had h ere. I go t fo u rth (overal l); first American. I don ' t kn ow wh ich Eu ro pea ns were be hi nd m e. There was abou t three l. or four Euro pea ns there. This wa s at Corriganville (H o pe t own) . Ho w d id American riders me asu re up agai nst the Europeans then? They didn't have the experi en ce t hat the Euro peans had. The European s had b een . very co m pe ti tive amo ng themselves. There wasn 't a lot of di ffere nce in th e equipment, It wa s just a lack o f ex p erienc e. I raced in Eu ro pe several yea rs wa y before th ey kn ew wha t m otocross wa s in this c o un try . J held an ave ra ge of third place overall for four seasons during Eu ropean motocr oss. So I go t a lot of first s and seconds. You race any of the grands prix , like Catalina? Yeah. I wo n Catalina in 19 5 5 o n a Triump h with a 20·m inute lead over t he second m a n. I rode all the Big Bear runs, which yo u probably never even heard of. I won three of those. During the time th at I did race , I won every maj or race - scrambles, IT, desert - a t least once, I had over 20 years of racing, and it didn 't interest m e a n y more . I did everything th at I wan ted t o d o. I ro de fo u r ISD T s. Five , as a matter o f fact . I was th e first American rid er . Rode in East German y , West German y , Poland, Ch ecko , Swe den. and Isle o f Man. What d id y ou get? Three gold me dals a nd a silver. got.llike~ wt1tI. __ ...."t..~-"' ..;•. ~ I'".. big carbs, radial fins on everything, with forward mounted shocks, and mono-shocks. What k ind of mach inery was used then? Just common road machines th at were lightened up. You mean a stripped-down Honda 305? No . No th ing as ridiculous as th at. Triu m p h , Matchless, AlS , Ariel - a lot o f m otorcycles that ar en 't even m ade an y m ore. I came in to racing at th e transit ion from rigi d fra mes and forks. First m otorcycles I was raci ng we re like 19 34 Harl ey , 19 39 T riu m p h. That's wh at everybody else had, too. Same stuff, It was relat ively the sa m e co mpetitio n. They talk abou t th e improvements in m o t or cycles to da y , you r m ono sh ocks, this, th at , an d the o th er. T ake mile and ha lf-m ile tra cks o f today, the records Above, Ek ins and Von Dutch , heads and hands together. Below je wel ry takes shape on the bench. «.... ~ got oil injection. I'U te ll you : you m ention any thing about a m o t orcy cle that they've done in the past 10 years that yo u t hink is so me great im provement, I'll show you where they did it sometime between 1900 a nd 1920. They 've just been impr oved on today, th at 's all. But the idea was there 50-60 years ago . I ca n 't think of a ny thi n g th at they h aven ' t d o ne . Like the old Schieckle two-stroke motorcycle m ade about 1912 that has a third port. The 191 3 Flying Merkel has go t a type o f telescopic fork, a n d the telescopic fo rk never came o u t until 19 39 on the BMWs. Wha t are you doing with you r st udio re ntals? The studio rentals is really just an excuse to b e ab le t o work on all these old motorcycles. They don 't use a lot of m otorcycles in movies, especially o ld o nes like I go t. We 've go t a few m odem o n es, t oo , but a lot of guys, the stu n t rne n , bring in their own m oto rc ycles when it co m es to the m odem stuff. How'd you get the idea that t he stud ios would go for antique motorcycles? Just an ac ci d ent. They needed o ne or two , a nd they co n tac t ed m e. I've be en renting mo torcycles for about 15 years, even when I was in the mo t o rcycle business. T h is t hing o f studio rentals is not a money-making proposition. I t 's j u st a hobby. An excuse t o do what I want to do. When did you get int o an tique motorcycles? A little o ver 25 year s ago . I've alwa ys pl ayed with these old motorc ycles. Since I sold my m otorcycle business, I've had time to work o n them now. What did you se ll? I was a Triumph dealer for I 7 years. An y thing else? Honda, CZ . Think much would come out of the Ho nda's and CZS back then? CZs were winnin g ' when I was seIling t hem . Joel Robert a nd Roger DeCoster were riding CZS at th e time. Did you think that Ho nda would make bikes so popular? You co uld see the writin g on the wall. Sure, Honda was m a kin g mo torcycles popular. In a w ay, to m e ;-it mined m otor cycling. You lo st t he old closeness of being a m otorcyclist. Everybody's a m otorcyclist today. You lo st t he in dividuality. It used to be if yo u rode a m o to rcy cle down the street, and ano th er m o t orc ycl ist was co m in g in the other di rection, you'd always wave at each other, you know? It 's made everything too co m pe tit ive in t he motor cycle business. It's made mo torcycle dealersh ips like car dealerships, where the customer gets the sa m e tr eatment he ge t s in a car deal ership - bad. When th e m otorcycl e business was sm al ler, a cu sto mer got a fair shake. When he bough t something, he usuall y paid retail price for it, a nd when he we nt to t rad e it in in two years, he go t a de cent trad e-in bac k. He wasn 't losing a ny th ing. T o d a y, th ey can go buy it for just a little m ore m oney th an the de aler paid for it . Bu t the cu sto m er pays in t he long run, 'cause when he tries to get rid o f it. no o ne wan ts it . Whe n you quit racing in 1967, wh at d id you do after that? Racing off-ro ad cars. ' Was it as fun as bi kes? I thought it was more fun, ac tu ally. Pr ob ably 'ca use it was new a nd different. I got a lo t m ore enj oyment o u t o f it be cause I cou ld just sh ow up at a race with my helmet a nd go ggles , an d that 's it . J ust climb in the car and you go racing. Yo u can drive a 500 or 10 00 mile race, enjoy every bit o f it, an d not become physicall y tired. ' Win any car race s? Yeah , several . Baja 500 - the first one. Riverside Grand Pr ix , Parker Dam 5 0 0 - won' that overall. Several class wins, too. I 've been quite su cce ssfu l a t o ff-ro ad racing. are still held by m otorcycles from the 19 20 's. Back in those d ays, they had ] DOOee e ngi n es with over h ea d - valves , runn in g o n alcoh ol ; a nd the bik es wei ghed ab o u t 200 pounds. Actually, the old motorcycles were better than the new ones are. New bikes today, say a 750 , it 's twice th e weight of a · I OOOcc that t hey us ed to run. I'm sure if they took an d bu ilt some ultra-su per 10 0 0 cc V-twi n overhead valve t hing, ran it on alc ohol, a nd d id it exactly t he sam e, they would turn the same times agai n . Did anybody give an y tho ugh t to the way motorcycles would develop? Vel ocette had ai r/oil fo rks in 1956. Stan dard equip ment. And I got a 19 I 3 Fly ing Merkel that's got a monosho ck Would you take an old motorcycle any day over a new one? Abso lu tely. Ne w motorcycles j ust do n't interest me. T o me , it's an art form. I e njo y t hem . I like to ride them. I ride 'em m aybe a few hundred yards, and th at 's it . I' ve had enough riding as far as a m odern motorc ycle to be used as tr ansportation. I kind o f like sittin g in my ca r an d roIling up the windows a nd turning the radio o n. If your rental company doesn't put bread on the table, what does? Stuntwork. I did all th e Th en Cam e Bron son shows, a nd several features . I did Electra -Glide in Blu e, A ngel Unchained, Th e Great Escape , and Bullit. Several I ca n't eve n remember. I work o n the R o ckford Files ab o u t one day a week. Al l you need is one or two days a week to m ake a good living. When you did the stunts for Bronson, was it really true that the Sportster

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