Many of you have had paint work done by Brent Budgor, AKA The Vintage Vendor over the years.
He has been our primary paint partner since we opened the shop in 2008. Brent cut his paint teeth in California and somehow managed to end up in Vermont, first in Northfield and later just around the corner in Burlington. He does a lot of vintage bike paintwork by mail with a wide ranging clientele, including many projects with Kenny Cummings at NYC Norton.
As I write this, Brent is packing a moving van and relocating to a place just outside of Nashville, Tennessee. He plans to be up and running very quickly once he is there, so you can still send your tins to him, you’ll just use a new zip code. We wish him all the best, and plan to continue to collaborate with him on all of our future projects.
Over the years, Brent has painted all of my personal bikes.
While some are off to greener pastures with new owners, some are still with me. As you know, the vintage bike market has been soft. As a result, my plan to sell my 1973 Trident fizzled. So, I decided to double down and finish what I started on that project and go for a signature paint job. I was keen on some variation of the ‘72 purple theme, but I wanted it to be a “Brent Special.” As usual, he kept poking at me until I was able to articulate exactly what kind of look and feel I wanted. And as usual, the results were amazing.
While I am still working on some other upgrades to the bike, I loosely installed the front fender, tank and side covers for the photo shoot with Brent. When I quoted something that my dad was fond of saying – “Don’t put a diamond in a goat’s ass,” Brent quietly quipped, “You’ve got some work to do.” Yeah, yeah, Brent. The T150 will have a deep clean and polish before final assembly in time for this year’s DGR.
Happy trails Mr. Brent and thanks for all of your help over our first 16 years. We will miss you, but we’re happy for you.
Frozen Norton Gearbox
We had an interesting situation happen here last weekend that we thought might give you a good chuckle. We are restoring a 1974 Norton that has been stored outside for well over 10 years. It had been somewhat covered, but not completely, and now has some very rusted parts: handlebars, fork tubes, exhaust, etc.. We’re doing this restoration in stages: the motor was ok, but the electrical was shot, as were the brakes, forks, isolastics… pretty much “all-of-the-above.”
When the bike first arrived I thought she needed a “complete makeover” to get rid of all of the rust. Seriously, the color of the triple trees is more “rust” than silver! However, as I started working on it, I realized that she still had that “inner beauty” that shone through the patina. I recommended to the owner that we leave the bike as “natural” as possible. We’ll see what he thinks now that he has her back home.
Anyway, we just finished the first stage of the restoration: primarily brakes, oil lines, and electrical (new wiring harness, electronic ignition). Other than those systems, everything was left “as is.” We stored the bike outside in our sea container for a few weeks until the owner could come and pick it up. He is going to do some of the scrubbing and cleaning before bringing it back to the shop this Spring for more work. He made arrangements to come up last weekend, so on Sunday morning, I went to pull the bike out of the storage locker, but she was stuck in gear. Strange, since I had moved the bike around last week to get access to another project. And, we usually leave the bikes out of gear and on their center stands.
Since the CBE Guild also works here, maybe someone had gone into the storage container for their bike and slipped this one into gear when they put it away. I tried to take it out of gear but it wouldn’t budge. We hadn’t done anything to the primary or gearbox, so I tightened up the clutch cable to ensure I was releasing the clutch plates. Still nothing. I loosened up the rear brake, still wouldn’t move. I took it down off the center stand and pushed it back and forth, trying to switch gears. Nothing doing. It was freezing out and I hadn’t put on my jacket or gloves, so I went inside to get them. When I went back out I was determined to move it… even if I had to drag the rear wheel, which I finally did. Then, the rear wheel began to move… albeit begrudgingly. I fought it some more and was able to bring it indoors to warm it up before heading home for lunch. When I came back it rolled around as if nothing was wrong.
I had a theory about what it might be, so I drained the gearbox oil.
As you can see in the images below, there was as much water as there was oil in the gearbox.
I had known the gearbox oil wasn’t any good, but since we are planning to rebuild the gearbox this Spring, I felt it was better to leave the oil where it was. Never would I have thought that there would be THIS much water! Since it had been freezing overnight the previous few nights, the gearbox was literally frozen.
The bike is now at home in a heated garage getting some TLC before coming back here for some more repairs in the Spring. Rest assured, the gearbox will be getting a THOROUGH inspection before being put into service.