It’s funny how life can change trajectory on a whim like it does. When I decided to host a bike build-off competition with the help of some friends, some of whom were already committed to building bikes themselves, this 1982 Suzuki GS1100G that I had bought off of a father and son around the corner from my mom’s house 7 years ago went from Madre’s shed and the bottom of my priority list to the top overnight. The father and son snapped the #4 spark plug off in the cylinder head when they realized they were in over their heads and decided to sell the rusty heap to me for a bill. That’s $100 and yeah, it went down on Craigslist.

That same year, back when there used to be a motorcycle show and swap meet at Carlisle (by the way, what the hell Carlisle?), I bought a roached out ’78 GT750 tank off some guy on a rainy Sunday while everyone was cleaning up. That was it. I tossed the side covers because “I wasn’t going to use them” or something. How dumb. I think they go for $100 on eBay now. Anyway, I’m a hoarder now.

There it sat in my mom’s shed. I was in over my head too. Also, I had just discovered that chicks went to college to get more knowledge so school ended up consuming my motorcycle wrenching time. Going to community college during the day, I was working nights in Independent Can Company’s slitter department saving up as much money as I could for going away to UMD, College Park for 2 years. One night while operating an automated slitter, I fantasized about the GS. I was running some American Spirit Light Blue rolling paper and tobacco tin that was to become a can and the color inspired me to build the battery box for the bike to match my truck using the turquoise tin sheet. From there I drew the rest of it out. It was to have a hinged seat that would clamp down on my skateboard when lowered into place forming a sissy bar. It would don the fog lights I removed from the front bumper of Burp, my ’86 Chevy K20 Suburban, and the VP 500 pedals from my cousin’s Mongoose he had back in the 80’s on the custom-fabricated forward controls. Complete with white wall tires, a foot clutch and jockey shift, I was slammin’ gears in my dreams over the next 5 years while in reality I was finishing at ICC and HCC, finishing at UMD, starting the BMC and borne from it, the BBB would get me off my ASS and drag the POS out of the SHED.

Some friends and I decided that my shop, the Baltimore Motorcycle Collective should host a build-off competition I dubbed the B(alt) Bike Build-off and I would follow it up with a season opener bike show to showcase what we’d built. Basically ripping off the Dirtbag Challenge, we established 3 rules; you have 3 months (January 1 – March 31) to build a custom (Alt) bike for under $1000 including the price of the bike and it had to survive 100 miles on our group ride. The following is the story of my build.

January 1st, 2019, I rolled it up on the lift. About 2 weeks went by before I touched it again. I had it completely disassembled (minus the front suspension) in a couple of hours. The first thing I wanted to make sure of was that the carburetors were ok. With some work, they seemed promising. While the engine was out, I could make quick work of measuring my valve clearances to order shims. The tires were one of the first things I received so I got really excited to mount them. But before I could do that, I wanted to make the wheels nice. Nothing like a fresh pair of shoes. But then freshening up rims turned into painting my rotors. That almost lead to painting the calipers when I remembered this was supposed to be a rat rod. Where would the painting and polishing end? Right there, I decided.

Now, the front forks were not original to this bike. See, I had another ’82 GS, a hardtail. I burned that to a crisp working on it a year or two before buying this heap. I ended up scrapping that bike but I did keep the forks. Not because they were advanced in any way, but because they were burned. They still have that lovely patina and smell. Mmmmm.

The exhaust on the build bike was so far gone that I ended up gathering enough rust chips to almost fill a gallon pretzel bucket. I also saved a mouse nest to put back in place after finishing the build. But the rest of the bike wasn’t that bad. Not a lot of rust on the frame, the wiring harness was ok, and apparently there were only around 10,000 miles on the engine. It’s a shaftie so no chain trouble. We had a decent rolling chassis at this point. Which is where I lost momentum. It was about a month later when Tim Bernstein, my friend building a bike for the competition, came in to mount some chonky tires for his build. Mind you, Tim was not only new to wrenching and building but he was new to riding as well. To see his progress on his bike inspired and energized me like nothing else on this planet. That afternoon I hit the ground running. It wasn’t a moment too soon.

I needed to design and make the forward controls, the skateboard holder, a mono shock swingarm, a shift handle, exhaust, a seat pan for my custom seat I was going to outsource and 1.3 million other bits and bobs. About a month prior, I had picked up some bikes and tools at the York Technical Institute everything-must-go auction. A roughly 3 foot by 8-inch piece of ¾ inch thick steel leaned on a table I purchased so I assumed ownership of it. This stock was far thicker than I needed for anything on the bike but I decided to use it on everything because it was free and I didn’t have to worry about it fatiguing. With the help of a new metalworking friend of mine, I cut 2 skateboard holders, 2 forward controls and a base plate for my swingarm out of it and I got to use a plasma cutter! He also happened to have the tube bender I needed to shape my 2-inch rectangle stock for the swingarm. My other neighbor lent me his Lincoln Electric MIG welder and I fabbed a few things up. Come to think of it, my upholsterer was in Crown Industrial Complex too. This place is a wonderland.

The swingarm almost exactly copies the swingarm on an ’82 Yamaha XV920 I was working on in the bay next to this project. The forward controls are funky but they reuse the rear master cylinder mounted upside down (still not sure if that’s a problem) original pedal and spline shaft. I ran hard line from that to a pressure switch off a BMW R75/5 to some old Triumph Bonneville 750 rubber line which ensured that my pedal would be squishy. That eventually burst down the line. I fashioned the foot clutch out of some pieces of a kick starter someone had me remove from a ’79 Yamaha XS1100.

The tank was probably the hardest part. I wanted one of those external hose fuel level gauges. There wasn’t enough metal there to tap a hole for my NPT 90-degree tube fittings so I freaking welded a washer to my gas tank. That went well luckily. Then I screwed it all up by misusing the NPT tap. I didn’t realize it was a tapered tap so when I tapped all the way through the hole, it was no wonder the fitting felt loose in the hole. So, I welded the hole closed and tried again. Upon tapping I found out I hadn’t sufficiently filled the hole so I welded it a third time. This time it was almost good enough. To make sure there were no leaks (yea there are still leaks), I braised the fitting to the tank with solder. It actually looks kinda cool. This was my first time trying to do a 2-tone paint job so it took a lot of work to get it right. Not to mention the paint was bubbling for some unknown reason. I was working on something else inside after my last coat of paint out front of the shop when my neighbor came in and told me he had backed into the tank. Boy that set me back about a week. The thing was riddled with dents.

Before I end of writing a novel here, I’ll tell you about three more quick weird things that happened with the bike. For starters, if you remember, one of the first things I did was measure and order shims. I ordered them from Babbit’s Suzuki Parthouse located in Muskegon, Michigan. They were rocked by snow that winter and failed to ship out my parts. 2 and a half months 5 phone calls and 2 shipments later I had all the shims I ordered. There were 10 days left before the deadline and I had still never heard this bike run. I had never even tried to start it in the 7 years I had the bike. Wouldn’t you know it, it wouldn’t start. With the help of some starting fluid, though, it would run barely. I didn’t have many spare carburetor pieces but I did have some main jet needles that were adjustable and tapered unlike the practically simply round stock 5D 58’s Mikuni put in these particular BS34SS’s from the factory. It was at least able to idle with the new needles and the idle mixture screws way out, like 6.5 turns out, practically falling out. I didn’t have much time. March 31st was a Sunday so realistically my last day to receive ordered parts was that Friday. I hastily ordered a few sets of main jets and went up a size with my pilots. That Friday, I had to go to a #137.5 main jet up from the stock #115’s. I thought I was gonna have a heart attack, I thought the largest of the 4 jet sizes I ordered wasn’t going to be enough. It was very important to me as a shop owner that my bike ran like a top. Boy does it. We are moving a fair amount more air between the cheapo pod filters (which kept falling off) and the exhaust I threw together out of tail pipe from Salvo’s. I was finally able to get acquainted with the foot clutch and GO FOR A RIDE. Damn that thing goes like hell!!

I wasted no time, man. I got bored after a few minutes of piddling around in the parking lot so I slapped a random tag on it and headed out on the road. It was all fun and games until I cherried my rear disk due to a stuck rear caliper. Luckily I wasn’t far from the shop so I skated back, (that’s right ladies [aw who am I kidding, no ladies reading this ]) because aw yea I have a skateboard on my bike, and grabbed my truck. It was getting late so I cracked the bleeder, whacked the caliper with a hammer to break the rear wheel free and rode the turd home. That night it rained. That morning I rode to work in the rain with a bike with no fenders, a suicide clutch and no rear brake. Then my clutch cable snapped. Woo boy what a ride. I limped that thing all the way across Baltimore to The Collective. It was becoming really annoying stalling the bike out at every red light and then getting it going again with the starter so I started trying to time the lights which anyone who lives in Baltimore knows is impossible. There is this particular string of lights on Erdman Ave. between Federal St. and Macon that have very sensitive red-light cameras. I was coming down Erdman in the rain and I was just about at that distance from the light where you can either slam on your brakes or gun it in the case of a red-light. Well, I decided to hammer it and wouldn’t you know, the light turned red. I bitched out and grabbed for the front brake and down-shifted my little heart out. I ended up locking up the front brakes and swerving bad. The only thing keeping me up were my Vans sliding on the wet road. What a rush. I hope to never experience that again.

I lived. I worked out all of the kinks between that morning and 10 pm March 31st. There was one last trick, the 100 mile ride. Everything was going well with the bike. I was riding it to and from work, ran up to Havre de Grace taking the back roads. I was falling in love with this bike. Since we had about a week before the ride, and it was peak motorcycle prepping season, I decided to focus my efforts on the slew of customers banging down my door wondering why I was ignoring everyone for months. Consequently, I didn’t get to plan the ride until the night before. Since I wasn’t familiar with the route, I simply uploaded it to my phone and asked someone to bring a USB cable for me to use to keep my phone charged since we had at least 3 hours of using the GPS ahead of us. This, or something else, proved to disagree with the bike. We made it as far as Fleet and Eden in Fell’s Point when my regulator/rectifier wires melted. That was it for me. I was unable to complete the ride and disqualified from being voted on at the show the next day.

But man did I have a sweet bike. The next day, at the Season Opener Bike Show, we had a terrific turnout, over 200 people, and I got to show off what I had built to my friends and family. It was an amazing journey and I am excited yet terrified to do it again next year. The bike has a name now derived from the Billy Joel song “Still Rock and Roll to Me.” Miracle Mile. You know, “Should I get a set of white wall tires? Are you gonna cruise the miracle mile?” I tell yea, it’s becoming less and less of a miracle every mile I get out of it. But, it’s still funny because you wouldn’t know it was reliable just by looking at it.