Classic motorcycle collection

We were invited down to another antique engines showing this weekend. This one was being held at a guys house near Las Lunas, NM and I was told that he was a director for the Albuquerque Museum and had quite a nice motorcycle collection. To go see some old bikes we decided to take the old BMW airhead for its first long distance ride to see how she does.

Wow is all I can say. He had such a wide selection of bikes going back to 1914 in various states of restoration but his garage was just amazing. I’m aspiring to have something halfway close to this by the time I retire. The garage was built into a hillside and as far as I can tell was almost the entire footprint of the house with the living quarters on top. I’m blown away by how neatly organized everything is and just how many bike parts there were laying around.

Besides bikes there was quite a bit of memorabilia, antique engines, radial engines, printing presses etc. I would love to have this sign.

Every edition of several motorcycle magazines going back several decades all neatly organized. I have no idea why one would need that many rims, seems to be a lot more of them than there were bikes, they were all labeled what they went to.

Nuts and bolts and parts bin section.

Need some tires? This is a better selection of old school tires than you’d find at almost any store in Albuquerque, check out the reaaaly old ones still wrapped in plastic.

Seems to be a lot more tanks than frames also. If I ever need some old tank from the 60’s or 70’s I know where to find one.

Need some bars anyone?

Trying to show how big the garage is.

How many people have stuff like this in their basement?

Enough of the garage, I know you all came here to see the bikes!

This is a closeup of the first picture above, a 1914 Excelsior. Looks like the original paint.

I think Tom had said he had bought 3 motors from various swap meets to coble together a whole one.

I love these leaf spring type forks like the old Indians used to use also.

Acetylene headlight, I’m glad we dont have to fill up our lights with fuel and manually light them now days.

Acetylene tank, I’m not sure if this is just a gas cylinder or if it ran off carbide and water like a miners lamp.

An amazing Royal Enfield restoration. It took us a while to figure out exactly what it was Tom had put some custom badges on it to throw everyone off.

Dont see too many of these anymore, an old Velocette.

This was one of my favorites and probably in the worst condition, the mass of spaghetti wiring and giant magneto is just scary. This Jawa is whats called a double port single, as in single cylinder and dual exhaust. Actually looking closer at the picture it could be dual intake also.

This is the tank that goes with it just back from chrome! Very beautiful finish. Tom said it took a long time to find someone that could do the tank at this level of quality, there used to be many shops but slowly platers are going out of business or shutting down and the old timers that can do this type of work are retiring.

Can you guess what this is?

Its a Harley!

This is probably why Willie wanted to come, he had 100 year old engines and Montesa motorcycles too.

Well what do you know… Tom had a BMW 1976 R90/6 too! His looks much nicer than mine. He did say he was impressed that we had ridden all the way from Santa Fe on ours and liked that these old bikes were still getting used, especially by the “younger” crowd.

Willie’s bike, a Honda Shadow thats been converted to right side shift because Willie only has one leg.

Cece was quite popular, and even got to sit on some of the display pieces to pose for pictures. This one is a 50’s Allstate with right side hand shift. A bit of googling has shown that these were rebranded Puch motorcycles from Austria resold by Sears.

Things were much more stylish in the 50’s even with small details like the headlight lenses.

Cece loved this one, an old Triumph Cub. A kids bike but finally one just her size.