A couple of weeks ago, BJ and Seth over at Brick House Builds announced a new challenge they were setting themselves. The shop is located in Missouri, and so is Archway International Motorcycle Salvage.
Or the salvage place was, anyway. See, the crucial point here is that Archway was about to close down for good. So, as a way of doing something cool and also bidding farewell to Archway, the BHB guys decided to do something mad.
The gist of the challenge was this: They'd go to Archway on its last day open, select a couple of bikes they thought they could revive enough to ride for 100 miles to Quincy, Illinois to go get ice cream, and also gather any spare parts they thought they would need.
They would then take the bikes and any associated parts back to the BHB workshop to work on. From start to finish, all parts of the process including bike selection, parts harvesting, troubleshooting and wrenching and troubleshooting some more, test riding, and actual riding to get ice cream would all be accomplished in 48 hours.
Could they do it? It wouldn't be fun if it wasn't a challenge, right? Right.
The Bikes
Over the course of about two hours, give or take, BJ and Seth managed to select both a couple of likely rolling chassis candidates, as well as a couple of spare bikes and some additional parts they thought they would need.
In the end, BJ ended up with a Honda CL360 and a CB360, while Seth had a CL350 and a spares bike just in case. One of BJ's bikes had a seized engine, but he knew that he'd need a camshaft for the bike with the good engine, so that combo seemed like a good idea.
Both guys chose air-cooled Hondas because it's what they felt comfortable with. Something relatively simple and familiar, that they felt they could successfully diagnose and fix up to realistically meet the challenge they'd set themselves.
The Video
This is a feature-length video compressing the entire 48-hour project down into just under two hours. They live-streamed part of it on the BHB Instagram, so if you already follow them there, then you'll have seen at least part of what happened.
While it was BJ and Seth who did the heavy lifting, they go out of their way to thank the motorcycle community in general, without whom this project wouldn't have ended up coming together as well as it did.
From the potentially catastrophic whoops of forgetting to grab ignition coils for the two bikes while they were at Archway to needing to source 'new' old tires to fit their bikes on a Sunday (when no motorcycle shops are open), it was members of the moto community who stepped up and helped BHB on their way.
That's because, in a way, seeing someone successfully complete a project as audacious (but theoretically attainable) as this feels like a collective win. That right there is the beauty of a good community, isn't it?
Grab your snacks, grab your favorite beverages, settle down, and watch the whole thing come together. I have to say, I've had friends use vice grips in sketchy ways before (as replacement lug nuts on a Honda Civic comes to mind, and I definitely don't suggest you try that one at home).
But the vice grip petcock solution is a new one on me, haha.
