Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 Motorcycle Swap meet Sacramento.

I had been curious about this swapmeet for a few years. Sacramento is a good drive away, but as I said before, these events serve as my primary entertainment. My route would take me past my Son's house, so a couple of days before, I gave him a call and asked if he'd like to join me. He had been storing his and his Wife's bicycles at my house, so I asked if he'd like me to bring them up. He said that would be great, so I loaded them into my truck before leaving. 

I didn't anticipate buying anything big, but of course you never know! And it is nice to get some utility out of the trip.

Cute logo, but shouldn't he be wearing a helmet?

When we arrived there was a booth that was selling event merch, but they didn't have any T shirts that sported this logo.

The motorcycle parking area was filling up with lot's of bikes. There were some interesting bikes that caught my attention.

This colorful Indian was very sharp.

This is the longest front end that I'd ever seen outside of a magazine.

One of the things that I noticed was that a lot of the chopped bikes were not running a front brake. That was not a trend that I ever expected to see coming back into style. That super long front end bike featured both a front and rear disc brake.

Back in the '70's I had chopped Sportster that sported a girder front end with a 21 inch spool wheel. It did look sharp, but the bike wouldn't stop for a damn. After a trip up to Mendocino, I switched to a ten over, '73 OEM telescopic front end with the new disc brake.

There were only a few bikes offered for sale. This was in contrast with the Modesto meet where there were a lot of bikes for sale.

There was a S&S replica engined big twin project bike offered, but it didn't have a title. There have been many aftermarket reproduction parts available for Harleys over the years. It was often said that you could build a complete bike from aftermarket parts. There were dealers that sold complete customized bikes that didn't have a single genuine OEM HD part on them. The S&S "crate engine" was used in those bikes. Visually it was hard to tell them from an original bike.

On the other hand there was this very nice early Sportster electric start bike offered at a reasonable price;1,900.00 and it did have a pink slip. A bolt on hard tail was included in the package.

It was pretty complete, it had a 21 inch front wheel, forward controls, and a solo seat already fitted.

The bike featured the desirable electric and kick starting set up.

There were quite a few vendors, and some were offering their stuff at very attractive prices. I hadn't expected to find anything, as I really didn't need anything in particular. I was looking for a Lucas style tail lamp and a stock exhaust system for my '06 Sportster.  I hoped that I might find some after market mufflers for my XR1200 exhaust header.

This "like new" muffler and pipes was offered on Ebay for 900.00!

The most interesting find for me was a pristine "California" muffler for a "72 Sportster. I don't recall ever seeing one installed on a stock, new bike back in the old days. I didn't ask how much the vendor was asking for his.

One vendor had a tail lamp from an early 1900's Indian electric special. He was asking 1,500 dollars for that little part. The funny thing was, it wasn't protectively packaged or labeled in any way.  

Back in my swap meet vending days I recall sellers that would tell me, "I've got one of those, let me find it." Then they would proceed to dump a big bin of parts out of a tarp and paw through the mess until they found the item! If the part was so valuable, why didn't they have it protectively wrapped?

One thing that I've noticed at these swap meets is that there are usually a number of very old and disabled old guys riding around the meet on their electric scooters and carts. It's pretty obvious that their riding days are long past, but they are still strongly attracted to the idea of being involved with motorcycles. Maybe they still are active with a long term project. Or maybe they're just there to look, but hey, I give them credit just for coming out!

Although it didn't have a sign on it, I imagine that this Buell was for sale.

This XR1200 with custom exhaust was for sale.

I was a scoping out the foot peg lay out.

I was more interested in the rear set controls. 

I have been thinking about what kind of changes I'd have to make to accommodate the XR1200 pipe that I bought. It might be too complicated and expensive to make it worthwhile.

There were a couple of interesting four wheeled vehicles also present.

Old trucks are neat.

This was a pretty cool flamed '34 Ford. It looks like it started life as a Tudor sedan.

I didn't buy a single thing at this meet. It was just a nice activity and time spent with my Son. Although he has never been a Harley fan, he was a very active motorcyclist for many years, but is taking a hiatus for now.

Overall, I think that the swap meet was okay, there were some good bargains available. I'm glad that I went, but I prefer the AMCA swaps. 

I will probably go the next Turlock swap which has a wider selection of stuff.