Thursday, March 31, 2016

A good Deal

Have you ever bought a “good deal”? How about buying a “Good Deal” to help someone out? I’ve bought 100 shovelheads, most of the time Josh is pretty good about checking them out and getting them running. But every once in a while (like most people) I find a lemon, not all are winners or homeruns; it happens it’s the business. If the motorcycle world was easy everyone would do it, right? Now I’ve bought a ton of shovels that may have been, for lack of a better word, ugly or maybe needed to be put back together. And normally it’s no big deal. One bike I went and looked at with Josh it was winter and we were standing in a barn. It was cold, not much room to walk around it and really check it out; maybe I was feeling a little cocky that day, so I bought it. Josh and I loaded it up and headed for home. Now the guy said he was riding it when something happen, so it wasn’t running, he was up front about that. I told the kid to get it home and try to see if we can get it running. Josh got after it one night at the shop. It didn’t take much to get running but man it was leaking oil out of the back of the motor right by the base gasket. So we got the flash lights out and what we found was a bit shocking. The rear cylinder was cracked and half way out of the cases! I think what was more shocking was the engine was still running and sounded good at that. I told Josh let’s just take it apart, send the parts out into the chopper world. The bike didn’t look like much to me anyways. It had some good parts on it though. I managed to make my money back on the bike and little bit extra to keep the lights on (I give Josh a few bucks too; I can’t believe he makes me pay him WTF??). Josh has been in the shop for a long time, I think that when he was younger it played a big roll on his interests. He loves motorcycles and hot rods, anything with a motor really. I had an old Sears all state sitting in my shed for 15 or more years. My plan was always to put it out on the building, it would look so cool! But like most things we try and get done, I somehow never got to it. Randy is a really good customer, he always hanging around the shop. Randy is always working on some old bike. His grandson love working with him on those bikes; mind you he is all of 13 years old. Randy told him about the 1956 Sears, I had in my shed and the kids eyes lit up. So the next day Randy bought Jr up to the shop to do some dickering with me. After an hour and a tray of cookies we landed a deal. Jr would make payments on the bike for the next few weeks, until it was paid off. I didn’t really want to see the bike go, but I thought how it might change his life forever. After just two weeks the Kid had it all paid for and was ready to load it up ( I think grandpa may of helped out just a bit). Jr loaded up his bike in the back of Randy’s truck and he couldn’t stop smiling. Maybe that is the moment when that kid decides what he is going to do for the rest of his life. Maybe …… maybe not, but I know he has been working on it with grandfather every night since he bought that bike from me. I love seeing younger people play with hot rods and bikes, too many of them now days play video games, instead of going out and getting dirty. That type of thing didn’t happen in my day, or maybe that’s me getting older.

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