5000 motorcycles? Plus rare Vincent Rapide & Velocette Venom | Barn Find Hunter - Ep. 95

[Music] welcome to the first blindfold hunter dedicated to motorcycles you've probably noticed that we don't like to take leads from people about where old cars are i kind of like to do it the old-fashioned way and and just find them because to me it's not that it's not the discovery but it's the search that's the most fun but when steve davis calls me i pay attention we visited steve years ago this is one of his yards and then up there is a chicken coop that's 600 feet long and you may remember that the last time we were here in that chicken coop we found hundreds of cars and thousands of motorcycles we got such a reaction from viewers about you know motorcycles that we decided to make today's episode about motorcycles this is a first for barn find hunter motorcycles are really cool and as somebody told me once you can store one car in a garage or you can store 10 motorcycles in that same garage so let's go inside meet steve davis again and take a look at what he's got around here and then we're going to take a ride a little bit later to see what else he knows about by the way we haven't filmed an episode in a year it's been a year since we've visited the uk than the pandemic hit so this this is our first episode that we've filmed since the pandemic hit we are socially distant and we're going to wear masks when we're around other people so i hope this doesn't muffle my voice too much hello steve davis hello tom steve we haven't been in your building here for probably three years four years but you know the most dramatic episode i remember is in that building hundreds of cars and thousands of motorcycles we've decided to make this episode a motorcycle episode so would you show us some of the bikes that you've kind of found and why they're significant because they're all over the place i know well i started this when i was nine years old and the i borrowed three dollars from my dad fixed up an old little uh mini bike that fixed it up sold it for 25 dollars saved a hundred dollars and bought three uh honda 90s one of them was like this one right here so that's how this started when i was a kid and i just never threw anything away this is a 1959 honda 50. this is the 65 model from 1965 this is the 64 uh honda ct 90. they had a little extra piece of chain that came in the tool kit and had two sprockets on the rear wheel where you could run it in trailer street this one's got 855 original miles on it so is that a dream that's a dream but this isn't early i didn't know that that well i think that one was repainted but whoever did it did it real good unique motorcycle beside it is a 1928 aerial that i bought in a little town in australia called a manga it's got exposed valves that you actually oil it down with an oil can you see the oil can here and i can see the valves yeah and yeah you actually all the valves and so the so the oil can sat in the top of the fuel tank well so every once in a while you had to squirt it down you had to get when it get to clack and you'd have to squirt it down motor on it runs good though right here's a first year norton atlas behind it is another triumph 650 i've got over 200 trumps 200 triumph motorcycles yeah now check out these old helmets over here old metal flake oh yeah those are the things you'd buy in the back of magazines for like 9.95 back in the day there's a couple of things here i don't sell i collect and then let me can you see the back of your t-shirt hoarding is rewarding i you know i just finished the barn find book it'll be out later in the year and a friend of mine told me a quote that i had to include in there and it was the difference between hoarding and collecting is the illusion of organization [Laughter] i love that oh that's perfect i love collections this right here but it's the 500cc mx from 1974. this is the 175 right behind it that's the 250 right over there i've got the the 100 cc the 125 the 175 each one in that series so this is factory paint factory paint factory uh everything the the side covers the fenders everything so who who buys a bike like this and lets it sit for half a century before they give it to you you know so many people they would a lot of them you know they raced them one time and got scared you know it this thing would break your leg cranking it i mean it was not and it when you give it gas it was on the rear wheel and you better be leaning forward and headed in that direction and it's just like it was today original paint original everything you didn't have any restored bikes they're all original i love them as they are man look at that baby yeah that belongs to a friend of mine now that's a second generation 750 and it's uh they went to the double overhead cam on that 17 000 miles what year is that this one's a 79. and this is motorcycle country there's no uh mistake that the wheels through time museum is just a couple of miles up the road and people from around the country and around the world come here to ride motorcycles right here is a 1967 first year of the suzuki titan the 500 cc and that thing is still runs you know a friend of mine brought it to me from virginia he said i knew you'd love it yeah we're just walking by an mgtd and not even 53 into it you know look behind you 51 bentley oh with 18 000 original miles on it but this is not a bentley episode it's a motorcycle come on back here and i'll show you some more stuff have you ever been in this building tom i've been in all your buildings no you ain't been in all my buildings but you've been in those down here okay i think didn't you have eight buildings there's ten buildings twelve yeah look at all the cylinders from the 70s if it was japanese in the early 70s there's a cylinder there or a head there for it these are all new old stock brand new exhaust pipes from the early 70s and that's another really really cool one that's the holy grail of the motocross the 250 elsinore first year this is the very first wankel one though the hercules wine it actually says wankel on the seat now it looks like a jet turbine so that was made in japan no they were made in austria really yeah they were wankels they i mean it was the first wankel alfred wong vunkle german uh inventor of the rotary powered engine that's it that's there's your first motorcycle one that was ever done it's right behind you there's a osa 250 osa you had osa montesa and bull taco were your main uh things out of spain and they were and they're all out of spain really yeah exactly and that coal look how big the rear sprocket is on it that wild me yeah and they had see the gas tank was and all of this was made the seat pan everything was made together all fiberglass there's another honda dream a honda super hawk right here is the suzuki x6 hustler i love these things they had such a beautiful the way the speedometer and tack was on there look at this tom the odometer is vertical you don't see that i don't know of another bike that had 12 000 miles so this bike is new two-tone paint with a pinstripe uh-huh and it had something really cool czechoslovakia and it had one of the neatest things that no other motorcycle had and you see the shifter yep you pushed it in it became the kickstarter oh man same lever and that cold brilliant only one that ever had it brilliant this is a wall of death bike look how big they had the rear sprocket on it so that's where you can ride it vertically but now those are the those are unique and that's the ct-90s you'd see them on everybody had them on the back of their uh motorhome or you know and stuff and they made them in the earliest ones were yellow then they went to red then they went to orange and that's the whole series there let's see did you have you ever counted how many motorcycles you have there's over five thousand but i don't know how many this is amazing and that's a trail hopper whatever it's i mean and it's perfectly original nothing's ever you know wow it wouldn't take much to start that oh wait wait around that cool oh yeah what a beautiful paint job decals [Music] i feel like i need to get back there it's got zero miles so this over on the other side of the garage we saw a rotary powered motorcycle made by hercules here's a rotary powered motorcycle made by suzuki and and this is as steve said this is the speedometer odometer it's kind of spaceshipy any and you look how the tail light and the signal lights are all like that spaceship oh yeah so it's a disc like that like this it's a brand new motorcycle it's like nothing on it no miles i just got i mean a few but nothing you know yeah you roll them around you get stuff on them yeah so have you ever ridden it i've cranked it what does it sound like does it sound like a mazda it will not stop revving it just wang i mean it just and it's carbureted it's not feeling good carbureted what do you what year do you figure it is that was 74 or 75. man cool so if if you remember the uh the song alice's restaurant arlo guthrie sang for 45 minutes about alice's restaurant and he said but we're not here to talk about alice's restaurant we're here to talk about the war well in another in a crazy way all the time we've spent here looking at steve's motorcycles we're not here to talk about steve's motorcycles we're here to talk about a horde of motorcycles that he discovered just a few miles from here that he never knew about and it started with a phone message that was left to him hey steve this is sherry ferguson i was calling you i'm up here on a job and the guy has some antique motorcycles and i'm not a motorcycle expert like you and i was going to see if you could move them uh we're up here on waynesville mountain fencing black shadow motorcycles uh give me a call back i called her back and i said all right which one of my buddies puts you up to this because i know i'm the only one around here with a vincent black shadow and she says just such unique stuff that he had hidden away that's been there for years and i had no clue and neither did anyone how far is that from here in a straight line 10 miles [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is my friend robin he's put the collection together for many years and i'll let him tell you all about it so so robin uh you're you're from the uk are you from the uk yeah originally 50 50 years ago 50 years ago okay but obviously you're a british motorcycle fanatic yeah i guess so you moved them down here let's let's they could take a look what you have and how how long ago did you start collecting these bikes i bought the red vincent in 64. cool well let's see them okay this is my pride and joy as i said it had a red tank when i got it but it's now completely red it's got the twin brakes front and rear oversized carburetors the sprockets and and so this is a red black shadow this is a red repeat red repeat okay okay but it's too old to shadow specs yep yep yep okay and you bought this in 1964. 64. no kidding do you remember what you paid for it how much you paid for it yeah 2800. but i was 64. uh-huh yep beautiful how many miles are on it now 71 000. are are these as fast as people say they are i know they have a reputation they're extremely fast um well it's got 150 mile an hour speedometer but does supposedly 26 were built and shipped um to north america and painted red painted red here or painted red in the uk in in the uk with the paint that they he got from the post office things were different then yep yep yep that's the first bike you have what are the other bikes you have here these okay well there's another black repeat back here so right here but this one also has been converted to a shadow with the same the sprockets and different carburetors and the 150 mile an hour clock yep how long have you had this one about 50 years both of them then wow both of them yeah man where'd you buy that one in sarasota florida that has three hundred dollars three hundred dollars yeah so you've restored that bike yes do you do the work yourself yeah so back here i see a bsa uh yeah that's a gold star 500cc race bike how long have you had that one about 40 years this um villa set has an interesting story um it's engine number on 59 it's the second to last veloset venom that was ever ever left the factory second to last now what year is that that's a 71. so what do we have under the cover here okay this is a very interesting bike this is one you've never seen before bsa had made something called a road rocket 650 twin and somebody at bsa had a great had a bright idea to put a road rocket engine into a gold star frame so there's not many of these around and that came from the factory like i came from the factory what a beautiful bike boy so that's got that's got the polished tank yeah that does too okay beautiful and what year is that that is a 61. yeah beautiful and then we have a norton here yeah this is a 600 cc uh 1951 dominator they all had exotic names back then now there's a total of eight i'm not sure one two three four five five six seven eight so there's one that's hidden here well that's it um that's when triumph brought out the um bonneville and that was in 1959 they made it they made it this color for five months no kidding they called it tangerine and duck egg blue oh is that beautiful i've never seen one like that when you were able to ride which was your favorite on a saturday morning to get on and go on a saturday morning the sun's out the weather's perfect which one would you get on developer set because they do triumphs and nortons and bsas all over the place but not that many valor sets yeah are all these particularly hard to start to kick them they are now they didn't use to me [Laughter] i understand the only one i haven't really looked at is the velocet over there so i'll go over and take a look at that it's called a throxton or thruxton okay yeah actually i've been to the thruxton race circuit and that's what it was named after yeah yeah yeah wow this seems very delicate very small like a sports car but this one is a little different because as i said it was the last one made on nexu and um they put all the extra spare parts that were left over at a factory they put them all onto this well robin thank you so much for allowing us to come into your house thank you for coming to taking time to visit us beautiful thank you thanks for joining us happy honey this is the 500 that's the 175 that's the 250. i've got the 80 the 100 and the 125 and i'm gonna put them side by side like they were in the dealership

Channel: Hagerty

Views: 419,137

Rating: 4.8905473 out of 5

Keywords: Hagerty, Classic Car, Classic Cars, Hagerty Drivers Club, collector car, enthusiast car, collector cars, motorcycles, tom cotter, honda, dream, z50, trail 70, CB, 500, 750, suzuki, kawasaki, yamaha, 125, 175, 250, velocette, thruxton, venom, goldstar, BSA, triumph, red rapide, black shadow, vincent, norton

Id: rKH_ll8cFxY

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021