Wednesday, August 15, 2018

A Wren By Bird Mini-bike with a 2 1/2 horsepower engine

This likely goes back to the first car I ever drove by myself at around age 8 which was a brand new 1956 Century Buick. I had sat on my Dads lap at first in his 1941 Century Buick that had been his brother's before he didn't come back from WWII that was a pilot and test pilot and I had started steering the 1941 Blue Century Buick when I was 4 in 1952. I think I remember that knobs were still legal  possibly when I did this. It also had a visor (like a baseball hat brim) and it also had skirts (they might have been called that which were extensions that brought your rear wheel access down on both sides that were painted exactly the same color as the car. The 1941 Buick was a very beautiful and fast car for 1941 and you couldn't even buy an American car that good after 1941 because they were building tanks and planes and ships with the metal they built cars with before the war. So, my Dad says a lot of people were jealous of the 1941 Buick because it had the biggest engine and my Dad used to race it(sometimes with my Mom and I in the car too.)

My first motor vehicle that I personally owned was called a Mini-bike that stood less than 3 feet high and had a 2 1/2 horsepower Tecumseh 4 stroke engine in it with a centrifugal clutch and the tires were about 1 foot high each and about 4 to 6 inches wide. It had a hand throttle like a motorcycle and a pressure plate as a brake that pushed against the rear tire to stop it. I don't see the pressure plate on this one. It must be a newer model than the one I bought around 1960 or so when I was around 12.
Mine was Metallic Blue instead of red. This thing could do 30 miles per hour on the level and faster downhill if you can imagine that but it wasn't street legal so I used to drive it around the local high school when school was out and do jumps with it off of ramps and jump over the pitchers mound and stuff like that. I also drove it down desert dry washes in the desert and down desert paved and dirt roads too up on Yucca Mesa above Yucca Valley which is in the high desert.
Image result for a wren mini-bike by Bird
Less thadkdkdkdkdkdk

No comments: