Excellent suggestion

My first flat track bike was a Hodaka. It was a real beater that wouldn't shift right, but I learned a lot about the shifting mechanism by tinkering with it. It was stock and clapped out. I threw an expansion chamber pipe on it and had a ball battling for last place with my brother, who was also rid...

Back in the 60s we used to buy VW Beetles for $50. We would strip them down and shorten them and drive them in the woods. Those chrome exhaust tips got reused as silencers on a lot of small motorcycles. Good memories

Dirty_rat might be on to something. It's hard to tell from the pictures for sure, but it seems to show that the diameter of the sheared portion might be slightly larger than the minimum diameter of the depth of the splines on the shaft, potentially indicating that the inner diameter of the splines o...

I just checked my sources and indeed have found that the Dunlop K990 90/100-18 has been discontinued and is out of stock. The Cheng Shin 755 4.10-18 is still available , and is still much more affordable than the Dunlop ever was. It performs very well on the Hodakas.

All of my racers have the 4.10 Cheng Shin on the rear.

The Dunlop K990 tires are specifically designed for small bore vintage bikes. They make a 70/100-21 and a 90/100-18 that have the look and feel of vintage tires, but manufactured with modern compounds.

I have found the Hodakas to be very competitive against the other brands. My MX model is top shelf but has all the mods, but even my slightly modified Road Toad has won against all brands at the highest level.

While I don't seem to have pictures of the early years of flat track racing, I always hand painted mine. Here are a few from the 70's.

I think it's hard to build up a head of steam when you're loaded down with all those hotdogs

I think his record was something like 72 in ten minutes.

Ahh, thank you Mike. I suspected that the number might have been intended to be .008 to .010, that would retard the timing as Dale had mentioned. It's still strange to have two different recommendations in the same manual without explanation. I have had two Road Toads and ran them both at 0.012 with...

The English to Metric conversions are not correct. They are off by a factor of 10. 0.08 " is about 2mm, and 0.10" is about 2.5mm. Hence my confusion. The 0.012 to 0.014 seems more in line with all of the other Hodaka model specs. Very interesting that the manual has this typo. 2mm to 2.5mm...

Without having access to the manual, I suspect that your second set of numbers (which is actually 2.03mm - 2.54mm) is relating to the ignition timing before top dead center, not the point gap.

Just a thought from previous experience. If a vent hose on the carburetor is plugged or crimped it can cause very erratic symptoms ranging from lean to rich.

Thanks for the great story Clarence! Perseverance wins!

But then the Old Man Going North thread has amassed 85,000 views.

Let's see... there are 6 pages with let's say 25 posts per page, that means there are 150 posts. If you divide the 41,000 visits by 150, it means that on average each post was read 273 times. Seems a little high considering the small group that we have.

I'm no expert on the topic but having seen the picture, I think it's possible that this could might actually be a Nigerian Police model. The black paint inside the headlight bucket , and especially the black gas cap and dip stick make it a possibility in my limited knowledge.

Magically cured!

Welcome and thanks for the interesting story. That AJS sounds like a great piece of history!

Vic,
Among other things it could be a glazed cylinder wall. It might need a light honing to restore the hashmarks and allow the rings to work with the oil provide a seal. Good luck.

Thank you for taking the time to scan all of these great memories. I've had a great time reading them.

Because the clutch is on the end of the crankshaft, in first gear it has to spin at a very high rpm and the drag caused by the oil is magnified. I've never seen a Hodaka that would push around easily in first gear with the clutch pulled in. in the higher gears it spins much more slowly and is able t...

You may have stumbled onto something here. The Wiseco 228 piston is a fit for the Yamaha 125 AT-1 Enduro. Yours is definitely stamped 228. I wonder if the two pistons are interchangeable between the Yamaha and the Hodaka.