From 1920 through 1924, Ace motorcycles were built in a ... - WebRing

Joe Stephan – Ace Mechanic Copyright © 2000 by Joe Stephan
“I knew there was something wrong because when Red put out his legs, I knew he couldn’t
stop. I ran after him, he hit the wall and I grabbed a hold of him. There was a plank about that
wide across the railroad siding.” He was indicating the thickness with his thumb and index
finger.
“Art Lemon came over there—that whole front end—that front wheel got square!” Joe was
once again laughing over the incident. “He must have hit that about a good forty mile an hour
or better. I just grabbed him in time before he would fall down into the pit with the
motorcycle on top of him. I got a hold on him. He said, ‘Jehovah, thanks a lot!’ I said, ‘You
better thank me a lot.’
“Anyway, we got him back. Art Lemon comes to me, he says, ‘Go in the stock room and get
another front end and put it in. We’re going to see if Red lost his nerve.” Everybody had a
good laugh over the story.
Art Lemon’s Tune
“Red told me that after Art Lemon started,” Doug began to give a possible explanation as why
the Ace’s performance woes. “He found out that the cam timing was off by seven degrees and
that’s why they were slow.”
“The first time that Mr. Henderson asked me how I liked the Ace motorcycle I said that,
‘they’re all right, but they don’t have anything. No speed, no power.’ He went back inside,
into the experimental room. He didn’t give me an argument. The nicest guy in the world, that
you would ever want to talk to…this Mr. Henderson.” Joe probably meant Art Lemon.
“A couple of weeks afterwards, I said to this guy that was testing the motorcycles, ‘Did you
notice something?’ He said, ‘Yeah. I was going to ask you if you noticed anything.’ The
machines were getting faster. Real lively! I don’t know what Mr. Henderson had said to
upstairs—where the motor department was—but they changed something in the motorcycle.
In the motor.”
“Red had said that… The crankshaft, as you know, is offset a little bit—to one side. The
crankshaft isn’t dead center and Red said that this gives a seven-degree difference in your
spark timing; and they found that if they advanced the spark seven degrees it took care of that.
That’s probably what they did.” Doc believed the two accounts reconciled each other. “Seven
degrees is a lot of advance!”
Sporting Solo
“Whatever Mr. Henderson did… Now I’m going to tell you something.” Joe began but then
uttered his favorite phrase that meant that he’d changed course again. “He was a… When he
designed that drop bar, he…so…I said this is…I said…” Joe’s words tumbled out as he
searched for what he wanted to say. “I got him to do that! I said that you sit like a…like
nothing on there.”
“You put the Sporting Solo bars on there?” Doc indicated the brightly nickeled handlebars on
the street Ace.
“Yeah. You put them… He made the different bars. And then, at the same time, they changed
the manifold… The exhaust manifold?” Joe looked at Doc and Doug, looking for their
acknowledgement. “And they called it the sport…the sporting model. You know—with the
drop bars. Twenty-five dollars! Twenty-five or seventy-five dollars more dear.”
“Well that’s the…ah…putting the pins on the intake boxes Doug, huh?” Doc turned his
attention from Joe to Doug with this question. “They changed that in 1922 or so?”
“Yes, and the exhaust manifold changed too.” Doug seemed reluctant to say too much. He
wanted to hear as much from Joe as possible and only entered the conversation to confirm
some point or another.
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