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

Joe Stephan – Ace Mechanic Copyright © 2000 by Joe Stephan
“Is that so?” Joe sounded amused.
“Yeah. He’s the oldest man out there, he’s going faster than anybody else, and he had perfect
competence.”
“I’m going to say to you again; I never in my life saw anybody—and I rode with a lot of
them. I rode with Bennett, I rode with—.” Joe interrupted himself. “This is you too, isn’t it?”
Joe was leafing through more of Doug’s photographs.
“Yeah. This is all of my stuff.”
“This is a foreign job isn’t it?”
“No, it’s a Harley.”
“A Harley-Davidson?” Joe sounded dubious.
Great Riders
Continuing on to his previous train of thought, he said, “I never saw a man who could handle
a machine like Red! And I had seen a lot of them!”
“He was a natural.” Doug agreed. “It sounds like you’ve ridden with just about all of the big
guys at the time. You’ve been around them.”
“He was out of this world.” Joe was lost in reverie, hardly listening to Doug. “Then when that
Cannonball Baker came over, when he saw how Baker rode, I told him, I said, ‘Red. Do you
see how he rides?’ He says, ‘Aw, he’s alright but I could beat him!’
“I said to myself, ‘I know damned well you could beat him!’ And that Cannonball Baker
could ride!”
“Red always told me that he liked—out of Wells Bennett and Cannonball Baker—he always
liked Baker the best because he said that when Baker went out on one of these record runs he
just went. But Wells Bennett went out and he had spares all over the place.”
“Oh yeah! He had places to get fixed up along the way.” Joe added.
“He told me that one time, in nineteen twenty-two when Henderson took the transcontinental
record, well they changed engines in Kansas City.”
“Oh yeah! They changed it in two places.”
“Two places?”
“Yeah…two of them. Two motors they put in there.”
“They would never tell you that in the magazines.”
“Nobody knows that; but I know that! Red and me knew that! We talked about that. When
this fellow was chasing Cannonball Baker—he had motor trouble. They changed the motor.
Right after they changed it, how long—it didn’t take long to—. Especially if you…I could
take a motor out of there—. I could break that motor down, when I was working, inside of six
minutes; I could take that motor out.
“That’s a good speed! I could put it back in—in ten minutes I could have it back again. Now,
in ten minutes time, you could catch a guy—maybe—if he’s fifty miles ahead of you. If
you’re doing seventy, you can catch him inside of about three hours; you can be right on top
of him. And that Bennett was right on Cannonball Baker. When Baker found out that he was
being chased, he really took off—to come in as fast as he could. He didn’t stop anymore;
anywhere!”
Spare Parts
“One of the things I’m working on at home is…ah—. I just bought a bunch of Ace material at
a show and it has a pressure feed crank in it.”
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