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

Joe Stephan – Ace Mechanic Copyright © 2000 by Joe Stephan
“When I left,” Joe was speaking of Bradley’s now. “There was only the store at Third and
Diamond. This store in the picture was somewhere else.
First Record Attempt
“Getting back to the tires. I worked in the service department with Bill Slater. That was at
the time when they sold all of the motorcycles to the Philadelphia Police. He came over there
to the service department.” Joe was speaking about Art Lemon. Doug showed him another
picture.
“All right.” Joe was now shifting his weight in his chair and was indicating the picture.
“When this was happening, when they broke the motorcycle record, I was over there with
Plass and a couple other people. Bill Slater was over there with us.”
“During the record run?” Doug asked excitedly.
“Yeah. And they tried to get me to go into that sidecar that they hooked on. It looked like a
big sausage. There was a rope in the center and you pulled yourself in. They wanted me to
get in. I said, ‘No way. I’m not getting in there.” Joe laughed. Doug and Doc laughed with
him.
“When they did the record run, one of the questions we had…” Doug began to ask. “They
had the two bikes for the record run. XP-3 and XP-4. Was XP-3 used on the second run, for
the sidecar?”
“Now I don’t know how the heck that sidecar got on there.” Joe answered. “It was a Flxi
sidecar. Not a…not a…? There were three different kinds of sidecars made. One was Flxi, of
which I had one. You could ride the cycle just like you didn’t have a sidecar on. The other
one was a Rogers. And the other one was a…? Cannonball Baker used that one once to
break the cross-continental record. What the heck was the name of that one? It was a sidecar
that wasn’t too well used because they had a failure. They had a bar in the front and that used
to break.”
“A Goulding sidecar?” Doug offered helpfully.
“Goulding!” Joe exclaimed. “Yeah. That’s it!”
“Now, back to the tire bit.” Doc took up the questioning. “As I recall, the world record was
set on those skinny board track tires.”
“That’s right.” Joe confirmed. “Twenty-eight by three.”
“These are twenty-eight by three. But they were even smaller.” Doc was speaking of the
original XP-4 racer.
“No. That was about the size. Twenty-eight by three,” Joe insisted and then went on to talk
about Art Lemon. “Because he came into the service department—he used to call me
Jehovah. ‘Jehovah’ he says, ‘We can’t get the tire man to put them tires on that rim. Do you
know anybody who would put them on?’ I said, ‘You’re looking at him. But it will cost you
a dollar a tire.’ Joe chuckled as he told the story. ‘All right. Put one on. Let me see if you…’
I said, ‘No. You don’t stand here. It’s a secret on how to put them on.’ Because they have an
inner tube and if you pinch that, you’re out of luck!
“He said, ‘Are you sure you know how to put them on?’ I said, ‘It’ll cost you a dollar apiece
no matter what the heck you’re talking about.’ So, Bill Slater says, ‘Joe. Do you know how
to put them on?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘When I worked for the Indian crowd we used to…’
“We had two racing Indian motorcycles. Hedstrom models. Do you know what Hedstrom’s
are? And every race, this here guy that I worked for…this Indian guy…he said, ‘We’re going
to put new tires on. I’m always careful because anything can happen. If a tire blows, a guy
gets killed!’ So that’s how I learned how to put those tires on. I didn’t know how to do it but
they taught me how to do it.” Joe was speaking of the Niley brothers. “So, that was that.”
05/22/00 Preliminary Draft Page 8 of 43