By, Hot Rod Rohr
Growing up in the 1960s, I was one of the thousands of boys that longed to own a go-kart. My dad was a plumber but also an ace mechanic. I worked with Dad from the time I was old – or strong enough to lift a toolbox. He had always tinkered with motorized devices. After enlisting in the Army during WW2 he taught mechanics at Ft. Benning before shipping over to Germany to run the motor pool.
Dad preferred building “stuff’ as opposed to buying. So the promise was to build a go-kart when I was old enough. Usually a project got started when a few of the major components showed up in the shop. My dad had a friend from his days working at the Lackawanna steel plant that was in the scrap business. He would come by and pick up old pipe and salvage-able materials and drop off interesting parts for me to disassemble and tinker with.
My dad tasked him with finding four similar wheels to build a go-kart. The days ticked by like an eternity. Finally one day John the junk man showed up with two nice industrial strength wheels and tires – one even had a braking mechanism involved.
So the decision was to build a mini-bike instead of a go-kart. At this point anything with a motor and wheels was a step up from my Schwinn bicycle.
Most projects started with a frame built from black steel pipe – the stuff plumbers use for gas piping. Enough short scraps littered the shop to build a frame, forks, etc. I was nine at the time, and small for my age. So dad’s goal was to build the smallest size mini he could assemble. A Briggs and Stratton 4 cycle 3 HP engine was selected, from an old reel type mower. A centrifugal clutch and a handy jack shaft so I could easily swap sprockets to make gearing changes. The seat was from an old Indian motorcycle. It was a tank, but it purred down the trails.
My grandfather lived out in farm country. So weekends we would haul the mini out and I got permission to ride the lot roads between the fields of vegetables. Life was good.
As the years went by I upgraded engines trying to squeeze more speed from the two-wheeled tank. One time I installed a 2-cycle engine from a push mower. These were a bit higher revving motors and a new “louder’ sounding engine. Being a vertical shaft engine I had to mount it on its side and build a custom carb adapter. This located the carb down under the engine, tough to service and adjust.
I learned to reach down while riding and adjust the mixture screw to lean out the engine and coax the best performance. One fateful day I reached a bit to 
deep and got my hand caught in the jackshaft chain. I suppose the equivalent of driving while texting. I lost part of one index finger and my mom insisted the mini be “moth-balled” for a while.
A year later it was pulled down from the shop attic and a new engine Clinton “Panther” 2 stroke that I had saved fore was installed, along with a chain guard!
Throughout my mini bike years I learned how to weld and run the, lathe in the shop. I finally out grew the small frame and build a larger mini with plans form one of the “popular” magazines. Wheel diameters increased to wheelbarrow size, engines went to 5 hp.
By this time we had moved to farm country and I ended up building minis for 3 of my friends. Every summer evening we would ride the back farm dirt roads to Taffy’s – the local hot dog stand. We would eat the charcoal cooked dogs and play pinball until late, and ride home in the pitch dark without any headlights. Nothing like riding in the dark to sharpen your sense of balance. Like skiing in a whiteout. We wore colorfully painted safety helmets for some protection.
Of course minis led to motorcycles. My sister’s boyfriend had an old beater CZ enduro bike that he world ride over and let me take out to the fields and gravel pits around our hometown. I was hooked on two wheels.
My very first brand new bike was a Suzuki 250 Savage. Street legal opened a lot more riding opportunities. Four of my mini bike riding buddies all bought 250 Enduros of different brands and we road them everywhere. We rode every season, even studding the tires to ride on Lake Erie when it froze in the winter months.
50 years later I still own a few motorcycles. I had as many a 6 at one point. All were old dirt bikes that we would take out to the west deserts of Utah to ride after I moved there from Western New York.
Every one of my original mini bike buddies still own and ride motorcycles of some sort, and their kids are also up on two wheels.
My fondest memories of growing up a plumber’s son are building and riding mini bikes and later motorcycle. It a lasting bond when you ride and breathe two wheelers.
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