We busted into Bob T’s garage recently while he was lost in a bottle of Jack Daniels, but not that gone. We just barely roamed into one of his antique collection drawers and he came to life, shouting and loading weapons. By the skin of our teeth we grabbed two photos and hauled ass into the desert.
Some of the assignments Bandit doles out are high- risk adventures, but it’s all for our esteemed readers. Next, I had to find out what the tools were for. “Research,” Bandit yelled at me across the table. Fortunately Sin Wu brought me a Corona in a coffee cup to sooth my jangled nerves. I rode out to Tujunga, to meet with Rodan, in a Quonset hut behind a bar. I was to slip him prints of our photographs and take my chances. If he knew Bob T. from the old Bonneville days, I coulda been in real trouble.
He snatched the shots from my hands and peered at them intently. “Where the hell did you find this stuff?” He said glaring at me. Then he grabbed old manuals off a dusty shelf and began to leaf through them. “Starting with the left of the big shot,” Rodan began. “That’s a Stilson Wrench, made just after wagons were our only form of transportation. They are the basis of the monkey wrench or bicycle wrench. They were the first adjustable open-end wrench and many were substitutes for hammers. The three tools next to the Stilson wrench are chain breakers of various vintages, but I want the cast Harley- Davidson chain breaker from the ‘20s. It was probably used on JDs.”
Rodan looked up at me with a confident smile and handed the prints back. “When you have the chain-breaker I’ll give you the rest of the info.”
I looked at him, then at the photos. What the hell was I gonna do? I no more wanted to ride 75 miles out into the desert, to 32 Palms than I wanted to go to jail for life. A desert grave would be a shorter lifespan for sure. I started to plead.
“Okay, okay,” Rodan said. “I’ll give you the info, but you gotta bring me something.”
I started to think about a brunette in Los Angeles.
” The tool at the top is a very handy cylinder base nut or head bolt wrench,” Rodan explained, “maybe from the flathead era in the ‘30s. Many of the stamped-out wrenches are from old tool kits through the ‘50s and used for chain adjustments. The rod with the tit on is an old ‘37 H-D hub alignment tool for bolting wheels to brake drums. And the rest are tire irons, now get the hell out of here and don’t come back empty handed again.”
I slipped him Brenda’s phone number. Shit, I could offer to buy him half of a Corona, but the Bikernet budget is tight. He threw an old H-D spark plug at me, like the one in the photo from the mid ‘30s and I scrambled to my rat Shovelhead. Another mission accomplished, but I dread the next one. I’ll be his partner forever once he meets Brenda.
–Snake
This just in from Rodan, ” Hey Bandit, I just looked at a picture of a Harley tool kit for a 1914 Harley, and there was that Harley chain breaker from your photo. It is H-D part #GK 739 . Hows that?”
