My first bike was a 90cc Bridgestone, bought from the Guadalcanal Marine Veteran who gave me my first job at 15. He owned a go kart concessions track where he also sold Bridgestone motorcycles.
Bridgestones were, indeed, two strokes but unlike Suzuki, Yamaha and the rest, had rotary valves. The rotary valve, mounted on the end of the crankshaft between the crankcase and the side mounted carburetor, increased low end torque. It was the two stroke equivalent of a camshaft.
I had taken a coping saw to the phenolic rotary valve in mine, opening it up to "full race" as per a photo that I had seen in an advertisement in Cycle World Magazine. I had also installed an aftermarket Zundap (high compression) head and replaced the aluminum head gasket with a home made one made from aluminum foil. It would make an honest 60 MPH on the level with no wind and would walk away from the OHC Honda Super 90s.
In the early summer of 66, on the first Friday evening that I had had off, I left the local drive-in restaurant heading toward home and decided to show the folks where I worked what it would do. After all, I would drive by right in front of the sorry sacks who had to work.
I had it wound up to about 60 and had just passed an acquaintance/customer that I recognized in a 57 Pontiac Bonneville (could have been a Star Chief) convertible, when a guy pulled out in front of me from a stop sign in a 1958 Impala comvertible.
I got it down to about 30 before hitting him just ahead of the rear wheel. My first summersault was on the trunk and the next two were on the road. No helmet, of course, no shirt, just slip on tennies. I could not get up and knew that traffic was behind me, but crawled off of the road and folks from work took me to the nearby hospital.
Life was good at 16. Though stoved up for 6-7 weeks, no broken bones and nothing permanent. I'd love to be 16 again.
The driver in the 58 stopped. This would not happen today. He also had insurance. This would be unlikely today.
That's where the money for the X-6 Hustler came from.
There's more to this story but I'm sure that everyone is badly bored by now.
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