So, Mr. Ford, what have you been up to the past few weeks?
I'm so glad that you asked me that but first, a little preamble.
Many years ago I was the "Buell Guy" at Schoch's H-D/Buell in Stroudsburg, PA.
I bought one of the first XB9S' in Battle Blue in 2003, happily modified it a fair amount and put about 15,000 miles on it (give or take a few).
I got it into my head that I simply MUST HAVE an S3 and I ended up trading the XB for a fellow Badweatherbikers member, Henrik's 98 S3, in 2004 or 2005 which was in really, really nice shape.
www.badweatherbikers.com is THE Buell enthusiasts site, by the way.
I really loved that big, black S3 and would always put on PJ Harvey's "Meet Ze Monsta" before I'd go out for a ride on the big black thing. That was a wild bike.
Henrik was buddies with Court (high muckity muck at Buell and Erik Buell's best buddy) and I'm told that a fair amount of the bike was cherry picked by the guys at the factory. I suspect the entire bike - it came with a dyno chart showing something like 98.6 RWHP was isn't too shabby.
I rode the piss out of that bike and eventually it started burning oil like crazy. The damned thing smelled like a bus stop.
Sure enough, a valve guide seal had come adrift and something got in there and left it's mark in one of the cylinders. I bored it out for 10 over pistons, broke it in and all was (and still is) good.
The motor has XB rocker covers, updated détente plate and 2nd gear, a countershaft sprocket which is really too high (29 tooth?) but the 27 tooth is a bit too low, I threw in a Screaming Chicken diaphragm spring and plates, some other stuff I'm probably forgetting.
My first wife, Sharon, ended up dying and while I was still totally shell shocked from it all a local woman, Lynda Fernandez, ended up getting her meat hooks in me. I had sold my house and was living in a rented duplex about 30 minutes away from work at Schoch's going due west and Lynda's house was another 30 minutes from Schoch's to the east.
Neither place had a garage and Winter came on and, of course, I was riding the S3 for around 2 hours per day (to work, to the rental, to Lynda's place). It was pretty nippy and the Poconos does get it's fair share of snow and road salt.
The firm who did Buell's powder coating really didn't do such a stellar job in the prep department which is the key to a good coating. Couple that with the poor finish on the hardware and well, the S3 ended up looking pretty sorry. Throw in the dreaded Buell bubbles on the tank and it was fast turning into a roach bike which was really a terrible thing as Henrik kept it in such beautiful shape.
My guess is it lived inside his apartment and I had the poor thing under a cover outside.
Summer finally rolled around and I got it into my head to own one of each of the major Buell models and as luck would have it, a fellow in the Detroit area had a 96 S2 for sale for two or three grand on Badweb and I hopped in the truck, drove straight out, loaded it into the truck and drove straight back to the Poconos. That was a long day but when you're on a mission...
Lynda and I moved to south central Pennsyltucky and after a bit we ended up buying a house down here with a big garage (finally)!
The S2 was a very nice bike but the motor was not quite the powerhouse the S3 was, the S2 motor was leaking right at the front of the cases, I really didn't like the steel swing arm, the S3 was looking pitiful but still ran great and hmmm...
Two days later the S2 had a few S3 parts in it.
The motor, swing arm, exhaust, wheels, front brake caliper, little things like that.
I rode it around for a bit to make sure that everything was okay and I knew that it was time for new tires when the rear tried to slide out from under me and pitch me on my head. Don't do that to the nice man who screwed you together...
For whatever reason, the Purple Nurple ended up getting pushed into a corner and years crept by. Around 5 of them - where does the time go?
Beardo (on Badweatherbikers) recently ran an ad about having an S2 for sale needing some TLC which I was all ready to jump on when I looked at my own S2. It was sitting there covered under a coat of dust, grime, mung, you name it. It was horrible.
Why am I going to buy another one when I have one that just needs finishing up? What the hell is wrong with me?
Boldly springing into action,I gave it a bath, a battery was ordered (posts reversed - WTF?), I found some Tommaselli Gran Tourismo grips in the loft (with white to match the frame), popped on some new Michilins, found some grommets at Ace Hardware's plumbing section that let me fit a Napoleon bar end mirror (that was a great find for like 76 cents), changed the oil and then took off the air filter.
PHEW!!!
Disassembled the carb, soaked it in Gunk HydroSeal, slapped that back together, purchased a different air filter, adjusted the clutch, got it insured and registered, fought with the turn signals a bit (stupid bullet connectors) and it lives!
The bike runs great, handles really well and here's the old girl, back from the dead.
There's still some cosmetics to attend to but I'm in love once again. With the bike - the wife's okay but she doesn't handle quite as well as the S2 does...
Oh yeah, Lynda and I got married.
Here's some quick pics - I see why they did the screw up with the paint as this really is Parkway Blue (as in purple) but it doesn't photograph that way.
