Board-Track Beauty

BOARD-TRACK BEAUTY

CW READERS’ COLLECTION

Milwaukee mantelpiece

DALE WALKSLER IS NOT your average bike buff. For starters, he’s the founder and curator of his own museum, Wheels Through Time, located in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. He’s built two-wheeled entries for the transcontinental Great North American Race, and he runs a successful Harley-Davidson dealership situated, appropriately, adjacent to the museum. Maybe best of all, Walksler lays claim to a double-digit collection of old-time board-track racers.

Walksler’s latest splinter machine, a 1914 HarleyDavidson, won Best-ofShow honors in St. Louis.

It wasn’t always this perfect, though. In fact, when Walksler, 46, bought the bike from a Michigan collector, it was in very rough condition. Friend and fellow board-track enthusiast Mike Lange did the restoration.

“It’s the only known 1914 A-motor racer,” Walksler says proudly. “The key ingredients are the correct short-coupled frame and the right motor. This particular bike has the large, or long-distance, riveted fuel and oil tanks. The racing forks and handlebars were lightweight versions of the ones that were used on standard bikes in 1912. Same with the front wheel. The rear wheel, brake and clutch are the same as what was used (on production bikes) in 1913 and ’14.” According to Walksler, the A-motor represented Milwaukee’s first serious racing effort. “Indian had cut back, while Harley was campaigning both dirtand board-tracks,” he says. “By 1915, it was winning everything.”

Sadly, Walksler knows little of this particular bike’s history or its riders. “This bike would have been raced in 1914 and ’15. Harley had its Wrecking Crew then, so Red Parkhurst would have been a possibility. Ray Weishaar would have been another possibility.”

Walksler rides the bike, which he values “in the $100,000 range.” He relates, “When we brought it over to the Cycle World show, it was a pretty nice day. We gassed it up, and I rode it up and down the street a few times, and into the trailer. It starts real easily. You prime the cylinders, put it on the stand, and just pedal-start it. As you’re pedaling, you drop the compression release and it pops right off.”

Stopping is another matter. “On a lot of the earlier bikes, you’d backpedal like on a bicycle. But this bike has a drum rear brake. On a standard machine in 1914,

40 mph was about it. So the brake was pretty usable. At 80 or 90 mph, though, it was probably less than what you’d want it to be.” We’ll trust you on that one, Dale. -Matthew Miles >