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Nice build!!! well done!! what are those forks?? are they Dan Gurney Eagles?

Nice bike!! I had a 78 gold FMF as my first "real" bike. I wish i never sold it. The forks look like Tange.

Hey, Gang. Man, this brings back memories.

I worked for Bill Bastian when he was just starting the Kawasaki BMX line. That was his design and he used Triple A as a financial backer. We made both steel and aluminum bikes for Kawasaki back then, starting in 1975. They had rear shocks and fake rubber boots for front shocks and that was about it. The steel ones were green and the aluminum ones were of course ball burnished silver.

I don’t know whether Bill is dead or alive, so I’ll be kind to him here. My mental picture of him has him in a tan Member’s Only jacket. His blonde hair was thinning and his face was in the first stages of wrinkles, but there was always mischief in his grey eyes.  I’ll never know if he liked me but I like to think so.

Triple A was an armpit of a place, based on cheap labor and no amenities. A guy I went to welding school with named Brian and I were hired right out of high school. Neither of us really knew how to weld, so we were hired and spent a few weeks welding scrap metal and generally screwing off.

Eventually we got our act together and started making bikes. Ed Penfold (III) of Triple A helped Bill with the fixtures and equipment. We had one ancient TIG machine and one workable Cobra MIG. Brian got the MIG while I started working the TIG when we got a new Lincoln.

You can tell the earliest Kawasaki bikes by the rear sections. The first ones were TIG welded and have an appearance much like the rest of the welds on the bike, but the later ones were MIG welded (by Brian) and the welds are much rougher just because of the process, not because of Brian. Okay, maybe a little because of Brian.

I never welded a steel bike, Brian did those. I did all of the aluminum bikes. I started out making about three a day. It was hot, July heat and no air. By October I was cranking out three an hour. By spring I was doing 35 a day. I think I was making about $2.75 an hour.

I left Triple A in 1977 for another job, but when Bill went on his own he needed a welder to help him make his first bikes, so he called me. He had a small service garage on some alley in Gardena. He had a surface plate, a micrometer, a tube bender, a lathe, a mill, a saw, and a cot upon which he spent many nights. A small office with a drawing table was attached.

Bill hand measured each bend, each cut, every detail on those first bikes. His new design was much different from the Kawasaki. Bill eliminated the rear suspension and moved the seat post up. He put a triangular throat for the rear stays in and beefed up the wheel stays, creating a solid union with the crank tube. Those first few bikes weren’t perfect, but he had them ball burnished and/or anodized and took them on road shows.

That’s when he came up with the simple Race, Inc. sticker he put on the head tube. As the first trade show was near, one night (we always worked late those first months), Bill sent me to a Carrow’s restaurant for some dinner. He gave me some cash and told me to get what I wanted and whatever looked good for him. As we ate on the granite flat, bill started to sketch a logo out. It was just Race, Inc. inside a circle, but as the ink bled out it created a scalloped effect along the edge of the circle. I shrugged. At that point I had a crush on his daughter and had little else on my mind.
Eventually Bill moved his shop to a location not at all far from Triple A. We went into production soon after. I got to do everything on those bikes in the first year. I bent the handlebars, cut the head tubes on the mill, cranktubes, too. I bent the downtubes and deburred the gussets. I welded my head off, and learned a lot by doing that.

I left Race, Inc. in 1978 to work in aerospace. That has been a wild ride, and a whole ‘nuther story, but those days with Bill Bastian, his son, and his company were juicy, rich days. I missed out on his daughter, though.

I have a lot of stories about those days if anyone is interested.

AncientRebel wrote:

Hey, Gang. Man, this brings back memories.

I worked for Bill Bastian when he was just starting the Kawasaki BMX line. That was his design and he used Triple A as a financial backer. We made both steel and aluminum bikes for Kawasaki back then, starting in 1975. They had rear shocks and fake rubber boots for front shocks and that was about it. The steel ones were green and the aluminum ones were of course ball burnished silver.

I don’t know whether Bill is dead or alive, so I’ll be kind to him here. My mental picture of him has him in a tan Member’s Only jacket. His blonde hair was thinning and his face was in the first stages of wrinkles, but there was always mischief in his grey eyes.  I’ll never know if he liked me but I like to think so.

Triple A was an armpit of a place, based on cheap labor and no amenities. A guy I went to welding school with named Brian and I were hired right out of high school. Neither of us really knew how to weld, so we were hired and spent a few weeks welding scrap metal and generally screwing off.

Eventually we got our act together and started making bikes. Ed Penfold (III) of Triple A helped Bill with the fixtures and equipment. We had one ancient TIG machine and one workable Cobra MIG. Brian got the MIG while I started working the TIG when we got a new Lincoln.

You can tell the earliest Kawasaki bikes by the rear sections. The first ones were TIG welded and have an appearance much like the rest of the welds on the bike, but the later ones were MIG welded (by Brian) and the welds are much rougher just because of the process, not because of Brian. Okay, maybe a little because of Brian.

I never welded a steel bike, Brian did those. I did all of the aluminum bikes. I started out making about three a day. It was hot, July heat and no air. By October I was cranking out three an hour. By spring I was doing 35 a day. I think I was making about $2.75 an hour.

I left Triple A in 1977 for another job, but when Bill went on his own he needed a welder to help him make his first bikes, so he called me. He had a small service garage on some alley in Gardena. He had a surface plate, a micrometer, a tube bender, a lathe, a mill, a saw, and a cot upon which he spent many nights. A small office with a drawing table was attached.

Bill hand measured each bend, each cut, every detail on those first bikes. His new design was much different from the Kawasaki. Bill eliminated the rear suspension and moved the seat post up. He put a triangular throat for the rear stays in and beefed up the wheel stays, creating a solid union with the crank tube. Those first few bikes weren’t perfect, but he had them ball burnished and/or anodized and took them on road shows.

That’s when he came up with the simple Race, Inc. sticker he put on the head tube. As the first trade show was near, one night (we always worked late those first months), Bill sent me to a Carrow’s restaurant for some dinner. He gave me some cash and told me to get what I wanted and whatever looked good for him. As we ate on the granite flat, bill started to sketch a logo out. It was just Race, Inc. inside a circle, but as the ink bled out it created a scalloped effect along the edge of the circle. I shrugged. At that point I had a crush on his daughter and had little else on my mind.
Eventually Bill moved his shop to a location not at all far from Triple A. We went into production soon after. I got to do everything on those bikes in the first year. I bent the handlebars, cut the head tubes on the mill, cranktubes, too. I bent the downtubes and deburred the gussets. I welded my head off, and learned a lot by doing that.

I left Race, Inc. in 1978 to work in aerospace. That has been a wild ride, and a whole ‘nuther story, but those days with Bill Bastian, his son, and his company were juicy, rich days. I missed out on his daughter, though.

I have a lot of stories about those days if anyone is interested.

awsome piece of history tell us more......
dion