A near-obsessive ardor drives bike enthusiasts; however, when Bryan Bentley became talented at a vintage Japanese motorcycle through his wife some years lower back, neither of them should have guessed what it’d lead to. Now Bentley has 17 bikes — at minimum, he thinks that’s proper; he needed to prevent and count up motorcycles saved in several locations — and is hosting what he hopes will become an annual swap meet show and public sale.
Organized via the national Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club, of which Bentley is a member and former board member, the purpose is to get club individuals together for an afternoon of celebrating their shared ardor. Along the way, Bentley said he hopes the event attracts the uninitiated so that novices can examine more about the appeal at the back of those motorcycles.
The event will feature an indoor and outdoor switch meet, a motorcycle display, and an auction through Lakelands Auction Company. A horsepower competition will permit motorbike proprietors to use a dynamometer to judge the energy output, with awards for maximum horsepower and maximum horsepower in line with motor length.
“There’s, in reality, no cost of admission to human beings coming in to enjoy the show,” Bentley stated. “I can’t get any less expensive than that unless I pay people to come.” He said any profits raised at the occasion would be going to Davidson Street Baptist Church, and the event is family-friendly.
Mechanically minded, Bentley’s first exposure to those varieties of motorcycles — that are more compact than American-made motorcycles and generally tend to have smaller, sportier engines — got here when he was 16. He had a Honda CL90, which became a small motorcycle that made a large effect.
“It was just a little 90cc; it wouldn’t go, however fifty-five mph,” he said. “But while you’re sixteen years vintage, fifty-five mph is quite rapid.” The motorcycle could address terrains on and stale street, and despite his and his friend’s great efforts to journey the bike to its very cease, it never gave out on him.
However, that motorbike wasn’t the one that sparked Bentley’s love for these machines — that would come years later. He worked as a vehicle mechanic as a teenager, then became an engineman inside the Coast Guard before running as a college bus mechanic and subsequently as transportation director for Laurens County School District fifty-six.
In 2004, his existence changed when he had a coronary heart assault. While convalescing after the transplant surgical procedure, he observed himself idle and struggling with the concept that he should now not do the sort of work he’d constantly loved.
“I become sitting around bored, and my spouse bought me a touch Honda step-through motorcycle,” he stated. He laid out a tarp, took the motorbike apart, and restored every inch of it from tip to tail. Bentley said that the motorcycle is now sitting in a bike museum in Newburgh, New York.
“I knew he needed to have something to do,” Rosemary Bentley said. “He had been a three-job man his whole life; he needed something bodily to do.” Eventually, he joined the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club; in the end, he grew to be a board member and marketing director for some time. The club linked him to an international of fans, broadening his horizons and networking him with individuals who would tell him about motorcycles in the marketplace.
He works totally on his motorcycles but can now and again be talked into doing paintings on someone else’s motorcycle. He stated something magical about hearing an engine kick on after sitting idle and neglected for many years. The hobby has paid for itself, including his towing trailer, vapor blasters, cleaners, and various gear. “It has just been a life-saver for him,” Rosemary said. “The humans he has met and the pleasure he’s had simply from that first little motorbike to what it’s far now.”
