Monday, February 2, 2015

First Trip to Bud's Motorcycle Shop - Part 2 of 2

I did manage to pick up on thing during our first visit to Bud's on Saturday. While poking around looking at parts, I saw a pile of boxes that hadn't been sorted just yet. In the top of one of the open boxes I found this.


My initial thought was that it was a hot shoe for dirt track racing. It was obviously handmade, probably by some amateur racer in his home garage/shop. I'm a total sucker for "vintage" hand made items like this and had to have it. My step dad cautioned me that they probably didn't want to sell it but I had to ask anyway.

I checked with another guy behind the counter who said, "Oh, we usually don't sell stuff like that. You'll have to check with Aaron." Great, Aaron, the guy who I had already "wowed" with my vast knowledge of Sportster shifters (see previous post).

I tracked down Aaron, who had finished helping another customer, and told him I wanted to buy this. He too said, "We don't sell things like that. We keep them to hang on the wall." I mentioned that I wanted it for just that, to hang on the wall in my man cave.  To which he responded, "Look around, this IS one big man cave."  I said, "Yeah, but it's soooo much cooler than mine. If you sell me this, mine will get just a little bit cooler."

Well he told me to throw out a number, so I did knowing that I was going to be pretty low.  He of course responded, "no way" and hit me with more than double my offer.  I countered in between and he said he'd need to think about it, that he didn't really want to sell it anyway.

So I eased off and went about browsing for other parts, while still holding onto the shoe. When I was done I approached him again and asked if he'd thought about. He said yeah, that it was a really cool piece, and he'd have to stay at his original number. I gave him the cash and kept my new treasure.  Keep in mind we're barely talking tens of dollars here, so it was silly to even do the back-and-forth... but I had to try.

After getting home and doing a little research on hot shoes, I'm not entirely sure that's what it is. I initially thought it was as did my step dad and all of the other guys hanging around at Bud's that day.

It's the correct foot (left), but there are a few things that I'm not sure about. Why the tire tread on the bottom? From what I could find on them, most are all metal because you want it to slide on the dirt. 

Also curious are the bolts. I get they are to attach the tread but why are a couple of them significantly longer than necessary. It seems to me that would be even worse (better?) than the tire tread and would cause the shoe to grab rather than slide.

So far, I haven't found any pictures of something similar so I'm not sure what I've got. Here are a couple additional pics, anyone else have ideas?





No comments:

Post a Comment