More Dick Allen goodness......

Joe Hurst was a friend of Dick Allen, and he worked with Dick at Transway Auto, a transmission shop in Lawndale, CA. They built quite a few bikes while they were there, and also several more together when Dick opened up his own shop in Redondo. This is a bike they put together for Joe himself.

This picture is from a May '68 issue of Roth's Choppers Magazine, and it always cracks me up. Joe has a big grin on his mug, but he's missing one of his front teeth. And, if you look close, there's a big thumbprint in the middle of the picture. They even made mention of the print in the article!

Check out Joe's sissy bar. It's a variation of the double loop bars Dick used to make. Instead of two bars right behind each other, Dick built this one with the second bar sweeping forward to the rear frame legs, for support of heavy loads when they traveled. Also, the SU carb conversion is an early version of the one's Randy Smith was working on.

Respect the trivia - The layout and art (a takeoff of Jackie Gleason's character from the movie of the same name) for this article was done by a young Suzanne Williams.

Here's a great shot of Joe's Dick Allen-built Springer, from the same article. This shot was used in a lot of the ads Dick ran for his springer at the time.

Here's a later version of the same bike, when Joe and Dick were still building some bikes together. Aside from all the Dick Allen-inspired framework and molding, how many of Dick's parts do you see? Well, there's the Dick Allen front end, the converted American 12 spokes, the 2 into 1 collector system, and a new Dick Allen-built sissy bar. Notice also that Joe's SU has been replaced by a pair of Posa Fuel carbs.

Look close, and you'll see a couple unusual things- Dick was a fan of the Sporty rubber mounted headlight, which was actually made for H-D by Guide, GM's lamp division. The headlight used here is a Guide headlight, but it only has one retention band for the sealed beam, not two bands like the Sporty used. Also notice that the collector system Dick fabbed up for Joe uses a "S" pipe, not a full "outside the frame" front pipe like you've probably seen before.
I wonder if Joe ever got his front tooth replaced?

This is Bob "Bender Bob" Olson's bike, that Bob built to promote his company, EME. Among other products, EME manufactured the girder that's mounted to this bike, as well as that collector system you see - it's the production version of the Dick Allen 2 into 1 system Dick designed. The sissy bar for this bike? It's a little higher version of Joe Hurst's, and this too, was made by Dick Allen for Bender Bob's bike.


And another trivia bit for you - "Bender Bob" Olson was CJ Allan's father-in-law. Yes, that CJ Allan.