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Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to get to the bike itself which is called Narley but actually the English term “bitsa” for a special like this is might be more correct. Gary’s heavily into road racing vintage bikes and just started rummaging through his spares finding a real Norton Manx Featherbed frame that looked like perfect fodder for what he had in mind. Typically, a popular conversion is to install a Triumph twin into this race-proven frame and this has been done many times, although it never gets old to me. Gary’s not one to take an easy way out and explained how this bike came to be. “I’m not a Harley guy (more on this later), I happened to have Harleys around. All my vintage race bikes are things like BSA Gold Stars, Triumph twins and stuff, and they’re all of the era of the Manx. But I didn’t have a Manx, I just had that chassis,” he said. “It seemed it was going to waste and to build a Triton or something like that would have been easier for me ‘cause I have all that stuff. I just thought, ‘Well maybe I’ll see what the Harley can do.’ A good friend of mine [Alan Sputhe] is such a Harley guy that I thought it’d be fun for him to help me out on it too.”

Surprisingly the ‘80s-vintage 1000cc Sportster unit-construction engine fit like a glove according to Gary. “It actually went into the frame quite easily. It was just a matter of making parts and stuff. The chunk of aluminum behind the motor where the back of the bike attaches, Alan Sputhe www.sputhe.com made that for me. That was maybe the most complicated piece out of everything and it wasn’t complicated,” he said. “We took a little bit off the top of the motor to get it in there and then I had to set the tank up 1.25” higher than it would normally sit on the chassis to help get clearance at the very top. You can’t tell that by looking at it, even the Norton guys don’t notice it. Everything was surprisingly easy.”

The question was still why a Harley engine for a guy who’s not a diehard H-D person. “I don’t even know why I had it. At one time I owned Trackmaster frames and I had built an 883 street tracker for a friend. I bought a wrecked Harley just because I was going to build a street tracker for myself and never got around to it and so this engine just sat in the back of my shop,” said Gary. “It’s an iron barrel Harley, nothing particularly trick at all, most of my good running 500s will kill it.”

A Suzuki SV650 gave up its front end (fork legs, calipers, and rotors) for the build. When I asked Gary if he had thought of using a more modern inverted fork he sternly said, “I’m not that guy!” and laughed (nicely) at my silly question while continuing on about the front end, “One of the things I did do to make the geometry correct was I had my partner at Trackmaster make me up some triple trees so they had the right offset. I put a spoked wheel on [originally mags] so I had to fit the two rotors to that wheel in the same place as the stock one with spacers.” Gary really enjoys wheel building and said, “Wheel building is kind of a nice thing to do at night while I’m watching television. You can do it in the house without your wife kicking you out.” I couldn’t help but notice his rear brake which is a Hurst/Airheart unit that was so familiar to me adorning the back of old flat trackers and Gary’s laughing response was, “I have so many of these from my racing era!”

When it came time for paint, Gary almost had no choice but to go with a traditional Manx silver base coat and said, “I had it painted locally here in Auburn by a buddy, Dale Burske at Auburn Collision Solutions, who’s painted a few of my bikes. I always have trouble getting painters to do more than five or six of my things and then they flake out. This guy has been around quite a while.” As far as the name Narley on the tank goes, Gary said, “The more correct blending of the names would have been Norley, but Narley just sounded fun. Everybody I spoke to chose Narley over Norley.”

The end result looks like the barn find I’ve been chasing for decades ― not over the top with a patina to die for. “I didn’t even polish it, I glass-beaded the whole thing because I wanted to have the dull racing sand-blasted look. Those are just my choices because of what I like,” said Gary. “I’m not saying everybody should do that, but . . .”

When questioned about what it’s like to ride and how many miles he had on it so far, Gary said, “I only have about fifty miles on it. The weekend I was setting up the bikes, one of them started to fall over and I grabbed it quickly and it tore my bicep off my arm so I’m in a cast and I can’t add any miles to it for a while.” Kind of ironic that he’d fall victim to an somewhat stationary injury like this as Gary has been a Hollywood stuntman for the last 38 years working as a stuntman and later as a stunt coordinator or what’s referred to as the second unit director. Where have I seen him you say? Oh he’s worked on little projects like Terminator 2:Judgement Day, U.S. Marshalls, Independence Day, Stroker Ace, Speed, Starsky and Hutch, Patriot Games, Roadhouse, Escape from L.A., and one of my personal favorites, Bad Santa, to honestly name just a very few (check out the Internet Movie Data Base website www.imbd.com for a good read on his credits).

Now that I found out what I should have checked before I spoke with him, he dropped another bomb on me. “A long time ago a man named Evel Knievel and I were rivals, that’s how I got into the picture business. They needed somebody who could do that kind of stuff on bikes and they drafted me. My first job in the business was when Sam Elliott was playing Evel Knievel for a television pilot so I came in to double for Sam. When Evel broke his back in London, he asked me to come over and take his place and from ’76-on, I’ve done all his riding.” Hold on there, I didn’t think I heard him correctly so I asked Gary somewhat incredulously, “You were doing what for him exactly?” To which Gary replied, “I was doing all his riding on every TV show he was ever on, every commercial, every movie, every-everything. Now I’m an old man and just enjoy building motorcycles.” Holy shit that was some kind of revelation to me and I thought I was fairly hip and with it about all things motorcycle, but this . . .

And the quite casual way Gary referred to himself as an old man that just enjoys building motorcycles was kinda funny as I asked him if he still stunts as well as directs. “Oh I’ll still go out and do a big wreck or something, but quite honestly the tricks I used to do on motorcycles were pretty juvenile by today’s standards.” And he’s leaving out the part of his racing activities of riding dirt track, road racing, trials, and motocrossing. Yeah Gary you say you’re some kind of “old guy” but with a full schedule of racing, stunting, directing, and building and maintaining a fleet of vintage race bikes you’d fool me. And I didn’t even get into how for 21 years your old house down in Woodland Hills was famously known as “Toyland” every Christmas with an elaborate display that blew peoples’ minds.

Hey Gary, you’re making it tough for the rest of us old guys with all your incessant busy work. Knock it down a rung so we don’t look so bad man. In the meantime, get that arm all better and get that bike out on the track. It might not be fast, but I bet it sounds good and looks good doing it.