The Ultimate Motorcycle Mayhem | American Pickers

JERSEY JON: Rolling, rolling. MIKE: God dang, Jersey.
We gotta come back out here riding these roads on motorcycles, dude.
JERSEY JON: I’ll bring the Indian 4 out here.
MIKE: I’ve never ridden up here before.
JERSEY JON: I’ve been through here.
MIKE: Have you really? JERSEY JON: Yeah, yeah.
MIKE: This is it right here. There’s a barn, look at that barn. That looks like an Iowa barn.
JERSEY JON: Let me get the flyer.
MIKE: Hey, hey! I’m Mike.
LINDA: Hi, Mike. MIKE: This is Jersey.
JERSEY JON: How you doing? LINDA: Hi, Jersey!
MIKE: Hey. What are you doing, cleaning this spot out for more motorcycles? LINDA: Yep.
LARRY: I’m Larry. MIKE: What a great barn.
Good to see you, Larry. JERSEY JON: I’m Jon.
LINDA: Hi, Jon. Nice to meet you. JERSEY JON: This is cool.
LINDA: We have lots of cars and lots of motorcycles that need to go. MIKE: Nice!
(laughing) LARRY: Let me come down.
JERSEY JON: Yeah, she’s selling all your stuff, dude!
LARRY: I collect mostly motorcycles.
We race them in vintage races.
Motocross and Trials.
LARRY: I have every Japanese Trials bike made in the ’70s.
MIKE: No kidding. JERSEY JON: Cool.
MIKE: And you’re racing them? LARRY: Oh yeah.
MIKE: That’s very cool. LARRY: About four times a year.
MIKE: God dang, I love that man. LARRY: It’s fun.
MIKE: That’s something I’ve never, never done.
But I remember like watching it on television when I was a kid, you know, like Wild World of Sports stuff, crazy stuff, you know. LARRY: Now I get to own all the bikes I wanted when I was 16. MIKE: Oh yeah, absolutely.
LINDA: Hey, I think you guys are good.
LINDA: Hey, I think you guys are good.
I’m gonna leave you to it. Sell something, please!
JERSEY JON: Thank you. We’ll do our job.
LARRY: Alright, let me take you to the back and check out the…
MIKE: Alright, here it is.
Wow. So, what year is this uh, this 500?
LARRY: That’s a 400. It’s ’75.
MIKE: So, you still riding this? LARRY: It’s got a mono shock.
MIKE: Yeah? LARRY: So, you can’t run them in vintage.
JERSEY JON: ’75? MIKE: So, ’75 is the cutoff for vintage races you guys are doing?
LARRY: ’74. MIKE: ’74 is okay.
MIKE: Larry’s motorcycle passion is in the 1970s. I’m remembering this stuff, I remember what it sounds like. (mimics motor revving) You know, all the 2-stroke smoke, the RMs running up and down the street.
The older kids scaring the crap out of us because they were so big and cool.
Doing donuts on the baseball field, all that stuff, you know.
Jumping ramps.
We were doing all of that on our bicycles.
We were imagining ourselves being Roger De Coster.
You know, painting our bikes yellow and black and jumping over our friends and all this stuff, breaking our frames in half.
MIKE: Hey, I got a question for you. How much is this?
(knocking) LARRY: I don’t know, throw me an offer.
MIKE: It looks like it’s something that came out of, like, a conversion van or something.
It’s a piece of the paneling.
LARRY: It’s definitely ’70s.
MIKE: Yeah, for sure. I like the fact that he’s got the girl. You usually just see him.
LARRY: Right. MIKE: Wow.
This is the rare version, Jersey.
JERSEY JON: Yeah, with the girl?
MIKE: We’re all on the memory lane train, you know, all the motorcycles, reminiscing, and then we look on the wall and there’s the hieroglyphics from the 1970s, you know. The Keep on Truckin’. MIKE: 50 bucks. LARRY: Okay.
MIKE: Alright, we’re doing it. JERSEY JON: That thing’s killer.
MIKE: Very cool.
LARRY: Alright, this is a building I keep all my good stuff in.
MIKE: Okay, so this is everything that runs?
LARRY: Everything runs in here.
MIKE: God, I bet you never get tired of that view.
JERSEY JON: It’s gorgeous.
MIKE: Whoa. Dang. LARRY: This building’s bigger.
JERSEY JON: It’s a lot bigger in here than it looks– MIKE: How many square feet? LARRY: About 5,000?
MIKE: Wow. What bikes are you…
LARRY: Everything with a number plate on, I race.
MIKE: Okay.
JERSEY JON: This room is full of Larry’s pride and joy. These are really super clean bikes, they’re all vintage bikes, man. But they look brand new. I mean, he’s taken a lot of time, he’s taken a lot of effort to make sure every nut and bolt is tight and these things are ready to ride. MIKE: This is cool.
Look at the condition this is in, Jersey.
LARRY: SL70. MIKE: Yeah, that’s cool.
I remember these when we were kids, man.
JERSEY JON: What year is this?
LARRY: ’75.
JERSEY JON: The Kawasaki KE series is one bike that was there that I’m really interested in. It’s probably one of the longest runs of Kawasaki motorcycles that they’ve made. JERSEY JON: Are you racing this still?
LARRY: No, not that one. I have a bike I race.
This one is kind of too nice to race.
JERSEY JON: Is this for sale?
LARRY: No. JERSEY JON: Aw, man.
MIKE: Is that original paint? LARRY: Yes.
MIKE: Wow. JERSEY JON: It’s so clean!
MIKE: When you talk about selling something and the idea of selling something sounds pretty good, but then when someone shows up, and they’re like, “Hey, I want to buy that.” Those words make it real. And he is selling a few things, but a lot of the stuff we’re seeing that we really love, he loves it too. So, this is all new for him, I think.
MIKE: How about this sign right here?
Whoa. Porcelain.
LARRY: Is it? MIKE: Yeah. Oh yeah.
LARRY: Double-sided. MIKE: Double-sided.
That’s the good side, actually.
MIKE: Greyhound has been around for a very long time. I’m talking before World War I. And I can’t tell you how many times that we’ve been through, that one of the coolest buildings in the town is the Greyhound bus station. Some of those early bus stations, you know, they just got a look to them. Almost like a car dealership or a service garage. But some of these places are still open today. Greyhound is still around driving back and forth across America. MIKE: Would you sell that?
LARRY: If the price is right.
MIKE: I know someone that’s restoring an old bus station right now. LARRY: Oh, okay.
MIKE: Um…
600 bucks.
LARRY: Okay. I’ll do that. Cool.
MIKE: Alright, man. Yeah, baby. Appreciate it.
LARRY: So, this old guy we knew, used to go to the Indy 500 every year.
MIKE: Yeah? LARRY: And he worked for Bear.
MIKE: Oh, wow! JERSEY JON: Whoa, that is cool.
LARRY: At Bear, they wore those and I have the hard-hat that goes with it. MIKE: No way. Those are cool.
JERSEY JON: Yeah, that is cool. LARRY: This is his dealership.
MIKE: Oh, man!
LARRY: Periato & Son. JERSEY JON: DeSoto.
LARRY: Well, I was introduced to him, Marcel, by a friend of mine that we ride motorcycles together.
And he and his father would deer hunt up in the mountains.
Marcel owned the property.
JERSEY JON: Whoa, racing division.
MIKE: Racing division. LARRY: As he got older, he was on the safety crew. MIKE: Oh yeah.
LARRY: I actually got to go to the Indy 500 with him before he died.
MIKE: No way, you did? LARRY: Oh yeah.
MIKE: Chain stitched, automotive-related coveralls, shirts, one’s got a dealership on the back of it. This stuff gets me so jacked up, I can’t wait to try it on.
JERSEY JON: For sure. MIKE: Look at that. Jersey who?
JERSEY JON: Looks like crap on you, dude.
MIKE: Uh-huh. JERSEY JON: It would look better on me.
MIKE: Now we’re all of a sudden seeing a side of Larry that we did not know existed, the vintage clothing side of Larry, the guy that cares about this kind of stuff. Yes, it could’ve been thrown away, but Larry saved it. He’s got that big heart, and he was connected to the person that owned it. MIKE: Grab those Barbour jackets, too.
Did you see those, Jersey? JERSEY JON: No.
MIKE: Barbour and Belstaff are two high-end companies when it comes to motorcycle clothing. Gear that you wear when you’re riding. And anybody that owns that gear will tell you that it’s high quality, but it takes forever to break it in. (growling) MIKE: Look at that, Jersey.
JERSEY JON: You look pretty cool. MIKE: Oh yeah.
MIKE: And so, when I’m putting on these Barbour jackets, that’s what I’m checking out. I mean, you can actually move in them. Some of the stuff when you buy it new, it’s like armor. These are already broken in. MIKE: Is this something that you would consider selling?
LARRY: I’ll sell one of them. MIKE: And this is so…
He would’ve worn this stuff at Indy?
LARRY: Every May, he went to Indy for a month.
Bear would teach him how to use all the latest alignment and straightening equipment.
MIKE: So, like, what year are you talking?
LARRY: He started in the ’30s. MIKE: Wow.
LARRY: Mid-30s.
MIKE: Bear is the company who basically invented alignment equipment and they were the industry standard. I mean, any body shop, any service garage, that’s who Bear is.
MIKE: He was freaking tall, man. LARRY: Yeah, he was.
JERSEY JON: But is DeSoto a Plymouth dealer?
LARRY: Yeah. JERSEY JON: Wow, cool.
MIKE: 550 bucks.
LARRY: 600?
I’ll even throw in the hat.
MIKE: Try it on, Jersey.
LARRY: It’s been used.
JERSEY JON: It’s all full of spiders, man. You put it on.
(laughing) MIKE: 600 bucks. LARRY: Okay.
MIKE: Thanks, man. I appreciate it.
This is so cool that you knew him for so long.
LARRY: I got to go to Indy with him.
MIKE: Everybody know him there? LARRY: Yeah. Oh yeah.
MIKE: That’s so cool. What year did you go?
LARRY: ’99? MIKE: Wow.
MIKE: The reason a collector doesn’t want to sell something is because they are emotionally and physically connected to it. So, what that tells me about Larry is that he is a very passionate man. MIKE: Hey, hey. Oh, you got my bicycle!
MIKE: All of these things, he embraces. You know, he just needs to get his wife to do the same. LINDA: All this crap and he won’t sell a car.
He sells a bicycle. MIKE: I had to buy something with two wheels.
(laughing) MIKE: This side, Jersey.
JERSEY JON: I got you, bro.
LARRY: Linda, you know, she really was upset that I kept the Volkswagen.
There are cars like the Cadillac and the Pontiac back there which are 4-doors.
They weren’t really interested in it, but I’d really like to get rid of those because I’m never gonna work on them.
I’ll do it little by little, I’ll get rid of them.
JERSEY JON: Thank you so much. LINDA: Oh, thank you.
JERSEY JON: Nice to see you. Nice to meet you guys.
MIKE: Thanks for sharing your family’s history with us.
MIKE: Hey. It’s a slice of heaven here.
LINDA: I know. MIKE: You’re very blessed.
LINDA: It’s God’s country. MIKE: It is God’s country.
(honk, honk) MIKE: See you down the road!
LINDA: I can’t believe you didn’t sell the car.
(laughs) LARRY: Why would I sell the car?
I love my car.