Super Rocket

I'm starting to look for a Super Rocket, preferably the later version from 61 on with 9 to one compression and the 357 cam. I am interested to hear from any owners of these machines either past or present as to what the riding experience was like, ie are they a reasonable long distance machine. They sure are pretty, as are the Road Rockets also.

Glen

Glen you might get more response posting an enquiry here.
http://www.britbike.com/forums/ubbthrea ... d=1&page=1

Thanks Mark, will give that a try.

Glen

Well I bought a 63 Super Rocket. It is being trucked to the Canadian border from Texas.

Glen

Has it arrived yet Glen?
What do you think?

It took two full weeks for a small Texas bank to clear my US dollar certified cheque that was drawn on the 277 year old Bank of New York, the oldest bank in the US. Banking in the US is quite different than in Canada. Here we just have 5 large banks and a Certified cheque from any one of them is considered the same as cash, any car dealer will give you a car instantly in exchange for a certified cheque drawn on a CDN bank.

In the US there are hundreds of tiny banks and each state acts almost like a separate country in some ways. Just different to be forced to wait two weeks and not what I expected when sending a certified cheque by Priority Mail.
Then the seller decided to short cut the crating arrangement the shipping company required and we had agreed upon. He decided that a crate was not needed for shipping the bike as his sister owns a Harley dealership and new Harleys are shipped without a crate, just strapped to a pallet. If it is good enough for A Harley, it is good enough for a lowly Brit bike, was the attitude!
What he failed to understand is that Harley does not hire common carriers, they have their own trucks and ship only Harleys on these trucks, so there is no fear of other merchandise falling on the uncrated bike. Also, the Harley goes directly to it's selling dealer without changing trucks, whereas the common carriers like mine (Hercules Forwarding) use small trucks to haul from out of the way places to major centres where the crated bike is then "cross docked" to a large highway trailer. The large truck and trailer will take it north to Seattle where it will again be cross docked onto a small truck for final shipment to Lynden, WA. That is why this shipment needs a crate.
The seller instead strapped the BSA to one of these leftover Harley pallets and called my shipping company for pickup. Of course they took one look at the way he had packed to bike and refused to load it, then decided that they did not want any further involvement with the shipment.

I convinced them to try again after convincing the seller that he must crate the bike as originally agreed upon. This was all very frustrating to this retired carpenter because I could build the crate in less time than I spent trying to convince the seller that it was mandatory! Unfortunately I am 2700 miles from the bike.
Finally after about a hundred phone calls and many emails to the seller's sister ( he has no email!) , apparently all unopened, the bike was loaded last Thursday.

Stay tuned!
This was an impulse buy based on a very blurry phone pic and the information that the bike has only 542 original miles, which is not believable. So I deserve to get burned a little or maybe a lot!

Glen

^ ouch Glen!
I hope that it works out well for you.

Cue the Customs agent...

Sounds like Mr. Murphy has been up to his old tricks again.
It can be like that when you have to put your faith in someone else and have no control over what is happening thousands of miles away.
It reminds me of when I bought my Commando in the states. I had it trucked form Ohio to California to be loaded on a ship for it's trip down under but the bike got stuck in a warehouse somewhere in L.A. while my agent and the company that loads the containers slugged it out over contract details. I was expecting it all to go pear shaped because it took months longer than it should have to arrive in Fremantle. Western Australia. I thought I was going to loose the bike for a while there. But it all worked out ok in the end and arrived at home while I was away in Europe. Sure was a trying time though.
Hope this doesn't put the willies up you Glen. Just my experience. :roll:

I had a bad shipping experience once as well, that was when having my Vincent shipped via ocean freight from Australia to Canada. I had to hire a person to pack the bike in Sydney. He took several weeks to get around to it. After many, many phone calls from me he eventually did pack the bike. I believe he was waiting for a free motorcycle crate from the local Ducati dealer, who in turn were waiting for delivery of a new Ducati.
He charged me $550 to put the bike in the free crate and drop it off at the shipping Company 5 minutes from his place.
After 9/11 it became mandatory to fill out a form that details content of the box being shipped. I had a hunch he might be weak on paperwork, but he assured me that it was ll done and "it's with the bike mate".
After he finally dropped the bike off the shipping company(Eculine) rep phoned to say that they had my bike sitting in a crate in the middle of their driveway with no paperwork. When they told the packer that he could not leave the bike with them without paperwork, he told them to F off,drove his 5 ton crane truck back out to the main road and in a fit of temper dropped the bike very roughly onto their driveway entrance, then roared off. The shipping company rep knew it was my bike because I had been calling to see if it had been delivered to them yet. The packer had lied several times in the preceding weeks, saying it was there when in reality he hadn't bothered to do the job yet, so I had called Eculine several times about this and they were familiar with the shipment plus had my contact info.
The shipping company Eculinesaved my bacon, they knew and understood what was in the box and put it safely away in a shed somewhere. As the rep said," We have a 1947 Vincent Rapide with no paperwork, so technically it belongs to no one at present. From our conversations I know it belongs to you and will take care of it temporarily. However, if we ship it to you without paperwork it is doubtful you will ever receive it" Of course I had already paid for it in full.
I talked to the packer and told him he had to fill out the paperwork and he refused. At least he had stopped lying!
Finally the next day his temper had cooled off and he filled out the paperwork so that the bike could be loaded on the ship.

Then the shipping company lost the bike for two months! It turned out that bike and it's container were unloaded in Malaysia due to mechanical problems with the container ship. It was two months before the container was picked up again and no one at Eculine, the shipping company, could tell me what had happened to the bike!

Feeling better about this BSA today though, the bike was picked up in Texas on Friday. The tracking number wasn't available until this AM and it shows it already in Seattle to be delivered to Lynden tomorrow!
Once again though, the seller has let me down as the title and bill of sale were promised weeks ago but have not arrived yet. The bike may have to sit in Lynden, Washington for awhile until I can get the paper work sorted for the Customs.

Funnily enough, the paperwork is all given to the US Customs for a three day period as they seem to hold all of the power over the export/import approval. Once they determine it is OK to be released from the US, the Canadian Customs blindly goes along with it all, but they do collect 5%GST.

I should be able to get a look at the bike tomorrow to see whether all of that chrome is pitted with rust from the salty Gulf air! It was really hard to discern from the crappy phone pic.
Impuse buy

Glen

Wow Glen, you got me hooked on this story, keep us posted, we're dying to know how badly you get burned on this one... Hopefully its just a mild singe ...!

The saga continued yesterday.In 1963, a Californian by name of Larry Clark special ordered this Super Rocket thru Hap Alzina, the west coast dealer/distributor. Hap demanded special bikes for his west coast market. They were higher compression, had a differently shaped fuel tank and had more chrome than the east coast bikes, which although sedate compared to the West coast bikes, were pretty flash compared to the UK Super Rockets. Larry ordered this bike in the Catalina Blue colour, not standard for a Super Rocket of any year.
Other than the Carb, which was changed to a Concentric years ago, it is all original and the seller had the original title, still in Larry's name. The sellers father bought the bike from Larry two years ago, then passed away about one year ago.

We all know that the title is pretty important, especially for a Canadian attempting to export the bike from the US to Canada. Without the title the bike cannot be exported to Canada nor can it be registered for road use.

So my instructions were to send the title by Priority Mail to my US receiver , just across the border from me. Priority mail has tracking and requires a signature, plus it can be accepted by my receiver whereas regular US mail cannot (by law)
My instructions were sent via email but , like this entire deal, where only skimmed over.
The seller's sister, who owns a Harley Dealership and ought to know better, ignored the instructions and dumped the title in the regular USPS mail.
I alerted the receiver to this fact and he intercepted the envelope before it was returned or worse, lost in the mail.

The bike showed up today as did the paperwork.
I must have horseshoes up my butt because the bike is a beauty. You could enter it in a show as it is and expect to win.
And it is all original paintwork and chrome. There is some Patina of age here and there, but that tends to add to the desireability, for me at least. Hopefully the mechanical condition will be similar!

Glen

The receiver though the packing crate might have been built by Ray Charles, however there is no shipping damage anywhere on the bike.

Almost Marilyn Monroe pretty. I hope the other bikes don't get jealous :shock:

That looks lovely, more pics when unpacked please.
With luck like that, you should put your life savings on the lottery, and quick!

Looks nice and pleased it all worked out in the end.

I felt your stress about the unprofessional behaviour !!

Thanks John& Nigel.
There was definitely a bit of buyers remorse for me about 2/3 of the way thru the deal, but it is all gone for now. Can't wait to get it home and see how it runs.

Glen

Lovely Glen. I bet your excited and relieved all at once. Strange how things can be so totally disorganized and still work out in the end.

Hey Glen.
What is the latest with the bike?
All ok?

Everything is OK but the confusion/screw ups continue. As of last April the rules to export a motorized anything including a riding lawn mower from the US became much more complex. There is now an/online process to go through and unlike most online processes which simplify things, this process makes it almost impossible to export the machine without hiring a broker.

If I wanted to form a company and then register that company with the US Internal Revenue Service, then wait a month, it is possible that I could export the bike without using a broker!
As a Canadian citizen, I do not want to register a company with the IRS for one motorcycle export.

I checked with various brokers and had quotes from $500 to $800 for the service. One of the brokerage reps was a girl I knew from school. She told me of a PO box company on the Canadian side doing the paperwork for "a very reasonable amount".
I called them and set it up, only $40 for the paperwork. It was all set for hauling the bike across last Wednesday, but the PO Box rep forgot to file the paperwork! The US Customs insists on paperwork being filed at least 72 hours prior to export. The Canadian side is easy, they just want their 5% GST and beyond that there is no red tape. The US side costs nothing(other than broker fees) but is laden with red tape and acronyms like EEIN and INXST plus several others. Very complex.
So we will try again this Wednesday.

Glen