Barber Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham, AL!

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There are currently 1455 complete motorcycles in the collection of which about 700 are kept on display. The secondary storage area is for incomplete bikes that are mostly used to salvage parts. I paid the extra for the guided tour that included the basement shops. On the south side of the basement is the main restoration area which is divided into the car side and the motorcycle side. Today they had a '64 Ferrari F1 done up in USA colours...

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In 1964 Enzo Ferrari and Bernie Ecclestone were having a falling out and Ferrari was going to pull out of Formula 1. John Surtess pointed out that that he was leading the World Championship at the time so Enzo decided to lease the Ferrari to Ferrari to Ferrari USA rather than be the official entry which explains the blue & white livery instead of the traditional Ferrari red.

On the other side of the restoration area was a replica of one of the early Harleys....

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What makes it a replica is that not all the parts were original when the museum got the bike but they had received permission from Harley Davidson to make up the proper decals since the bike was for display in the collection.

On the back wall in the hallway between the shops is a board that was brought over from the old museum that is signed by a number of racers and other dignitaries that have been to the museum over the years...

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One of the signature near the center bottom that stood out for me was Jeff Smith, former World MX Champion for BSA and also worked for Can-Am Motorcycles. Jeff rode for the Canadian ISDT team and I had met Jeff at the 1980 ISDT in France when I went over as a manager for one of our club teams that year.

We did go into the storage area where the bikes that are not currently on display are stored. This Vincent had just recently been rotated out of the display area....

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There was a very interesting modified V12 Kawaski in the storage area....

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Apparently there is a chap over in Great Britain that has done conversions by mating on extra cylinders. In this case he took two 6 cylinder Kawis and mated them up to make a V12 as if the Kawi 6 cylinder was not crazy enough. I could not even imagine what this thing would sound like.

In the one shop they had a computer controller water cutter for making up everything from wheel rotors to decals. Across the floor was the main machine shop. The museum has an agreement with Hass Automation (of Hass Racing fame) for Hass Automation to use the shop as a showroom and training facility in exchange for the use of the equipment. In this shop the museum can machine just about any part they cannot find for a restoration.

The basement also has a number of cars on display including this Bonneville Streamliner...

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One of George Barber's recent additions to his collection is outboard motors which are displayed in the basement around the outside of the main area...

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The other new addition to the museum are these life size plastic model kits...

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If you had plastic car models as a kid you probably remember having these snap out kits just not quite in this size.

The museum were also prepping a few bikes to the shipped out to a concourse coming up in the near future. This Vincent Black Lightning was certainly looking very pretty...

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Thanks for sharing - this is on my agenda for a road trip to check out all the wonderment there....

Harley Museum here in Milwaukee is cool, but clearly nothing nearly as awesome as that !! :)

 
A warning about the Barber Museum. Take several extra batteries for your camera when you go. We started on the 5th floor and by the time we got to the third floor my wife had exhausted both batteries we brought with us. Another very cool sculpture on the grounds is a giant spider. Viewed from the air you can see that they used different seeds for the grass and cut it at different angles so it looks like a giant spiders web. Very Cool. BTW, if you ever want to see one of the guys wearing the red jackets, just reach out to try and touch one of the bikes. They will appear out of no where.

 
&^%^$#$ !!

I was down to just north of Atlanta last year and didn't know I was that close!

DOH !
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If you make it into the basement look up on the wall of the elevator on the track side of the building and you'll find this interesting piece of artwork the boys in the shop cobbled together from some bicycle and motorcycle parts amongst other things they laying around....

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One my previous visit two weeks earlier there was a Porsche Driving School taking place but on this Saturday some group had a motorcycle track day going on....

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A view of the museum walking up to the entrance....

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The guide told us that there are plans to expand the museum to almost double its current size.

When you first walk through the doors there is a display case area on your right....

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This is a replica of Cook Nelson's 1977 racing Ducati, the first victory for Ducati in North America at Daytona....

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Have a look where the spark plug boot is located...

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Another Ducati race bike on display.....

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I wonder just how much Italian wine was consumed coming up with this design?

There is simply no where else will you see so many bikes on display....

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This time I made an effort to get a better view of the machine shop in the basement....

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As I mentioned earlier the museum is a customer display and training center for Hass Automation. That is the same Hass as in the Hass / Stewart Racing of NASCAR.

The staff were in the midst of doing a teardown and prep of their F1 Ferrari getting it ready for the Vintage Car Festival coming up at Barber. They will probably be putting this car out on the track during that weekend....

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One of the bikes in the restoration shop area...

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They also have a clean room for the race bikes and a number of Yamahas were being worked on. They also had the Britten in the clean room which had just returned from a concours event....

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Here is the Britten at the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance....

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What makes this particular bike so amazing for me was that the New Zealander designer basically built this bike by hand in his own basement.

Now here was something completely different that was parked in the back storage area.....

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Looks like something Don Carver would ride.

I am going to stop with one of the classic motorcycles of its time, a 1938 Brough Superior....

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If you want to see more you are just going to have to go to Leeds, Alabama and go look for yourself. This place needs to be on everyone's Bucket List.

 
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Your second Ducati race bike is actually a Bimota Tesi 1D, using a Ducati engine. Hub-centered steering eliminates forks by using a swingarm on the front wheel. Motorcycles with standard fork front ends have a large offset in braking force, with the axle being so much lower than the steering hub. Braking force acts on the axle at the bottom of the fork, but is transferred to the bike at the steering hub, way up at the top, and the result is a much greater dive on the front end than would happen if the braking force went straight back from the axle. Hey, look what that swingarm does!!!!!

The downside is much less steering lock, and 8 or 10 joints in the steering linkage, all potential points of wear that can make the steering...... imprecise.... after a certain amount of time.

On that Ferrari, this is how it was displayed in 2009, as the car with which John Surtees won the World Championship in 1964. (Gurney's 1963 Indy Lotus 29 in the background.) They also had cases full of bits and pieces to drool over:

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In the last two races of the 1964 season (United States and Mexico,) the Ferraris were not entered by the factory, but by the North American Racing Team, in American racing colors of blue and white, which is how they've got the car now (So I have to go back for more pictures......)

This pic is from the web, Surtees driving the car (I can't say it's this same chassis, but...... how many of them are there???) at Goodwood last July.

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The museum actually has two of John Surtess' Ferraris since one was in the basement being prepped for the upcoming vintage festival and the other was in its usual location in the museum on this day. The red Ferrari was the first Ferrari to be added to the collection.

The story goes that when the car became available the museum contacted John Surtess for the first time. No one from the museum had met John at that point. The car was in England not that far from the Surtess estate so John agreed to met with the museum people who went over to England to look over the car. John took one look at the cockpit and authenticated the car as one of Ferraris he used to win the championship. The museum people were a little taken back by how quickly John had authenticated the car. John explained by pointing to the crude hammer marks in the inside on the sides of the cockpit and explained that he himself had borrowed a hammer from one of the mechanics and had banged out the sides of the cockpit to make room for his hips.

From that meeting John Surtess developed a lasting friendship with George Barber and is a strong supporter of the museum to this day.

 
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Very cool, then! Two of them! Like I said before, how many of them are there??!?!?! Still means I have to make a trip to go see!!!!

 

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