McCulloch motor on AMF moped

[mark hinrichs]

Hello
I have a few AMF mopeds. and have had the motors apart and back , and can make them run.
I have a few things I'd like to learn about this odd little mill, the BHE 900
Where were they built?
I've learned that about 200,000 of these bikes were built between 78 and 81. I talked with a woman that worked at the assembly plant in Illinois, and she said the motors would just arrive by truck.
The motor is a friction drive, and I'm curious about how that evolved. Were there ever any other McCulloch friction drive motors?
The motor has Los Angeles, cast just below McCulloch, was there a manufacturing plant there in the 78-81 time period?
From what I can tell, there were 2 modifications to the original 1978 motor, I'm curious if these changes were improvements, or done for some other reason.
the first modification was to the carb with a pump incorporated into it,, and the 2nd modification was to stuff the crank, enlarge the muffler, and/but to decrease the carb throat size..
A little off the subject, for go karting, so , thanks for your thoughts
Mark

[Doug Milliken]

Mark,

I can help you out.

I was a Design/Development Engineer at McCulloch from 1974 through 1978, my first job out of college. I designed the Power Mac 300 series of chainsaws that started production in 1977. Sitting a few rows in front of my design station in Marina Del Rey, Ca. (drafting board days) was the gentleman designing the engine for the AMF bike. His name is Joe Harralson.

I reconnected with Joe a year ago. That’s an interesting story, so I guess I’ll tell it.

I remembered that when Joe left McCulloch right around the time I did, he said he was moving to “Hangtown” (Placerville, California) to start a vineyard. The only reason I remembered this factoid was Joe had told me the colorful story of why they called Placerville “Hangtown”. It was because back in the gold rush days they used to do the public hangings of bad guys for all of Placer County in Placerville and it became famous for that. Great entertainment I guess.

In August of 2011, I was vacationing in California wine country with my wife and we stayed a night at a B&B in Placerville. I told my wife what I had learned from Joe about “Hangtown”. So I picked up the yellow pages and low and behold, there was a Joseph Harralson in the phone book, 35 years later. So I called the number and asked “Is this the Joe Harralson who worked at McCulloch in the 1970’s?” And he answered, “why yes, it is”. No s- - t. So my wife and I met Joe and his wife at a pizza joint and had lunch and reminisced. I had had dinner at Joe’s house in Redondo Beach back about 1975. We even talked briefly about the moped engine project, which was not his favorite professional project. Probably caused him to start thinking about leaving McCulloch. Not that he didn’t like the engine, but they put unimaginable pressure on him to design it and take it to production in a few months and that made his life miserable and soured him on the management. Joe designed marine engines for Mercury before McCulloch. He also designed a one-off turbocharged V6 (I think it was) that he and another guy set a land speed record with at Bonneville. They only built one engine, from scratch. Made tooling and castings and the whole deal. He also became a college professor in addition to a vintner. Now he just does the vineyards.

As a quirky side note, I was co-star in a marketing film for the kit version of that moped engine. It was a short film. I played a member of a bicycle club (no idea why they picked me to be in it). They filmed me riding around San Vicente Boulevard in the Pacific Palisades/Santa Monica area of Los Angeles as a member of a bike club (a real one), maybe a dozen bicyclists dressed the part. A hot blonde chick (played by Kathy Lamm, an early 20’s draftsman in our design department – I remember her well) on a moped passed us up a hill and I perked up and broke from the pack and chased after her. The final scene I was riding off into the sunset with her, with a McCulloch moped engine kit now attached to my bicycle………. Isn’t that sweet.

Besides the AMF Roadmaster the engine was also to be sold as a kit that could be bolted to the front handlebar/fork/wheel assembly of a standard bicycle – engine on top of front wheel - and transferred power to the front tire by a friction drum of some sort contacting the tire tread. I believe the AMF bike was powered on the rear wheel. It was 35 years ago so a bit fuzzy. It was the first and the last friction drive moped engine McCulloch produced. It was a short history, and not financially successful. AMF was projected to sell a lot more mopeds than they did.

Los Angeles was the corporate headquarters of McCulloch Corp at that time. Most of the production had been moved from Century Blvd right at LAX to Lake Havasu, Arizona - a town put on the map by my then boss, Robert P. McCulloch (R.P.M.) who had other businesses besides the chainsaw company. Oil and Real Estate, etc. A dynamic and some would say eccentric entrepreneur . RIP RPM. The moped engines were most likely manufactured in Havasu, though it is possible they were assembled at the Century Blvd plant shortly before closing (I doubt they would have put a new product in an old plant though).

Back in the 70’s I used to go to the annual McCulloch luncheon hosted by Earl Larson of GEM Products fame. I think back then Earl actually hosted several luncheons with different collections of customers and suppliers. Every winter Earl would escape the Chicago weather and come to sunny California around the Enduro Winternationals time and stay as long as possible. He was quite the gregarious people person. So he would call Chuck Hammond and invite any McCulloch employees connected with karting to lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Playa del Rey. Three margarita lunch. It was great fun and though Earl is now gone, RIP Earl, I still go to these lunches annually. Now it is called the Geritol Gang and Earl doesn’t buy anymore, at a Mexican place in Riverside (in conjunction with the VKA Riverside event) and now it is open invitation. Earl was partial to Mexican food. Except for a period in the 80’s I have gone to these reunions since 1974. And I go to a McCulloch dinner reunion at a restaurant in Westchester every now and then. Nothing to do with racing, just 8-12 guys formerly in the chainsaw division.

Anyway I have Joe’s business card so if you contact me I will give you his e-mail and phone number and you can get every question answered. I can call him and let him know you will be contacting him. The world’s foremost authority on McCulloch AMF moped engine, for sure. But don’t e-mail him attachments because he can only get dialup internet where he lives in rural Mt. Aukum, Ca. I sent him some stuff and he couldn’t download it.

Also vintage members might be interested that I had lunch last month with the great Jim Yamane. I recently moved to Orange, Ca and Jimmy, a former tool and die man at the McCulloch development shop in the 1960s, lives nearby in Yorba Linda. He is doing well at 80 something and told me about his dad being put in Japanese internment camp in California during WWII. That is where Jimmy spent his mid-teens before in 1959 becoming the first GKCA National Champion in A class at Azusa, Ca. in his late 20’s. He also won Nassau, Bahamas World Championship and later Tecate before retiring early after breaking his leg in an accident at Go-Kart Raceway. Jimmy did half of the welding on my Ukrainian Titanium Special that I won the 1975 Enduro Grandnational title with. The other half was done by Pat O’Brien, who passed away in April. RIP former Kendick team mate Patrick. Two better craftsman you couldn’t find to work on your stuff. (Jimmy also welded all the Kendick headers at home in his garage. Many, thousands. If you have one, check out Jimmy’s welding skill. Jimmy’s brother-in-law Sets Kanemoto also passed away this spring. Sets was racing sprints in So. Cal from the conception of the sport until at least deep into the 1970s. He was part of Inglewood Kart Supply Team with Wally Baines for awhile.

Doug Milliken
Orange, California

[Butch Kavanagh]

interesting reading, thanks

[mark hinrichs]

amazing. I had all but, given up on finding out anything about this motor.. Thanks..

[Steve Suppa]

Doug. Great story. I really enjoyed your posting. Thanks.

[Brian Thomas]

Doug
Great first post .
Brian

[VirgLove]

Kitzi and I were lucky to set and talk with Doug at the Geritol Gang Luncheon this year. A Karting ledgend and super nice guy.

[Doug Milliken]

Mark,

Were you able to speak with Joe Harralson and was he able to answer your questions?

[mark hinrichs]

Joe and I spoke on the phone for about an hour. It was a very interesting and entertaining conversation.
He told me his whole story of the little friction drive motor, from conception to production. It really wasn't a shining moment in his engineering career. The design was rushed, and McCulloch lost on the whole deal.
Joe was involved in some other interesting projects. He told me about a v6 turbo charged Marine motor that he designed for Mercury, and he designed the motor and transmission for the BUB 7 streamliner, which won the land speed record at bonneville a couple of times.
One interesting story. McCulloch had sent Joe up to the great northwest, to interview the loggers, and to see what they really wanted. They told him they wanted a Powerful, Dependable saw, and they didn't care what it cost. When he got back to his drafting board, McCulloch had him build the opposite.
Once the BHE 900 motor went into production, Joe was pretty much done with it. He had some observations about why some of the modifications were made later. He said the changes I mentioned were most probably about noise abatement, more so than power, or fuel economy.
He also said,, that at the end of one the ad filming sessions, that one of the riders, rode around topless for the crew. That wasn't you Doug? He looking for the picture.

[Doug Milliken]

Mark,

I wasn't there for the topless rider or I'd have remembered it.

McCulloch Engineering was split into two separate divisions in those days - Professional Products which Joe was in, and Consumer Products which I was in. Joe's boss wasn't a fav, shall we say. I was fortunate to have a great boss running the consumer group. So Joe is going to naturally be more negative in his recollections. I was having a better time than he was.

Here is my opinion on why McCulloch Corporation perished to the corporate scrap heap. R.P. McCulloch was a wild west entrepeneur, inventor and risk taker. He had a lot of wild ideas and he acted on many of them. The engineering storage areas had some wild inventions. The VP of Engineering had a cutaway of a 2-stroke with a square piston in his office. Why? Only to prove it could be done and would run good (which it did before being cut away). R.P.M. hired engineers that were excited about doing R&D on wild ideas. A fun bunch, a fun place to work, but the seeds of it's own downfall.

After enough wild ideas were funded to production where they met immediate death (balance piston chainsaws and snowmobile engines come immediately to mind) financial weakness started surfacing which led to selling out to Black and Decker around 1973. Black and Decker brought in new Engineering management who saw the old guard as a bunch of hackers living out their fantasies and put a stop to it. The square piston cutaway disappeared. B&D's business plan was to do with chain saws what they had been successful doing with electric drills - Make a dirt cheap 1/4" drill with orange shiny plastic handles and mass market it through the Walmarts of the world at little or no profit. $9.99 was what they cost in 1974. Then make upscale models with 3/8" and 1/2" chucks and black plastic handles with textures grips. Looks upscale. The manufacturing cost of a 3/8 or 1/2 chuck is not more than a 1/4 chuck. But most people bump up for a drill that is usable and there is a big profit on that model.

First you need some dirt cheap chainsaws. The problem was when a consumer purchased a dirt cheap chainsaw at Walmart, used it and needed service, which is enevitable with cheap stuff. Can't take it to Walmart for service, they won't talk to you and don't know anything about chainsaws. And when you showed up at a McCulloch dealer for service with a Walmart cheap a_s special, they would show you the door because they had been cut out of that business. Dealers who had been loyal to McCulloch for decades, now were hostile to the B&D version. So they started pushing other brands. That was the end. Black and Decker's business plan might have been great for drills but it was a disaster for chainsaws. They killed it, but P.P.M.'s hand picked engineering spirit of serious tinkering put them in a bad enough position that they had to sell out to the devil.

When I graduated college and was looking for a job, McCulloch had just been purchased by B&D and they had a hiring freeze. It was right after a serious recession (From today's economy it looks like a period of prosperity). They made an exception because there was a technician in the engineering lab named Lyle Lahr who was killed by a felled tree, creating an opening. So they hired me as a technician to replace Lyle and I was a dyno operator for 6 months until there was the first opening for a design/development engineer which I got. Lyle Lahr was a kart racer some of you might remember him. Other racers working in the lab at that time were Arka Shanks and John Julis, organizer of the Geritol Gang these days.

Good Times

Doug Milliken