10/28/2020
Engineering the Crocker Motorcycle
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While Harley-Davidson and Indian have a commanding hold over the American motorcycle market today, there was a time when a third company had them sweating. The name Crocker Motorcycles is enough to make any collector salivate, seeing as original models are among the most sought after and expensive pieces on the market. And though the company ceased production during 1942 due to the war, the company name lives on. In Greatest One-Percenter Myths, Mysteries, and Rumors Revealed learn all about the rise, fall, and rebirth of the classic Big and Small tank models.
Greatest One-Percenter Myths, Mysteries, and Rumors Revealed
Meet Al.
Al Crocker was born a while back, in 1882.
He was a good guy and an interesting dude.
He earned an engineering degree, a tough challenge at the turn of that century. He found his first employment at Thor Motorcycle, where he engineered new products. He loved motorcycle-riding and racing, and that led him to a friendship with Oscar Hedstrom and Charles Hendee of Indian Motorcycles, and a full-time position at their company.
That got him the Indian dealership in Kansas City, Missouri. From there, Al moved to the West Coast, where he bought another Indian shop.
Cool.
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But this is where the simple business-wise story of Albert Crocker becomes heavyweight motorcycling history; with myths and mysteries of a bike that out-legends both Indian and Harley.
No Refunds!
Settled in Los Angeles, Al and his shop foreman, Paul Bigsby, began designing and developing their own bikes. In 1931 they introduced their dirt-track racers, and then later, the Crocker 30–50 cubic-inch single-cylinder speedway bike. Al and Paul’s machines were kicking oval-course ass.
By the mid-1930s, Crocker and Bigsby were dreaming—and building—bigger. From 1936 to 1942, about three hundred full-size, high-performance, overhead-valve V-twins were produced, with approximately eighty surviving today.
The production number is a controversial one in itself, one more mystery that muddles the Crocker myths. But the truth is that Al Crocker was an exacting man and his numbering system did indeed reach into the three-hundred range. Factor in the power of the bikes, and a fair amount of them must have come to a high-speed end!
Referred to as “Big Tank” and “Small Tank” models, they looked good and ran like hungry jackals in a petting zoo, with cruising speeds of about 120-plus mph right out of the box.
And the Crocker customer was also a big part of the “Commitment to Excellence” of this Al. Each bike was custom-tailored to the individual rider’s order—color, the amount of chrome trim, and even displacement. Then came the guarantee that the full purchase price would be refunded if the buyer was beaten by a factory stock Harley or Indian!
That never happened.
A High-Speed End
But then the bombs of World War II hit.
Indian and Harley got fat Army contracts; Al got his with Douglas Aircraft, making plane parts. It was better and bigger business than the bikes, and so, by 1942, Crocker motorcycles had taken their last production ride. Crocker Motorcycle became Crocker Manufacturing, and all of that was eventually sold to a little ol’ auto-super-product company called BorgWarner.
And for those of you who have ever picked up and picked on a high-end axe, you may have experienced what Paul Bigsby went on to do in the way of guitars, tailpieces, and tremolos.
Both Al and Paul sure left their mega-marks on more than one part of American society and industry. But man, those bikes . . .
Today, the surviving Crockers are more than just relics: they are geared gods to be worshipped by those who understand and appreciate the engineering in these machines.
And they ain’t cheap.
Vintage Crockers have fiery flirtations with the $400K range and go up from there according to their purity of pedigree.
An Adventure and A Dream
After extensively studying the mind and machine of Albert Crocker, visionary and vintage bike superhero Michael Schacht set out to honor both with a new life. In 1992 Michael began to revive the Crocker Motorcycle Company. But he didn’t just buy the name and slap it on a modern machine. Using the exact specifications developed by Al in his Los Angeles factory in the 1930s, Michael’s savior of a company began producing authentic Crocker parts—and complete bikes. In early 2008, the operation was fittingly moved back to its Los Angeles origin, where the Second Coming could be continued on especially holy ground.
Michael Schacht relives the ride:
“This whole thing for me has not only been an adventure and a dream, but it has also been a permanent learning curve. I was very naïve and excited going into this. I wanted to recreate what Al Crocker built—with all the beauty and all the nuances. Ironically, with perfect re-creation, we engineered it all, including all the original inherent problems that were in that beautiful machine. Faults happened because it was so exact to the original.”
“I’ve spent the last few years in R&D; slowly, one step at a time changing all of that. We are very close now to perfection. We’re just putting the final strokes on the clutch and the gearbox—a bit of a challenge because we have manufactured everything in both. We’re dealing with the stack and the shimming and putting some thrust bearings in that didn’t exist before. We even make our own clutch plates. All the changes were internal; nothing external or visible. The bike is a one hundred percent fit-the-box identical version.”
“We even engineered the leaking cases out of the equation. The new Crockers will no longer leak—although the prototype does! And in the prototype that’s a tough fix unless we change the engine cases so we’re going to leave that one alone! Hey, all vintage bikes like to mark their spot! But the new Crockers beyond the prototype won’t leak!”
“Also, we’ve been focused on the metallurgy and on the castings and the quality of those castings. And of course our parts retrofit original Crockers. We’ve been selling our OEM parts for years.”
“Bringing the company back to Los Angeles, where it all began, allowed me to access some of the industry’s finest engineers—with the exacting skill and quality of Southern California’s aerospace legacy. Our team that includes my right-hand man and chief engineer, Patrick Folger, and pattern makers, Olie Kiprianoff and Brian McCabe is precision personified.”
This motorcycle is not a reproduction but a continued production of Al Crocker’s masterpiece.
