Sears Puch 250

A Not So Good Start

I brought this bike home in the trunk of my father's Olds Cutlass in the fall of ‘71. I bought it from a guy with a huge, black, and mean looking Doberman. While I waited for the owner in the entry hall of his house, the snarling beast of a dog barked at me from the basement. Only a rope and a child barrier fence to the stairs kept me alive. Everywhere I looked, the woodwork was chewed.

Finally, the owner of this peculiar machine - one that I had never heard of before - appeared, and off we went to look at the bike. Unfortunately, the

The Sears Allstate, Summer 1972

dog managed to escape out the door past his master and bounded down a quiet east-end Toronto street. He promptly got into an altercation with an unassuming moving car. The car lost with bodywork damage, and the black hell-hound continued on as if nothing had happened!

While I looked over the 250, the owner finally regained control of the crazed animal and returned it to its subterranean lair. At last, we were ready for the test drive, or so I thought; it didn't take more than a few moments for the engine to die out. Ah, what the heck, I said to myself. The price, though cheap, could only get cheaper with such a technical glitch, and I planned to take it completely apart anyway. So a deal was struck and I was the proud new owner of a broken motorcycle.

During the winter, I stripped the bike down to the bare frame and repainted it in candy apple blue and red, using frugal rattle-can technology. The engine, being a two stroke, didn't require much disassembly, but I quickly learned why it had trouble running. Burnt piston and broken rings! No problem, I thought. Just overbore the cylinders and pick up a gasket and piston kit from a nearby Sears, and all would be well.

Well, the parts, surprisingly, were readily available, but every shop I called informed me that they did not have the jig required to bore out the cylinders, and thus would not be able to help me. Sears offered to get new cylinders, but the price was way too much for a high school student with no job and a very small savings account, so I did the next best thing - I just got new pistons and stuffed them back into the freshly honed, but still damaged, cylinders. After thoroughly cleaning all the bits and pieces, the bike was put back together and started on the third or fourth kick.

Wahoo! I was in business and ready for the next step: a motorcycle license.