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Pay Backs, The Dick Gambino Story

296K views 986 replies 307 participants last post by  Dicky 
#1 · (Edited)
For those of you that cant read good. Just look at the pictures. But if you don't read it all.. Your missing the gems.

Edit: If your missing his site. Your missing the real show.
http://www.gambinometal.com/index.html
I was also able grab some video and put it on page 9.

So, I randomly ran into some girl one night. I must have mentioned I need a weld on my bike for some reason. She told me her dad works on old cars and does metal art. Dick Gambino metal craft. Then She showed me pics of his art things. She says "this is a picture of some old car he did a grill for". Little did she know it was a extremely high dollar Bugatti..!

I was like. If he could do that, he can surely weld on my lonely seat bungs. So I go to meet this weird old metal arts and crafts guy. He was out of the shop and left the roll gate up. To my shock I was staring at a hand formed dual head plugged BMW cafe racer where the side frame and cross braces welded solid. The lower frame rail is designed to be removable to pull the motor out the bottom!
This is the last thing I thought I would run into as I pulled in the drive way.



.

.
He showed up. We met, we talked. I told him I needed seat bungs welded and my numbers. Soon to find out he was an old biker and custom painter. Built choppers, stadium show bikes and drag bikes in the 60's. Raced a dirt Flat track in the 60's till he blew up his Ducati. Moved up to dragsters and painted funny cars in the 70's. Lives on a small sail boat.! In cold NJ year round. Did the body work for Ferrari race cars. Just plain unreal stuff. Topped of with the fact that he didn't redo a Bugatti grill. He hand shaped the whole car from photographs. All of the Bugatti fenders and body panels from flat steel. Yet he bills himself as a blacksmith.

At this point he had only seen my bare empty Triumph frame in hand. Two days later i picked up my frame with the seat bungs tacked up. I rushed home and built up my whole triumph chopper in three evenings. Threw it on a truck and drove it up for some other dodads/welds. As we pulled my chopper down he shoved me out of the way yelling "I gotta sit on it.. I gotta sit on it.. Oh yea, oh yea this is perfect".
He was like a crazed savage animal. So longer story short. He told me he wanted me to leave my bike there and I can come and work on it there. Come and go as I want and make sparks fly. All because he liked my bike and how i work. Works out great for me because he has all the big 100 year old tools and cool shit.

So I show up one day. There on the floor was this big old gang tool box. It looked like it had been under water cuz all the draws were like rust puddles. He then told me he had always wanted this box when he was a kid but couldn't afford one. He envied that box. All these years later someone found it and gave it to him. He lightly mentioned that one day he might think about fixing it up. Maybe paint it his old race colors.

So my plan was set. I was going to wait till he went on a trip to Texas and finish his dream because I know he just didn't have the time. I worked on it over three days. Ground out all the rust in the draws. Got some tough engine paint.
Painted it yellow and grey, his flat track racer colors.




Mind you these pics are after grinding and sanding.



I finished it up. Closed the lid and tossed it back on the floor in the scrap pile where it lay. Waiting for him to trip over it. So this was my little pay back for all of the priceless tip tricks he has given me.
 
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#723 · (Edited)
Time to move on to the nose. First the paper template.


The paper template was test fitted to the wooden chassis. Dick suggested that he just coat the paper with shellac and call it a day but then decided that bending the compound curves into the tin would be a mountain that he'd like to climb.


Dick, paper, scissors, tin....
 
#724 ·
craftsman such as this man are becoming a dying breed in our world unfortunately..just to be able to hang there and hear the stories alone he must have,make you trully fortunate...you re-doing the box for him was the coolest thing you could have possibly done ..very cool man...keep us all in the loop...
 
#729 ·
The sheetmetal work is amazing. I've done sheetmetal for aircraft, and it didn't look anywhere near that nice.
Did it fly anyway? :D Sorry, couldn't resist it.

Yeah the work on that sidecar looks fantastic! This has been a very important thread to me....I don't know how to explain it....it's just meant a lot to me. Thanks again La Dolce.

Whack
 
#728 ·
Been a while since I've been here (the "D" word) but this is the first thread I hit. I've had an idea for a sidecar for a while and while it won't be anywhere near this quality it has given me a better idea of what talent I don't have. Sure hope Dick has an apprentice to pass, at least, some of his knowledge on. I'm a geezer but would chuck it all to work in his shop.
 
#731 · (Edited)


The Norton build he is doing has some bad head issues to work out so he sat on it a while.



The rocker shaft spindle inlet into the head was whooped out.
There is no straight forward fix for this so Dick came up with his
own plan after weeks of research and dead ends.



Dick worked up a plan along along with Mike from JDS cycle.
This is the plate Mike machined up to hold the head square.



The plan is to machine down the spindle. Then build up the spindle
with hard chrome plating. Than machine it back down to fit the inlet
hole they had to ream back into round.

 
#734 · (Edited)


Ya see, I have to follow Dick around to bring you the stuff you will not find elsewhere. It's like your own Ripley's believe it or Not show. I went over with Dick to look at his friends Anvil collection. This is a collection of Anvil's in weight order. Organized by brand and century. There is probably a hundred Anvil's that you cant see. -Believe it or Not!-
 
#738 ·
holy god... that's insane.

I've been looking on craigslist for an anvil for over a year. I wonder if that guy has any clue what the street value of his collection is... I'd say seven figures...

I hope it stays together, and he or his heirs doesn't sell it. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's unique. (as in, one of a kind.)
 
#742 ·


Some guys don't have ideas, and have to copy. Other guys will wait until they have an idea, and then get implement it. Then there's the few who work through a bunch of ideas, until they've solved the problem multiple ways, and then pick the very best path.

I don't know how, but this pic just tells me which guy I'm looking at here.

-Bill
 
#744 ·


Some guys don't have ideas, and have to copy. Other guys will wait until they have an idea, and then get implement it. Then there's the few who work through a bunch of ideas, until they've solved the problem multiple ways, and then pick the very best path.

I don't know how, but this pic just tells me which guy I'm looking at here.

-Bill
Reminds me of a "modern" take on the sculptor "The Thinker".....
 
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