Morto and the Stringbean — Rust Magazine

A ferocious man on a ferocious motorcycle. The air cleaner housing will surly add speed when the bike goes to Bonneville.

Photos: Mike Blanchard

Spotlight: Morto Olson is what you might call a jack of all trades and an expert in many. He is a collector and student of motorcycles and their history, a designer, a film producer and writer, a vintage bike mechanic (of necessity) and a finder of things. We met Morto at One Moto in 2017 (see https://www.rustmag.com/new-blog/excelsior-super-x-of-morto-olson for our previous talk with Morto) and immediately felt that we had met a fellow traveler. Irreverent and funny and a joker with a twinkle in his eye Morto is a fount of interesting things.

Morto’s very talented wife Gina is every bit his equal (see the Rust Arts-y section for our spotlight on Gina) She is a talented artist and designer and a dedicated rider and bike builder in her own right.

Morto and Gina always bring something interesting to One Moto. This year they brought a Crosley-powered land speed racer named the String Bean. We took a moment to talk with Morto to see what the story is behind his bike.

  Tell me about the String Bean.

  “It’s a bike that I first conceived about 30-odd years ago. I wanted a four-cylinder Indian or Henderson; couldn’t afford one and so we started thinking about what we could make one out of. And I had some extra Crosley engines laying around … so we thought: ‘Well, we’ll couple it up to a BMW or something.’

 “But as fate would have it I had recently acquired some junker Marushos, so we sat down and looked at what it would take. We had to assure ourselves that the engine rotation was right, and it was, and the transmission rotation matched, so that was one good thing.

 “We looked at what it would take to hook them together, and what we found was that we could take the flywheel from the Crosley and the electric start so all we had to do was mount the entire clutch pack off the Marusho, which was really quite easy. We mounted it to the flywheel on the Crosley engine, and then the shaft from the transmission was already correct so we just had to build an adapter plate between them.

 “So really the only real technical part about it was that, and that was done. It just took 30 years to get around to doing the rest.

 “I had a couple of different visions. In the first one, the bike was going to be a kind of a fake vintage bike. We thought about making a rigid frame and making it look kind of more old and hiding radiators in saddle bags, all kinds of stuff, but none of it was really satisfying. I let the bike go for a few years and got the bike back. I started getting more involved in land speed and decided we’ll just make a land speed bike out of it. We kind of had a formula for that: how to build one because I’ve made so many.

 “So I just applied all that to it. It’s pretty nearly ready to romp right now with this carburetor on it. I have a supercharger for it as well and a couple of other things up my sleeve. It went comparatively quick after I decided what I wanted to do. I’ve got maybe a couple days’ worth of work now.”

You are one of the more original builders that I’ve seen here. You always bring something different. You could bring really nice original vintage bikes. What are your thoughts on bringing more creative things to the show?

 “Well, I guess there are a couple of ways to answer that. I guess the first one is pretty much: Anyone with a pretty good checkbook can build any damn nice custom bike with some research and some networking. But the originality levels are all over the map, whether or not they are all that interesting or not. A lot of trend-surfing goes on in bike building like everything else. It changes at warp drive.

 “But for me I really, really like the world of motorcycles. When I was in my 20s I got a copy of Erwin Tragatsch’s book ‘Motorcycles of the World.’ At the time he tried to list every bike that he knew of. I was totally fascinated with it. I would pore over it. I kept in the bathroom for the longest time and I would study it in the traditional way.

 “I ended up recognizing a lot of weird bikes and longing for them. The stranger the better. A Chinese-made Dong Hai is one of the rarer motorcycles in the world. They just aren’t out there. They didn’t make very many. They weren’t particularly good. The Dong Hai 750 twin kinda copied the British, sort of. I recently found the remnants of one in the United States. There are probably one or two in the United States, maybe. For me that is vastly more interesting than a new Harley or a Knucklehead or a new sport bike Indian or any of that.

 “To build something out of that holds far more allure to me than trying to compete with the rest. I tend to align myself with people that are a little like-minded. Carl Bjorklund in particular, we really get along. Man, you give Carl a hammer and some sheet metal and he’s going to build something you’ve never seen. You might not like it but you will remember it.

 “This is kinda the long way around but that's kind of the ethic. I can go to a swap meet and I can find shit for almost free (sometimes for free) that is ready to be discarded, be it fenders, wheels, forks, whatever. Nobody is going to give it a second look.

 “I know what to do with this shit. You put all this crap together like some kind of weird quilt and try to make it somehow go together. It may look cut and paste in some ways but it’s a lot more studied than that. I probably try four different forks on any given build, half a dozen wheels, different tanks, different things. A lot more thought than you might think goes into it. The result might not look like I put a lot of thought into it, but I did.

 “And I have my favorite things. I like Lycett seats, they’re triangular British seats. I just fucking like them. So that’s going to go on a lot of different things. I have a thing about girders. Girders have always been my favorite forks. So I will use them whenever I can.

 “If I can piss somebody off in doing so. … I have an 841 Indian girder right now, not on a bike yet. You know what an 841 is? That’s the shaft drive. They made about 1,000 of them before they faded away. I have a fork off of that and I’m not going to put it on no damn 841 Indian. I’m going to put it on something else. I haven’t decided what yet.

“I have a Ukrainian-made Dneper motorcycle project I’m working on now. Built it into a rigid frame. I’m going to use the Dneper 650 engine in it. But I have a set of Indian Four tanks on it. I’m going to use an Indian springer fork, which is guaranteed to get feedback. You want to elicit some kind of emotion. Beard-pulling is an important part of this. If I can upset someone, if I can get Mr. Harry Hairshirt to gasp. …Winner, winner, chicken dinner.”