Email from Marty on the Series A Comet.
From: Martin Dickerson
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 12:01 AM
To: stephen carson
Subject: Re: Red 39 HRD Comet
Dear Stephen,
I am sorry I can't be much help about the history of the Comet. I can tell you my history with it. I purchased it from a fellow who owned a muffler shop in South Los Angeles. His name was Oakie Gregory who is now deceased. I rode it for about a year, but it had a problem that may still exist. It would start right away and run fine till it got nice and warmed up, then it would get a misfire and the warmer it got the worse the misfire was. The misfiring would start at about 60 M. P. H. and if you continued riding it come in at 50 M.P.H. It had a Miller Mag/dyno unite installed for ignition and lighting and the symptom of the problem was the coil winding in the magneto. If you let it cool down it would work OK again till it hot again. I checked to see if a Lucas Mag/dyno unit would fit and found the platform it mounted on was way to high and a Lucas unit was out of the question. Probably the only way to fix it would be to rewind the coil in the magneto. To my knowledge no one in So calf. was doing that kind of work in thosedays, so it never got repaired as far as it know.
I ended up selling the bike to a fellow in San Diego and he is the one that painted it red. I found out he wanted to sell it , so bought it back, but never got it running again. I wanted to move it out of the shop so I put it up for sale again at which timeMel, bought it from me.
That is about all I can tell you about it. It is a fun bike to ride until that misfire came in, that spoiled all the fun! Good luck with it and I hope you can get it running and that misfire is gone.
Sincerely,
Marty Dickerson