Hagerty for me as well.

If you are not familiar with Hagerty, it's not like typical insurance most folks are used to. Hagerty does full coverage policies for agreed value. How much it costs depends on what you're insuring and what the agreed value is along with the usual things like where you live, etc.

I spend $175 per year for two machines insured for an agreed $10k each located in TX.

The price includes all of the state required minimums for insurance, too, including liability coverage required to obtain registration.

I'd highly recommend checking them out.

 Hello Everyone-

I'm still around and regularly login and poke around the site.

Anyway, I received this information via email a few days ago and have not seen it reported here. If there is anything you want to see or wanted to save, now is the time to do it.

US Scooter Museum and US Minibike Museum Website (Websites)

On September 11, 2015 the Museum’s will shut down.
 
I would like to thank all of you that helped make the site what it has become whether it was by furnishing pictures and/or information or just asking questions to find out what that scooter you bought was. I think we all have learned something from it I know I have.
 
I have had a love affair with motorized two wheeled vehicles sense the 1940s, and still do but to old to do much about it.
 
To me it has been very educational and I hope to all of you it has as well.
 
Thanks again for your participation in my endeavor.
 
 Regards
John Nida[/b]

Wow!

That new website is a tremendous improvement over the previous two incarnations!

I did, however, have trouble registering for the forum. Apparently none of the old user names and information got carried over to the new one, so I re-registered with my chosen name. I went through the steps and eventually came to a screen that indicated a password would be sent to the email address that I supplied. Never got it, so I went back and tried again. This time it told me that the user name was already registered. So...I'm not sure what to do now. I'm a pretty computer savvy person but can't work around this one.

Anyone else having the same issue?

I don't have a dog in that fight, but I've got to say that simply based on the response Freedom Auctions felt was necessary to post here -I- will never do business with them. Period. They can't possibly sell something that I want bad enough to subject myself to that kind of treatment and patronizing.

"Second, I want to acquaint everyone with the concept of an 'auction.'" This, Freedom Auctions, is about the absolute dumbest thing that you could have possibly said if you wanted to maintain any sense of professionalism and any credibility with this crowd. As if we don't all know how auctions work...yeah right. What BS.

The third party service that is quick to be blamed may have had issues on this particular auction day (I have no way to know for sure), but let me say this: I have bid in auctions online through that service several times without issue. Many, many auction houses use them. Hundreds? Thousands? Whatever it is, it's a lot. The service is "mainstream," for sure. For the claim to be made that the 3rd party technology has been the issue every time is certainly suspect.

A truly professional auction company would have NEVER come onto a forum like this to "set the record straight" in a public setting. Buyer-Seller-Bidder issues should all get worked out behind the scenes, so *news flash* this makes the auction house look bad, not the bidder who was essentially 'talking' with friends here about what happened. The auction company is the outsider, not the bidder, who is a known entity to this community. Something for Freedom Auctions to think about the next time they feel the need to jump online to fight a war of words...resist the temptation and just don't do it.

I think the club should just give up on the magazine.  Seems to me, a lot of expense and effort, for not much more than pictures from Portland. 

I agree about the magazine content.

They have a President and Vice President's message that always seem to say the same thing, at the same time each year; the rest of the magazine content is mostly either about going to Portland, rules/safety/camping issues for Portland, or photos from Portland. Rarely is there anything else to see. Yes, a lot of effort and expense for a glossy photo album filled with only a handful of "on-topic" photos. Too many photos of random (and unidentified) groups of people sitting around, kids on bicycles...you get the idea. When asked about making changes, the response came (on their forum) that the "editor" (not to be confused with the publisher) was set in his ways and not open to any criticism at all. 

The main appeal of the magazine (to me anyway) was always the classified section. At one time the classifieds in the back of the magazine were consistently about 6 pages, and occasionally even more than that. Now they seem lucky to pull off 2 1/2 pages.

Without changes, I really do think that club will have tremendous issues going forward. A good website would definitely be a tremendous step in the right direction. I was not aware that it had been up since the outage was initially reported...I hadn't attempted to visit since then until today and discovered that it is (still??) down.

Quote from: Doodle Bugger on April 15, 2014, 12:08:11 PM

Towards the back of the Wollard book, there is a photo and small mention of a short wheelbase scooter, but further details seem a bit unclear to me and I find no other mention of this in the book.

Was this model that ever made it into production or was it prototype only? I know about the regular scooter that, for lack of a better term, I'll call the long wheelbase scooter, but what about this short one? Ever actually built? Any ideas on how many?

I am away and don't have a book handy, but are you talking about the simplex automatic scooters?  If so,  Bob Legron would be the man to ask, as he wrote that section of the book.  

Yes. The Simplex Automatic Scooters.

There is one pictured in the back of the book that is noted as being the short wheelbase model. That's what I'm wondering about.

EDIT: It's on page 38 of the Wollard book in the "experimental" section. I take that to mean it probably never made in into production, but figured someone here would know for sure.

I'm being slowly sucked in...

I purchased (and have since read) the Wollard book on the Simplex. Someone was blowing them out on eBay for a while at $10 and free shipping. I certainly learned a lot of Simplex specific things and think it's a nice piece to have in my bookcase.

I own no actual Simplex yet, but I've got an oil can! Maybe someday...gotta get through a backlog of project machines I've already got and finish up the current Doodle Bug project, but maybe someday...