EP. 12 - Mark Jarel
Mark Jarel Is Building Everything!Before we get into it — this episode is brought to you by MotoTote. Head to mototote.com/MOTOARCHIVES for 10% off your order.I got invited into his shop in the San Fernando Valley, and within the first five minutes I knew this was going to be a different kind of conversation. The man has vintage flathead Harleys, a 1939 Indian Sport Scout, slot car tracks he's sold for $20,000 a piece, vintage go karts that do 70 miles an hour, a 1949 Crown travel trailer, a custom sports car he's building from a wooden buck — and right in the middle of it all, a Yamaha RD400 that's becoming something I've never quite seen before.Mark is a hobbyist in the truest sense of the word. Not a collector. Not a restorer. A builder. And the way he talks about it — three projects going at a time, bouncing between them when one hits a wall, no TV for 25 years — it hit different. This is a man who figured out a long time ago that building things is the antidote to everything.We talked about how it all started — his parents building their own toys because they couldn't afford to buy them, a 400-pound welder with a visible butt crack charging him $50 to weld a bicycle frame, and the moment Mark decided he was going to be smarter than that guy. He bought a welder, taught himself, and never looked back.The RD400 build is wild. It started as a land speed record bike someone gave him — ugly as sin, but with a solid, never-run 1983 engine inside. Mark stripped it, cut the frame, and built something entirely new around that motor. Part 70s drag bike, part road race sidecar outfit, with a working brake wing (does it help aerodynamically? Probably not. Does it look insane? Absolutely), a nitrous purge system for when he rolls into shows, a sidecar nose made from a vintage go kart and a wheel pod off a 1960 Cessna airplane. He made the tank out of cardboard templates first. He drilled out the rear brake for lightness. Does it really matter? Nope. But it sure looks cool — and that's the whole point.We also got into his racing days at Muroc Dry Lake, a land speed record he still holds, racing a 1965 Ducati GP bike at Willow Springs, and why he stopped racing the day his son was born. His kid ended up building his own motorcycle at 13, taking third at a build-off, and now rides a '65 BSA Lightning. The apple didn't fall far.And then there's the slot car tracks. Nine of them built and sold. One in Florida, one in Iowa, one in Hawaii. Each one a rolling diorama that fits inside an enclosed trailer, with figures, landscapes, a dog about to pee on something, and a pedestrian mooning the track. The man is serious about the details.The thing that stuck with me most was something Mark said near the end — if you can imagine it, we can build it. His son told him that in the middle of an Iron Man movie when he was five years old. They went home and built a helmet. That's the whole philosophy right there.Topics covered in this episode:Building a Yamaha RD400 into a 70s drag/sidecar race bike hybridWhy Mark gravitates toward 45 flathead Harleys and their historyThe WWII connection that made flatheads the most widely produced motorcycle engine in historyVintage go kart racing and holding a land speed record at Muroc Dry LakeBuilding slot car tracks from scratch — and selling them for $20kWhat it means to raise a kid around building thingsVintage travel trailer rallies and the community that keeps showing upWhy three projects at once is the secret to staying saneConnect with Mark: https://www.instagram.com/jarelbuilt/Follow Moto Archives:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMotorcycleArchivesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/motoarchives/motoarchives.com
