walneck`s classic cycle trader® biker of the month

BIKER OF THE MONTH
MONTHLY FEATURES
Biker of the Month Cary Stanley is
shown with his wife Connie.
O
ne might not link over a million dollars
worth of vintage cars and motorcycles to
picking cotton, but Biker of the Month Cary
Stanley could. From his humble beginnings as an
8-year-old field hand working side-by-side with his
entire family, he acquired a deep appreciation for
hard work and fair dealing that he credits today for
putting him in a 10,000 sq. ft. workshop tucked into
a 1,000 acres of California beauty many might
mistake for heaven.
Early life at the bottom of the economic system
didn’t destroy dreams but grew them, Cary said,
crediting his parents for providing living examples
and everything else a growing child might want or
need, plus an outlook stressing self-sufficiency and
pride in doing any job as well as it could be done.
“We never went without a meal and always had
the cleanest patched clothes around,” he said of his
early life, adding that a lack of money never was
given much thought because “all of my neighbors
were just like me.”
Cary’s prime role model was his father
Diamond, a gem of man in name and deed in
Cary’s mind, and one who still moves him to strong
emotional points that caused Cary to pause and
collect his thoughts several times before continuing
to speak.
“Everything I’ve done is in honor of my father,”
Cary said. “My father is the reason that I am where
I am today.”
The road to the top was paved by hard work
mixed in with quantities of intelligent business
moves made when opportunity presented itself. The
first of these occurred when Cary’s father took the
initiative to use what he learned working for others.
Mr. Stanley utilized his much-deserved good name
to become a labor contractor who organized work
crews throughout the San Joaquin Valley. The rich
agricultural area has often been called “the nation’s
salad bowl” and it most certainly afforded fertile
ground for growth beyond simple plant life. In the
Stanley family’s case, hard work and strong ethical
behavior began to pay off enough to provide a
home that was used as collateral to buy a small gas
station in Tulare, California where the family lived
and where Cary still has many roots and interests.
Cary and his father partnered in the small, onebay station for only a short period until Cary was
told he could take over the business entirely by
paying off the loan on it, something he did in just a
few years as the business began to flourish. Cary
worked with his new wife Connie from 6:30 to 11
seven days a week until being able to afford to take
on help and then expanded the business to a 24hour operation.
The small station grew and both sons Dennis
and Bud worked along with mom and dad as the
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MONTHLY FEATURES
BIKER OF THE MONTH
As one might expect, a lot of wrench
turning takes place at Diamond CS
Motorcycles. This 1983 AMF XR-1000 is
being serviced by Mike Roberts, a man
Cary highly praised for being both a
terrific person and ace mechanic.
“I had a tire on each shoulder, a
Bates seat in my lap and a sack full of
rubber parts,” Cary said of the return
trip. Soon the TR6 was back on the
road. “That was my first experience
with something I could do a decent
wheel stand on,” he said.
Next in line came a $450 BSA
Road Rocket and lots more wheel
stands, some of which led to
complications.
After one wheelie for the gang
down at the local A&W, Cary had the
misfortune to also have a police
officer as part of his audience. Cary
attempted to out run the cop only to duck into a
back street and meet the officer coming in the
opposite direction.
“I was barefoot and just had my Levis and tshirt on,” Cary recalled as he also remembered the
officer shaking his head as he approached.
Not yet big enough to put both feet down to
hold up the BSA, Cary hopped off to parlay with
the angry officer. He was surprised to find out the
cop didn’t take issue with his wheelie so much as
he did the underage, unlicensed rider. The cop cut
him loose with a warning: push the bike home or
get arrested. “If I hear that bike start,” the cop said,
“I’m running you in.”
Cary took him at his word, at least until he was
four blocks away and out of hearing range. “Then I
started that sucker up and rode home,” Cary said. “I
didn’t go downtown much after that.”
The Road Rocket soon underwent Cary’s
customary modifications for speed. His goal was to
business prospered and blossomed to include
several convenience stores, all run by Dennis today.
While Cary said these businesses have done very
well, it was his move into real estate that greatly
increased his financial good fortune to the point
where he now can spend all of his energies around
a passion for old cars and motorcycles.
“I’ve owned motorcycles since I was 13 years
old,” Cary said. Like many boys he started out early
by modifying bicycles. Unlike many, Cary was
driven to excel. “I had to have the fastest bike in the
neighborhood,” he said. “That’s just me. I’ve
always been this way.”
Seeing that most of the local guys buzzed
around on Cushman scooters, Cary felt he
had to go one up and bought his first real
motorcycle, a Mustang Pony, good for 10
mph or better than the local competition.
Soon this just wasn’t fast enough, so Cary
went partners with his brother on a burned
out hulk of a Triumph, a 1957 TR6 to be
specific, owned by one of the rancher’s
sons.
The TR6 went up in flames after the
previous owner just let it burn until the fire
died out. “He just lit a cigarette with the
fire and watched it melt down,” Cary said.
Cary’s brother put up the $150 for the crispy
Triumph and Cary got a friend to give him a 25mile parts ride in each direction on an Allstate
scooter.
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Mike’s careful attention is evident in
this shot. Notice how he wrapped any
part of the frame that might be
scratched when removing and
installing the engine.
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BIKER OF THE MONTH
MONTHLY FEATURES
beat what he saw as the bike to have in the
late fifties, a BSA Spitfire Scrambler
dripping in chrome and featuring the now
iconic high crossover pipes. Cary cut down
the back fender in imitation of the Spitfire
and also modified the engine by having it
bored .040. He also increased the
compression by skimming the head and
changed the gearing with a front sprocket
swap. Now he could not only keep up with
the Spitfires but beat them as well.
Then tragedy struck, another wheelierelated mishap caused by a set of railroad
tracks. The tracks got the back wheel hopping and
soon the entire motorcycle was cartwheeling down
the street. “I remember watching it,” Cary said. “It
ended up high in a sycamore tree.”
Cary ended up in the hospital with a badly
broken leg. Two weeks later Cary had a friend cut
off the top part of the cast so that he could ride.
Mom was not pleased but dad let his hard-charging
son continue to ride, cast and all.
Always one to make good out of bad, Cary took
the engine out of the wrecked A10 and put it in a
Spitfire frame and also picked up a set of crossover
pipes and two more gas tanks in the deal. He had
each painted a different color, candy apple red,
green, and blue. “All I had to do to have a
completely different bike was to switch the tank,”
he said. “The rest of the bike was all chrome.”
Much later in his life but in similar fashion, Cary
turned another wreck into gold. During a hunting
excursion in Wyoming, his towed jeep met disaster
when he tried to avoid an oncoming car. Not to
worry. Cary had a fiberglass body later installed,
put a high performance engine in the jeep and soon
campaigned it in sand drags. After bumping the
jeep up to the highest racing class possible, Cary
made a bigger jump by buying a full-blown nitroburning sand dragster. In it he captured the world’s
title in 1974 and 1975 and set what was then a
record, turning 134 mph in 2.67 seconds in only
100 yards of sand.
Cary spends most of his time today with his
collection and oversees DiamondCS Motorcycles
with his son Bud. He calls his current activity a
hobby. “I haven’t made a nickel yet,” he said but
thinks somewhere down the line his son Bud may
turn the venture into a profit maker.
Profit, however, is no longer a driving force in
Cary’s life. He owns homes most would almost die
for that he rarely visits and has possessions far
beyond his simple needs. “What I’m doing now is
Mike and Cruz are shown making sure
every bike in this very large collection
stays in tip top shape.
for my heart and the camaraderie with old buddies,
and the look people get when they see my
collection.”
Of course, Cary plans to continue riding,
driving, and restoring both cars and motorcycles.
Walneck’s readers can see lots of Cary’s bikes on
these pages and many more on the web at
diamondcsmotorcycles.com. Inquires can be made
by email linked at the website and also by calling
559-336-2457 or 559-738-3952.
Detailing Cary’s vast collection would take a
book itself, but some of the machines he’s
especially proud to own include an Ariel Square
Four with less than 1,000 miles on the clock that
looks as if it just left the factory. He has a pair of
first year Triumph Bonnevilles. His ’39 Velocette is
also highly prized. On the car side, Cary owns a
blown ’57 Chevy street rod that’s been featured in
major magazines and he’s really proud of a $42,000
restoration of a ’72 Triumph TR6 sports car he did
for his wife. He has no reservations at the expense,
or anything else he does for Connie. “She’s an
integral part of what I have going and what I have
always been,” he said.
As for where he’s going in life and what he’s
become, certain markers carry much psychological
weight. Today on a shelf in his office rests a little
Mustang, the same one that Cary owned years ago.
The reconnection was purely accidental, unless one
believes in fate.
The story begins when Cary saw the early drop
in real estate values and sought a means to protect
his investments. Old motorcycles seemed more than
a good hedge fund, so Cary dove in, as usual, in his
own big way. But it was a little bike he really
wanted, another Mustang like his first one. He
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MONTHLY FEATURES
Bird’s eye view shows Cruz hard at work. Note also the Chevy street rod in upper
left hand corner and also the Corvette, another one of Cary’s passions. Don’t you
wish your garage looked like this?
found a Mustang advertised in Florida, two
actually, as one was a service car. He bought both
sight unseen and had them shipped to California.
“I knew it as soon as I saw it; I just knew it,”
Cary said upon first look at his purchases. Although
greatly modified with disk brakes, and an alternator
to power huge head and taillights, Cary said the
first look he took told him he found his old bike.
The lights, he later learned, were installed by the
previous owner who then rode the Mustang to the
top of Pike’s Peak when he was 70 years old.
To verify his intuition about the Mustang, Cary
took a peak under the seat. Sure enough,
there was the brace he had welded in to
repair the seat broken from riding two-up
with a two hundred pound pal way back in
the days when it was perfectly OK to also
carry a .22 rifle they used to hunt rabbits.
Total confirmation came upon inspection
of the flywheel Cary nearly beat to pieces
getting it off to reach the points. The
flywheel had the same dents in the same
place from errant hammer blows. No doubt
about it, he’d found his Mustang.
Much of Cary’s collection can be
bought. The Mustang, however, will never
be for sale.
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“Bikes have been in my mind and in my heart
throughout my life,” Cary said, and when it comes
to heart, be it family, friends, or motorcycles,
money often doesn’t talk. Sometimes Cary can’t
either when he reflects on his friends and family,
many still here and some no longer of this world.
Diamond left an indelible imprint on his son
much like the gemstone does on a wedding ring,
conveying clear meaning beyond words, a deeper
message needing no further explanation.
Mike is shown here attending to a pair
of BSAs.
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