Keith Lynas lives in his own world. Specifically, his very own planet. For want of a better name, his place is called Ossa Planet, a place where the Ossa owner can find parts and pieces that would be otherwise impossible to come by. Located in Spring Valley, California (near San Diego), it's a collection of goodies that takes your breath away. Recently, we spent a day with the King of Ossas.

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A flawless Yankee Twin gets near completion.

Another view of the ultra clean Yankee.

ORC - Keith where is your place at? Give me the phone number and the address. How do we reach you?

KL - The phone number is unlisted, and the phone number and the address are not in the Web Site, so, you kind of got to know how get here.

ORC - So you do have a certain number of Ossa Fanatics who are hard core?

KL - Yes, you find me on the Web Site.

ORC - If they can find you on the Web Site.

KL - Well, what it does, it has the E-mail on it to contact me thru it, thru the E-mail address and then...that's one of the ways I keep my anonymity here, I don't usually let all that stuff out, so I don't have a trail of people coming here all the time.

ORC - You don't encourage a lot people to come here?

Keith likes it best when no one is in the shop bothering him so he can get some work done.

KL - No really, 'cause I can't work. You know, there's only so many hours in the day
and if I spent half of it talking to people, I don't get the work done.

ORC - Well, what you do, primarily, for ah. . . for making a living?

KL - Most of it, building engines. People ship them to me, I build them and ship them back.

ORC - You concentrate on Ossas? Only Ossas?

KL - Yeah, Ossas and I do the odd, Bultaco and Montesa. There is handful of Maicos here, as well. I do modify bikes, as I worked for Honda for 30+ years

ORC - So, if anyone wants to get in touch with you, they got to go through the E-mail, right?

Rarities abound, as this pristine pair of Ossa flattrackers show.

You'll find a whole bunch of dirt trackers in his collection, like this perfect Yamaha twin.

KL - That's the best way, because that way, I have a little control over it.

ORC - What's your E-mail address?

KL - klynas@aol.com and the Web Site is Ossaplanet.com

ORC - And you stay on top of it all the time?

KL - I check it three or four times every day.

ORC - How many Ossa engines you do a year, ball park?

KL - Ahh. . . . . .probably twenty five or so. But I got a lot of friends all around the town and they arrive, so I get my share of local modern stuff to do as well. So Ossa isn't all that I do. I'll be doing an engine in one of them, or chassis service on another. I probably do twenty or thirty modern engines as well a year . In fact there are a couple Kawasakis or modern Yamahas sitting here to be done.

ORC - Ok, describe the place to us, what you've got here. First of all this is a rental facility. It's huge. You've got how many square feet?

KL - Just about five thousand.

ORC - Five thousand square feet, and eight or ten different facilities?

You want pipes? Everything from a Stiletto to a Desert Phantom can be found hanging on the wall,

KL - It's one basic facility, it's unique. Plus I've got a bunch of containers stored on the property filled with bikes of all kinds and thousands of parts, both new and used.

ORC - How long you've been here?

KL - Probably fourteen - fifteen years

ORC - What you did before?

KL - Worked the dealerships.

Keith's magazine collection is staggering!

ORC - Worked the dealerships, and you said the Heck with it?

KL - Well, I worked four days a week at the dealership and then worked here a couple of days a week and few evenings. It was like a secondary and then it got to where I couldn't keep up and I got more control of what I can do and can not do in here.

ORC - What's it going to cost a guy to get an Ossa Phantom done, start to finish?

KL - Actually , I completed this one, with all the good modern components using top state of the art, handle bars, controls, everything fresh and new, titanium hard work and all. It was about a thousand dollars on the hard ware, and it was like eight grand total.

Completed Ossa motors on their way to customers.

ORC - It was probably better than a brand new Ossa . I remember, I got a Ossa in for a test in Dirt Bike Magazine back in '74 and I went like "Wow! This is light! It was 192 pounds!"

KL - Yes!

ORC - On the official scales.

KL - The Official calibrated Dirt Bike Scales? Well, you probably got that machine through Yankee, as I would imagine.

ORC - By the way, Kenny Clark was there.

Very rare bikes can be found in various states of restoration, like this Yamaha TZ 750 road racer that Keith is building just for the hell of it.

KL - He had a lot to do with Ossa; not many people remember that .

ORC - We got talking to Kenny Clark and John Taylor was there, back and forth in phone calls or whatever, and he says: "Yeah, your bike is being tested right now by Dave Aldana."

Anyway, just about that time I hear this Yankee coming down the street and Aldana goes to pull right in the parking lot where we are standing. Right at that time, a station wagon pulled out in front of him and he just crushed the back of the station wagon with this Yankee! I mean he just stuffed the Yankee front end into the rear end of the station wagon.

The good stuff can be found on the shelves.

He had no shirt on, has levis, flip flops on, no helmet on, and he walks away without a scratch! The Yankee is a total basket case and I had to come back in another date to get a Yankee tested, because that was the Yankee that we were supposed to take with us. Aldana said, "Sorry man, I didn't know the guy was going to pull out." And that's the story.

Anyway, back to the Phantom gear box we were talking about earlier. Was the gear box tender?

KL - The gearbox was small and yes, you could do some damage if you didn't use the right components, or the right oil.

Keith makes lots of his own goodies, like these Ossa stickers.

ORC - What kind of oil was that?

KL - Well, there were different kind of oils that they recommended. One of them was a Full Bore oil. That's what they told the most of people, but they seem to like the Ford Hypoid gear oil. That was one of their favorites, because it takes high pressure well. The way the gear box is designed, the output gear is similar to a car gear box and the main shaft is a split shaft. Bultaco used a similar set up as well, and all for the first four gears drive thru the split gear. Fifth gear drives direct one to one right thru the shafts, so the shaft is need to be involved, but every one of the gears, other than that, does drive thru this outer gear.

New cases await a top end.

ORC - So the gear box is working real hard.

KL - Well, not so much the entire gear box. One pair of gears works harder than all the rest, as they carry the entire load in every gear except in fifth, so because of the way they match the size of the gear teeth, you wanna go high pressure lubricant. If you don't change the oil often, or if you don't use a good lubricant, they tend to pit the gears. I can show some of that stuff later.

ORC - So, as long as you use good oil and change the oil often, then you should be ok?

Keith in action with his light and fast Phantom.

KL - I recommend to change the oil every race, which really you should do on every motocross bikes anyway.

ORC - I got some feedback from some people who are just paranoid about it, and other guys who'd ride for another two years and no problem at all.

KL - There were a batch of bikes that came with some mis-machining. That is where they probably got their bad rep. The detent holes and the shift drum that would hold the gear, holding the gear into one place, some were longer as the shift drum can rotate into it a little bit. Well, that allows bouncing out of gear while it's not holding in gear, as far as trying to ride like that is a bit of a disaster.

ORC - The old Stilettos were allegedly bullet proof .

KL - They worked pretty good. The 1968's through 1970's were four speeds, and you could break them. The gear boxes were kind of small, but they held up pretty well.

ORC -What about the Enduro versions, the Pioneers and the Six Days?

KL - They were very good as well. The Ossa engine is a lot like a small block Chevrolet. You have the 283, 327 and 400 and they all share the same components. You swap the heads, cranks, etc., to make the different sizes. The Ossa Phantom, Stiletto and Enduro engines are all very similar. You can take parts from one and swap it to another. They have differences in head gaskets, crank shafts, barrels, pistons, different porting in cylinders and so forth.

Here's a near-perfect Yankee just waiting for an owner.

ORC - So you could take a Pioneer and put a Phantom barrel on it?

KL - Sure, and you have some of the Phantom performance in your Enduro bike. From '74 forward they had what they called The Big Crank Engine. The crank shafts were heavier, larger, and they had more inertia. The earlier Pioneers had a smaller crankshaft which spun a lot easier, but they also had a heavier magneto.

ORC - You told us earlier that you became an Ossa distributor when they went out of business.

KL - Basically, what happened, when everybody closed down, I stepped up and bought it. I bought all the parts and bought all the stuff from 75 dealers who were around. We manufacture parts as well.

ORC - What parts do you make?

What? A Hodaka lurks in one of the many containers.

KL - Pistons, connecting rods, I do a lot of graphic stuff including decals for all the bikes. Some fiberglass parts I reproduce.

ORC - Ossa hung on to making fiberglass gas tanks for a long while, when everybody else went to plastic. Any problems there?

KL - I have plenty of used ones. I don't have many new ones anymore.

ORC - Let's say a customer comes in the door with an average Stiletto. What can you make that thing look perfect for?

KL - Let's use the term restoration. My interpretation is that you start at the crank shaft and work out. Everything gets renovated. That can be a little pricey, because by the time you get done with the engine, that can cost a thousand to fifteen hundred bucks.

Here's a peek at the half-dozen containers filled with bikes and parts.

Start at the wheel bearings and work from there. There is pretty and there is function. Both of them have to work good. Stuff that you might never see, I'll spend extra hours on it. It's gotta work right.

ORC - I noticed that you do some Yankees.

KL - I don't encourage it and I don't push it. The total run of the Yankees was only 764 bikes. The engines were made by Ossa and the frames were designed by Dick Mann and they were assembled in Schenectedy, NY.

ORC - You look at the bikes like the Phantom and the Yankee here, and you see the excellent Works Performance shocks on the back and it makes you realize just how good the bikes are with quality shocks.

Wonder if Yamaha knows this oldy but goody is here.

KL - I rode a stock Stilleto for about a year and never thought much about the shocks, then put some good shocks on it and my lap times came down dramatically.

ORC - What are your plans for future restorations?

KL -The next half dozen motorcycles I want to restore, I want for myself. I've done so many for other people, that they are like my children. I don't want to let them go.

ORC - What are you going to do for yourself?

Keith has a special area he keeps his current rides in.

KL - Right now, beside my CBX and my Triumph Bonneville, I have four Phantoms that I have set up in different trim for different events, and my Stage 2 Super Pioneer, I have a black Six Days replica, the '78 version. I love my '87 CR500 Hondas and '83 480 Honda. A couple of Stilletos, several MARs, and a couple of short trackers for when the need arises.

ORC - Back to the ones you're going to build.

KL - One of them is a 500 Ossa Roadster. I have a Mick Andrews I'm in the process of doing. I have a Maico 490 and a hand full of others that I haven't decide on yet.

ORC - You're 47 years old now, how did you make the transition from business man to the Ossa-nator?

Rare bird! This Honda has the engine built in to the rear wheel.

KL - I rode my old Ossas in '70 through '73. I was into motorcycles working for an Ossa dealer. By '76 or '77, my Ossa wasn't doing the job anymore. By right around 1980, things changed drastically. There were all these red motorcycles and they were winning.

I could beat them in the first turn, but I couldn't beat them anymore. So I got on a Honda and every year I got a new bike. I raced until about '87 then stopped. I'd ride after work everyday but lost the urge.

That was the era when I bought all the Ossa parts and I went to a few Vintage Races in '91 and '92. Then I saw these guys racing around and I figured that I could go faster than they could, so I put a bike together and I've been there ever since.