All Bikes-and More; 10,000 motorcycles gleam in the Arizona sun.(NEWS)

Byline: LARRY EDSALL

RON ADLER WANTED THAT SCHWINN Stingray bicycle so bad. His mother said the family couldn't afford one, but she was willing to take the money Ron got from collecting soda bottles and put a copy-cat bike on layaway at Sears.

Adler, now 54, remembers that the Sears bike cost him $53.90, less than half what he would have needed for the real Stingray. But it didn't matter. He went to work to make his bike look like a real Sting-ray, and by the time he was finished, it looked even better. He did such a good job that he sold his modified bike for more than the real Stingray would have cost.

He still collects, modifies and restores bicycles, but Adler's interests have grown up. He also buys, sells, repairs and restores motorcycles and cars. He has about 10,000 motorcycles, and who knows how many thousands of parts, covering almost every inch of the 2.5 acres of his All Bikes yard.

With so much metal gleaming on the hillside in Rye, Ariz., All Bikes is more than a place for motorheads; it has become something of a tourist destination, 80 miles northeast of Phoenix and just south of the resort community of Payson.

All Bikes may look like a vehicle graveyard. It is not. Motorcycles are aligned by marque and separated by narrow pathways. Side by side, Hondas stretch the length of two football fields. Vintage bicycle wheels hang from the rafters of a shed. Old cars are parked nose to tail on the south side of the yard.

When he was 19, Adler moved from his native Southern California to Washington State to help an older brother who was going through a divorce. In Washington, Adler opened a bicycle-repair shop, but soon he was working on motorcycles as well and became a motorcycle dealer. In 1988, he went to Arizona to help an older ...