Vindikta

Just a sample of some of the seat pans heading out this week to some of the leather workers that use our pans, and some extra for the upcoming Long Beach motorcycle swap meet. The pans are laser cut from 11 gauge steel and the stainless steel mounts are TIG welded. We don’t use carriage bolts or 5 cent bolts from the local depot store. Some people want the pans just bent with nothing welded to them and even a few go out just as the laser cut blank with no bend. We’ve done quite a few custom orders for customers that wanted a specific style or radius and some of these pans have had some incredible leather attached to them on a few award winning bikes. In the next few weeks, we’ll add the contact info for a few of the leather workers that use these pans and turn out some mind blowing artwork.

With a little help, I got the shovel head engine and trans pulled from the donor bike. I would have liked to keep the original frame, but it was too badly damaged from the accident that it was in with the previous owner.

Fortunately, I happen to have the original frame that the engine belonged to, and I decided to hard tail it and make some slight modifications. I cut the rear swing arm section off and also chopped the neck. I want to keep the original cast gusset and HD numbers. I am planning on stretching the neck as well as adding the hard tail. I salvaged some 1 1/8 tubing from the wrecked frame for the stretch and the plan is to use 1 ¼” for the rear section. The plan is to have it together by the end of August, hopefully.

 Second photo

Here’s a pic of the latest project in the shop. My buddy Andy at Live Wire Fab Works is taking this on and making some adjustments to it. Nothing being done to the bike is from a catalog or “off the shelf”. Everything that is being added to the bike will be hand fabricated. The bike will have a custom set of hand built pipes, a sissy bar, modified “old school” passenger pegs and various other adjustments to achieve the look the customer wanted. The tag bracket is built by Andy and is 3/16ths steel, 100% Tig welded and comes in a vertical and horizontal frame. They are built to your specs whether you want it to mount to your ¾” or 1” axle or your passenger peg mount.
The black bike is a stock Harley soft tail Night Train. There was no cutting or welding to the stock frame involved in making this look. It includes a set of Andy’s pipes and his rear fender that he fabricated to achieve this look. This bike turns heads and gets a crowd around it wherever we ride.
I’ll post the completed pics of the project bike up in about 2-3 weeks. If anyone is interested in having Andy do some custom work for you or you just want to ask him a question, you can contact him at LiveWireFabWorks@yahoo.com, or get in touch with me. He also shares a booth with me at the Long Beach Cycle Swap/Show every month so stop by and say hi.
More bikes and more custom work will be posted in the coming months!!!

At the request of many of the people I’ve been talking to at the various events, in the next few weeks all of the bars are going to have the option of being dimpled.  I am also offering the “sweeper” style bars in a 14 inch height in addition to the 12 inch and both sizes will not only be available dimpled, but they will also be offered in a wider measurement to accept the Springer front ends.

I also just completed a set of bars for a customer that were a reproduction of an old Flanders style set of bars that he is putting on a 1940’s restoration project. I’ll put a pic up of those when they get back from chrome. Another customer had an old flyer from Stellings and Hellings and I reproduced one of the bars with a slight modification. I think that they came out really good and I had several requests for them, so I will get a pic up by next week and probably offer a few for sale later this month.

I decided to start a project that I am hoping will allow me to gain some more skills, be creative, and have some fun without worrying about deadlines, money or what anyone thinks.

I had acquired an 82 Suzuki shaft driven motorcycle a few years ago and it had been sitting in my garage awaiting some inspiration on my part. The bike had been sitting for a few years under a tarp, in a back yard, so it was going to need  some work to get it running again.

Exposure to time and the elements had left their mark, but once it was stripped down to basically a rolling chassis, and the engine still intact, it didn’t look so bad. So I called my buddy Chris to come by on Saturday, to lend his 2 cents, and see what we could do with it.  The goal was to get the engine out, and at least come up with a basic plan for the frame.

After removing the rear wheel and shaft drive and a few hours of debating back and forth, I took a portable band saw and chopped the frame where the backbone met the rails for the seat and rear fender. Using some scrap tubing, welding wire, and even some electrical conduit, Chris and I spent the next few hours holding them up to the frame, making bends, sitting on the skeleton and trying to figure out how to make the design flow and just simply, look good and be a functional ride. I decided to keep the rear swing arm with the shaft drive, and a curved set of rails that will house the seat pan will swoop down from the backbone and up. In theory, it will look like the rider is suspended over the rear wheel, yet tucked down into the bike.

The 27-year-old engine put up a good fight and was the victor on that day. Extremely rusted bolts on the engine mounts, attempting to remove some heat shrink wrap around the carbs, stripped screws, and the like, and the engine remains in the frame, but not for long.

I was having some work done in my shop the other day and when it was done, the guys that were doing the work asked if they could hang out for a bit and look at some of the equipment and handlebars that were being bent up. I gave them a cold soda and we talked about bikes and welding and I let them use some scrap steel and make some passes in the english wheel. They only hung out for about 20 minutes before they had to get to their next assignment but when they left they were appreciative for the sodas and for letting them try the wheel and hanging out to take a quick break in their day. I thought back to the “master builder” that tried to sell me $250 pieces of crap and if he would have let me hang out in his shop just to look around and talk about bikes and welding, even if I didn’t ride, or would he have charged me for that? I enjoyed sharing what I do with these guys, regardless if they would ever have purchased anything from me. It was nice to see someone get excited about welding and seeing how a tube bender works. They had some good questions about learning to metal shape and weld and hopefully I pointed them in the right direction. It would be great if they took some welding classes, bought a book or video on metal shaping, or even just got a piece of scrap metal and started banging on it and try and shape it to the vision in their head.

I hope that quick break in their day at a random location gave them the inspiration to try something different.

I got to thinking of my conversation with my friend again and the quality versus quantity discussion. I recently attended a local bike show and had the opportunity to see the other side of the business. Not the side where I can forego quality and buy a cheaper imitation of a product, but instead, spend a bunch of my hard earned money for a bad product because it had someone’s name attached to it. I met a so called “master builder”, who shall remain nameless, and I was admiring a set of drag style handlebars that he was selling. They looked good and he told me about how he used DOM tubing and that they were TIG welded, and how he built the jigs for consistency and that they were personally designed by him, blah blah blah. What I didn’t understand was the $250 price tag for a set of drag bars. When I asked if that was the correct price he appeared to be a taken back by it. He said that that was a fair market price and that it was compatible with what was on the market and being offered by other builders. Now I didn’t tell him what I do for a living but I did have, what I thought was, a legitimate question about his $250 handlebars. You see, they had a noticeable indent near the weld groove where someone must have used a flap disk and ground into the steel too far. There were porosity holes in the weld seam showing through the powder coating. For the non welders out there, that means that the weld area was contaminated. ( that’s not a good thing) The fact that it was showing through the powder coat means that someone didn’t care at the point of prep, welding, or powder stage. But t they felt comfortable slapping a $250 price tag on it and saying that is a fair market price.

So I simply asked him in a naive tone what the holes showing through the powder coating meant and if that had anything to do the noticeable dent near the weld seam. Needless to say he seemed annoyed and walked away to talk to someone that was inquiring about one of his bikes. Now I’ve got no problem with people trying to make a living, but seriously, what kind of person turns out such a piece of crap and justifies the cost by saying that it is compatible with what is on the market? We all have overhead and the cost of equipment and supplies and I understand that we need to make a living, but seriously, have some pride in what you do and don’t stick it to someone just because you can.

I was reading an article today in a magazine where they where comparing the results of an in depth test between a made in the USA, Baker transmission and one of the overseas copies that sells for quite less. The results were quite interesting  regarding quality versus cheap imitations of an original. The results were posted in a scientific manner and the author didn’t tout one design over the over, but rather let the results speak for themselves. The point of this is that while reading the article I got to thinking of a conversation I had the other day with someone when I was bouncing ideas of how I could be more productive and still maintain quality. While bouncing ideas back and forth, the topic of having a manufacturer produce the product overseas in China came up. What got me upset was that they went on and on about how I can come up with an idea or just steal a current product from someone else and have it mass produced in China and churn out so much quantity that I can afford to undercut people and still make a nice profit. That really got my blood boiling. This person just didn’t get it.

I agonize over every angle in a pair of handlebars and every measurement. If I have a lapse in concentration and make a 72 degree bend instead of a 70 degree, and if I can’t fix it, the tube goes into the scrap pile for future use. I literally measure and check every single set of bars and every angle to make sure that they are correct. I hold up every pair to visually check them and I actually envision someone riding down some highway with them and hope that they enjoy them. I’d love to see a picture of each set of bars on someone’s bike or project, and If I see you at a swap meet, show, or out on the road somewhere, I’d like to shake your hand and say “thank you”.

I have trouble believing that someone on some factory overseas has the same passion. If they’re off on a bend by a few degrees, would anyone really care, or notice? Sure, if I produced the product in China, then I can turn out more product  faster and cheaper,  but I would feel like I was cheating myself and my friends just to make a quick buck. Quality isn’t cheap but it isn’t a license to extort either. Someone can always find something cheaper somewhere, but in the end you get what you pay for.

Just finishing getting the shop set up. If anyone has ever had to deal with the city, the planning and building commissions, the fire department and all the hoops you have to jump through, then you know the frustrations. A local guy moving his business has been gracious to donate some of his workbenches shelves and give me some other misc stuff at a discount price to help get me off the ground. He makes custom pool cues and is at DenaliCues.com. His name is Bob and is a pretty cool guy if anyone needs some custom pool cues. Although he tells me the wait time is about 9 months right now.

Spent the day at the Pomona EasyRider show and saw a few nice looking machines. Most of the bikes weren’t really to my liking as they were mostly show bikes. I much preferred the bikes at The Horse Smoke Out West. If you like “garage built” custom built bikes, then it’s worth the weekend trip to Cottonwood, AZ.