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 are a few pics of the latest project I’m trying to work on in my spare time. I acquired a 1979 HD shovelhead from a friend of mine. It was in an accident about 5 years ago and has been sitting in storage. The frame had so much bondo, old purple metal flake paint and was covered with rattle can black. I got most of it off and you can see the frame after in came back from sand blasting. I’m going to hard tail the frame and keep the bare bones theme to the bike. The current pic shows the engine in the cracked and bent frame from the accident.

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!!!

I’m heading out to Las Vegas on October 3rd to spend the day at the Las Vegas Bike Fest. I will be going out to support some friends at their booths, have some fun, and to scope it out for next year when I will have a booth there. I am also planning on being at the 3 day CA Bike Week in the vendor village at the end of October. If anyone will be in Vegas for the event, or at the Bike Week, let me know. I’ll post some more info on Bike Week as it draws closer.

I had the opportunity to attend the 34th Bator Classic Motorcycle show at El Camino College this past weekend. I uploaded a few pics to the Vindikta MySpace page, of a few of the bikes that caught my attention. The one motorcycle that I really admired was the Moto Rumi. The owner of the bike was kind enough to take some time and he educated me on the history of the Moto Rumi brand and the intricacies of this particular machine. It was truly a motorcycle that when up close, one could see the simple functionality and how it was combined with beautiful Italian art. I have a few more detailed photos of the bike that were not uploaded. If anyone wants to see more pics of a truly beautiful machine, send me an email and I’ll post/forward them to you.

I’m working on a line of 1.25 inch bars that I am planning on having out by the end of October, just in time for California Bike Week and the annual Love Ride. One version will also be available for Springer front ends. They’re being made from steel tubing with internal gusseting in the bottom corners, and of course they’re 100% TIG welded. I also have all of the bars now available in stainless steel, which come polished and ready to install. Pictures and ordering options will be listed soon.

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.