can't stop, won't stop

got some bars bent up by Arie Vee.  They are 6" rise.  Preunit bend and sort of a Stellings and Hellings back and down bend.   I like them.  Now to decide if they should be PC Black or Chromed.  The height seems just right.  No more big chopper bars on this mini bike.

OH, and then also took off the full size Ppad and replaced it with a Little Guy version.  I remember when I had the whole 2 car garage to myself.  that was nice space-wise.  Now, Cicero and I are cramped in 'almost' a full 1 car garage amount of space with construction equipment slowly encroaching.  Hard to beat ANY space in Brooklyn though.

let the sun shine down on me

Amazing Summer Winter Sunshiney Day

Real warm weather can't come soon enough.

Swinger Updates

some exciting updates.

Picked up the motor from Nick, @50el_nick on the instajams.
Cleaned up the trans back at the garage
Put both back into the frame
Swapped out the rear stock Dunlop for a Firestone ANS
Painted the dropseat rails black for now
Started modifying the genny hydraulic brake pedal to work with the cone cover
Installed the exhaust and made some slashcuts in the ends to work with the shocks
Put some 6" risers and drag bars on, in lieu of the 8" T-bars that are being widdled up by Special 79 Jay.

Tank to Frame Fitment and Today's Stance

and some fitment of the tank to the frame.  I'll be welding tabs onto the sides of the front of the tank and drilling the mount through the side of the speedo cable hole/casting section for them to bolt to the frame.  The tabs would be way too long to connect to the stock tank mounts, and I want the tank to sit a little further towards the back of the frame than most others do.

Top Casting Trim Down

I'll be using one of Throttle Addiction's Narrow Frisco Sportster Tanks on this bike. The front tab was in the way of the speedo mount on the top casting though.  In fact, they both had to go.  So out came the grinder again.  The goal was to still leave as much of the stock parts of the casting on the frame as possible.  Metal finishing will be done later.

78 Drop Seat Swingarm Build

yep.  I'm back on the blog.  I really enjoyed documenting previous things on here, so this is more for me I guess.  Anyway, we are starting with what WAS my 1978 FXE Miami Vice and it will be undergoing a facelift and some major weight loss.  Stay Tuned.

photos of my 66 by Paulo

Paulo, Joe King Speedshop, snapped these pics when he was visiting back in September '15.  This is before I swapped out the z bars for the Noise #2's.  I actually really like both looks equally.  

wait, what???

So you're telling me that a "reconditioned" gas tank is worth the same as what some people are ditching the motor from the the same year Shovelhead for?  Someone or something has gone absolutely batty with this world...Sure, the motor may need a rebuild and will end up reconditioned as well, but wowie!

superglide tank wow

I don't know what else to say...

Clutch Hub Pulling

Tuesday Night:

Clutch Hub Puller arrived, so head straight to the shop after work.

Get bike on the lift, grab the tools I'll need.

Install the puller on the clutch hub.

Tighten center Bolt until there a great amount of tension.

Spray some lubricating/anti seize oil up in there.

Tap head of center bolt lightly with a mallet.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

POP.

Pick up hub and puller off the ground.

Look at the enemy tapered shaft.

I win this one.

Wow, sheared the damn key in half.

Realized I ordered the wrong main seal for the transmission.

Need to stop for the night. Nothing more I can do.

Take bike off life, put away tools.

Walk home defeated.  

Search out what parts I need now.  

Turns out my tranny is a 1980 model that uses a rubber seal specific to 2 years.

Order correct seal and a few other small bits. 

Sleep for a few hours.  

Work day starts again. 

Bike is one tiny step further than it was when I woke up yesterday. 

With every step forward, there is a step backward.
With every step backward, there is some learning to be done.
Without this, there could be no forward again.
While it is frustrating at the moment something else goes wrong/different, the lessons learned will last forever.
I'd rather have the knowledge of knowing how to fix things than leave this to someone else.

Dice Issue 43 and Michael Schmidt

If you haven't already, go get a copy of the new Dice Magazine, Issue 43.  Fun photos/article on the shovel and my commute to work.   Thanks again to Matt, Dean and Michael.

One of my favorite part of riding across bridges is the vantage point that you get, especially on a bike vs. in a car.  The city changes as you approach it.  While the empire state building is a mere shadow in this pic next to my head, it comes to life as you get closer to Manhattan, and then immediately disappears again behind the lower east side mayhem.

We found this crazy painted wall and ground section off of flatbush ave near where they are building the new Nets arena.  I really hope they move the Islanders into Brooklyn.  AND re-named them the Brooklyn Warriors.  That's what I was thinking about in this picture....while checking my email.

Issue 43 also has features on Schaaf, Eddie Cleveland, JD, Caleb, Scotty Stopnik, and more....suuuper stoked.

looking back on the end of the summer

we are having one of the mildest winters that I can ever remember on the east coast....which is making New York City actually the best city in the world as of right now.  If winters were always like this, lets not forget last winter though, this would be the perfect seasonal climated place to live.

Friday night I layered up and headed to Kickstart Cycle's Pothole Social in Lodi, NJ.  We watched the screening of the EDR movie from last year's event and it definitely looked like fun.  Maybe next time I'll have to muster up the time off and join the crew.  ALSO, it was the magazine release part for Greasy Kulture's newest issue, so the party was a triple win for all! GK is one of my favorite biker mags right now.  Content is always great. 

The Social was at cool bar right of Rt. 80, only about 4 miles from the George Washington Bridge so I figured the ride wouldn't be too cold.  And it was right.  Sure, the thermometer read 38 degrees when I left Brooklyn, but with warm clothes, a nice leather jacket and the full face helmet, it was fine.  

Of course, I reminded myself of the day that Malcolm and I rode up to the Seaweed Yacht Club though a few months ago.  Same first half of the route, except instead of getting on 80, we headed up the Palisades.  OK, I'll admit, that time of year is much better.  Sweating through the manhattan traffic to be rewarded by the trees and the open road while riding along the Hudson River.  Yeah, that was nice.

Godspeed 45/06 - in the neighborhood

Cicero hit me up through the Facebook after I posted about tearing the shovel down for the winter.  With a nice main seal leak and a tranny leak and the 70's paint wearing/chipping/flaking, OH and still no rear brake, something has got to give.  BUT the weather isn't it...

We got together this past Sunday morning, chatted about bikes, life, jewelry, work, kids and he took some pictures while we were doing that.  Just a couple of dudes, hanging at 9:30am...

check out his photography here.

and

check his quarterly Godspeed 45/06 photo collab books that are pure amazingness here.

thanks 'Ros!   sunday funday.

Pangea Speed *new* Streamliner Bars

Received a nice little package from Andy over at Pangea Speed and decided it was time to mount up these beautiful little bars.

I've always like the rabbit ear bar look, but proportions never seemed right. The either stuck up too much or were way too narrow and straight back making them awkward to actually twist a throttle with.

Well, he made his slightly lower than the last round and wider....aka perfect!?! First thing after mounting them up was lopping 2" off each end of the bars to get the right feel. Then I threw on a gorgeous new brake caliper/master cylinder set up that came from Kim. (more on that on a later date)

re-bled the front brake pretty quickly, but will be putting on new brake lines and throttle cable once the season tells me it is time.

CHECK OUT:

Andy from Pangea Speed on the daily

Andy's Born Free 4 Build Blog

New York City November

its almost december, yet the weather is holding in epic-ness for a few more days. I haven't ridden the shovel for a bit so I decided to go for a short ride around Gowanus, Park Slope, Sunset Park, Red Hook and then Soho before heading home.

Keino had a few pans at the shop. One of which is Gentry's with the coffin/prism tank. I really like this bike. Its not a 'pretty pan'. It isn't like every socal pan with the wassel peanut, 18" rear, 21" up front and a chrome springer. Its not flashy. And its not really my style, but every time I see it, I want it.

As with most rides I gave myself one goal, get a firewire 800 to firewire 400 adapter. needless to say after looking in a few local 'small businesses', and having no luck, I have decided to order it for $4.00 from a small internet company called amazon.com.

making bars from bars

with no bike here and completely slacking on getting Chris's sportster running, I need some sort of project to keep the few hours (read:1 hour) a day of free time busy. I had talked to both Chris and Kim about using the bends and bungs from the 70moto Gentleman's Bars and changing a few things ever since the shovel was getting finished. brought some pieces by BCM and we've slowly worked on it.

so....some heat, some patient coping, some tacking, back to coping, tacking, welding, heating, smoking, yes, a good amount of smoke was coming out of the ends of the bars, bending, heating, bending, and mounting. Kim was on heat duty while I was on the bending duty and I will fully admit that we went with the "art, not science" style of fabrication which can get interesting when bending stainless steel tubing. tip:use some science with your bends. bend it once, bend it right. whoopsie!

they are not the right style for maximum Bob's bike, but it's what we had to make sure the bars were perfectly in line with the front end. that was my biggest want for these. oh and a nice tight radius in the vertical sections of the bars....I think that they will look quite mounted up, especially after I spend some time behind the polishing wheel!!!

now, back to waiting!!!!! almost there!

is it bad to miss a machine?

maybe I'm just being sentimental here in socal, but I miss the shovel...all the way back in Brooklyn. (I'll be home soon enough, buddy...).

In the meantime, I'm slowly gathering little bits here and there that I've needed for it; new main crankshaft seal, UNI foam filter for my BCM air cleaner, spring for my brake pedal, and hopefully a straight kicker arm after the swap meet this weekend.

Also saw the *new and improved* Sreamliner bars from Pangea Speed and may have to pick up a set of those, and in some downtime going to work on some bars with Chris and Kim as well. You gotta have options and with the sportster almost sold, I think I need to move on from the modified window bar look alltogether...Lastly, looking forward to helping out some more with the Maximum Bob shovel seat set up!

photos for the future and from the show

On Sunday I had the amazing opportunity to meet up with Michael Schmidt to have him take some pictures and shoot film of the shovelhead. He used to see it as a pile of parts back in california when he was filming/shooting Kim for his sportster build, and now got to see a complete motorcycle. We took a few laps over the bridges between Brooklyn and Manhattan and then found a great little wall to shoot the stills in front of on Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn.

We were losing the light very quickly so hopefully the pictures come out as planned. Let's just say we had a ton of fun with everything from locations to wardrobe...photos to be featured in an upcoming issue of Dice Magazine.

Go ahead and check out Michael's work here.

back to the invitational:

since I only carried my iphone, AND more importantly, there were people with nice cameras at the show, I didn't really take many pictures. Here's a few links to some great pictures of the bikes that were at the Brooklyn Invintational:

45 Degree

Chop Cult

again, it was a great weekend. Great to catch up with friends from southern california. Great to see Walter and the rest of the Kickstart crew and great to hang with the NYC/Brooklyn crew of supportive dudes and dudettes.

romantic rights

3 turns of her throttle to get the carburetor wet...

...and then get to work and start straight kickin' it!

The truth is, once she's ready to go.....she's ready to go. And you can't rush these things. She's a machine like the rest of them. Chris captured these pics on more than one occasion. Sometimes it was more kicking than I would have loved to admit. Like, strip down all your clothes off because you're sweating so much from kicking. But JD's method seems to be the way.

SoCal Week - Day 4 - Kick and Fire

please excuse my use of (parentheses). I can't help it, I just keep using them.

This morning was spent driving around getting random bits and bops, mostly from Marshall's. No, not THAT marshalls.....although I could use some Calvin Klein underwear, some Polo Socks and a random non-fitted yankees world series hat....(yes they will always have that shit there).

The rest of the day was spent in the garage, walking in circles, thinking about what is next. I did stop to grab some lunch with Mike, and then it was back to the garage until just now. Here's what we are working with just after midnight:


Not fully running yet, and yes I look like I haven't slept in a few days (true), and sound a bit like Sloth from Goonies (a great movie that I haven't seen in a while) but a 32 year old machine re-built by hand that actually starts??? It's a happy moment.



It doesn't really matter if you're into motorcycles or not. The truth is, making something, or working hard on something is SO rewarding when it works/starts/comes together. I don't care if its assembling the best fantasy baseball team, getting that job you wanted, or even the joy of finally buying the TV you've been researching, it just feels good when your shit works out....especially when you know what went into it.

back in black

still warm from the oven. 1 day powder coating turnaround? yep. rebuilding starting tonight? yep. bike will be running by middle of next week? I won't rest until it is.


thanks Chris!