A German Triumph

Reinhart is a good friend of mine out here in MN. Originally from Germany, dude is obsessed with motorcycles in a very scary way. He put this triumph together last year with Born Free as his goal. He spent a lot of nights after work in the Speed Club garage finishing the work on his bike. I just stood around drinking Pabst and taking pics. Thanks to the Pabst, I completely forgot that I even took pics.

the D Pedal

Last night I was lucky to get pics of Zac Dooms garage-made Lee pedal. Joe calls it a D Pedal. I think that’s pretty fitting. Joe Mason and Diamond Dave are also lending a hand. Click the pic to see an enlarged image. Dig it.

Garage Pics

I’ve picked up a lot of parts recently and have made a lot of headway on the time machine. I finally stopped to grab the camera and snap some pics for the chopper blog. Just a bunch of random shit. Enjoy.

Garage Love

RL sent me some pics he grabbed from a few weeks back. We were kicking around the garage putting that xs back together and working on a few Pabst. Cold or not, gotta get out there and keep those projects on track. Show some garage love. On a side note, I’m usually the one taken the pics. Kinda weird seeing myself for a change.

Welcome to the chopper blog.

Garage Feature I – “Pinky”

If you’re even remotely serious about building bikes in the Twin Cities or Midwest for that matter then you probably know Rick. He’s a wealth of knowledge and quite a unique character. When I asked if I could get some pics for the site he responded with “I dont give a shit whatcha do.” Believe it or not, he and I get along really well. All the local bike and car guys gravitate to him when it comes to heavy duty fabrication work. He’s an all around motor man with decades of experience and experimentation.

I’ve heard him referred to as Handsome Rick, Fabricator Rick and my personal favorite… “Pinky.” Rick is one fine fella. He’s professionally or semi-professionally raced just about everything with a motor at one point or another. New rules have been written because he knows how to exploit the unmentioned details. He told me a little story about 3-wheeler ice racing in the 80’s. He asked what the widest wheel base allowed was. They said something like 3 feet. He went home and built a trike axle so narrow and with such narrow tires that you could canter around a corner like an 2-wheeled enduro. They showed up a couple weekends in a row. Won 1st place in their amateur division on every race they attended. The next season they introduced a minimum wheel base and that was that.

Rick’s really a bit of a living legend when I start to really think about it. I’m pretty sure he’s never had a “regular job.” At one point in his life he was racing 48 weekends out of the year at different tracks across the US. The last time I visited, the founder of House of Kolors Paint, Jon Kosmoski happened to drop by with a front end for Rick to work up. On top of it all, he’s a really solitary guy.

He’s good shit and he’s probably one of the most interesting guys I’ve met since my move to the Midwest. Who better to start off our first ever Garage feature than the one-man garage master himself. I shared all kinds of oddball ideas with him and he always says to me, “if you can imagine it, I can make it.”

welcome to the chopper blog Garage Feature I. More to come.