A Texas Style Trip

On our way back from Born Free last year, we made a number of stops at some long forgotten holes in the wall. This one in particular sticks out. We made a few calls while traveling through Texas. A lot of the bike junkyards had long since closed but one guy gave us a lead on someone. He said “yeah, call Dan… He’s got an old grocery store full of stuff.” Low and behold, He truly did have a grocery store full of parts. We met up with Dan and his buddy Mustang. After they sniffed us out to make sure we weren’t trouble, they let us dig through anything and everything. Jordan scored big. Old pan trans case among some other stuff. I just grabbed whatever looked shinny. The whole time, Dan is sitting out front on a lawn chair pick ticks off his dog. It was surreal. It crazy to remember that we went from standing in the middle of Born Free 3 to a grocery store in Texas full of HD parts in less than 24 hours. There is a second half of this story better left untold for now but… I realized this morning as I glanced at some of the parts I got from Dan, that I never posted any of the pics. Enjoy.

Let the Work Begin!

Man, it’s not even winter and it looks like lots of folks are already attacking the motor work with the intensity of a thousand suns. I started my shovel rebuild a couple days ago. The jugs are .060 over making my 74″ motor roughly an 80″ motor when complete. Flywheel assembly turned out to be a pile of sh*t but that was all sorted out with Gators help. The bottom end should be done in about a week (The heads are another story.)

Spencer’s Triumph is already under way. Damn – I’m rooting for that guy. He’s got some serious heart. All said and done, he’ll be the triumph man by the time he comes out the other side.

Everyone get ready for that long, hard winter. Swap meets here I come.

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.

A photo of the Mysterious John Funkie

This dude is the man. He’s got all the good records and he’s f*cking invisible! For all you folks who have heard him on the radio, this is what the guy actually looks like.

MagnetoZoo

I was doing laps across the internet yesterday researching magnetos and thinking up strange ideas for converting a triumph magneto to work on something very different. In my search I came across this really great site “MagnetoZoo.” The guy running the cycle blog has lots of really great pics and parts t feast the eyes on. Dig it. Very good stuff – Speed Club Approved.