Nick's Shovel And My New Phone's Camera

I just got a new android phone and decided to try it out this weekend at Garage Co. It's not bad for a 5MP phone camera. This is the picture I took with the software that came with the camera. It's not too bad, the bike is Nick's generator Shovel in a nice reproduction wishbone frame with an ORIGINAL 1941 springer front end. This bike will be freaking gorgeous when it comes together.



This picture I took with camera software I downloaded. it's called Camera 360 and is pretty cool. It took this sepia tone type picture AND seems to also increase the resolution of the camera itself. I'd post the pic I took with the natural setting, but I shook the phone and screwed it up. At least now, if I don't have my good camera I know I can get a reasonable shot with this one.

54 Panhead

Last Sat. I rode out to Riders HD with some of the Haints to check out their BBQ fundraiser and bike show. Not a whole lot worth looking at really, just 3 cool bikes there (besides ours ) The first one was this 54 Pan. It's a great looking bike and is always in the shows at both local dealerships. It was pretty cloudy that day so I had to bump up the saturation a bunch and play with the levels to get the pics looking the way I wanted them to. Not much else to say about it except "Nice bike dude!"

It's Alive!!!

Got the Triumph started today and actually even took it for a short ride up the block and back. The best thing was that it started on the FIRST KICK after sitting for 3 years. I have to swap out the rocker box oil feed because the new cool one sucks, then wire up the taillight and get the damn handlebars to stay in one place. After that it'll just be cosmetics and few other little details.

Sig Pics from Delphi Forums.

I post a lot on delphi forums (been a member since 1998) and usually use a sig pic to make it easier for folks to recognize my posts. Sometimes I use something simple and sometimes I get creative and do up something cool in Photoshop. Here are a few of my favorites from over the years.

I found this picture of the inside of the Batcave on the interweb and decided that I needed to have my Batcycle parked in the Batcave. Seems simple enough, yeah right! It took 4 layers, a cut out of the batcomputer in the foreground,and some shadows to make this work. I think it came out pretty good though for my experience level at the time.


I made this one a little while later when I was heavily into my pin-up stage. Cut out pics of my bikes, added the border made up of a section of barbed wire repeated all the way around and put the pic of the girl in the background with a color layer over it to get the coloring I wanted.


One of my more recent sigs. Cut the background out a pic I liked of the Triumph (pre-new tank, by the way, it's a major pain to cut out around all those damn spokes!) made a shadow for the bike and added a cut out of some Bettie Page art that I really liked (Bettie was a Goddess!). Added Mjolnir to represent me and the Triumph Logo to represent the bike and we're in business.


This is my latest masterpiece. I decided to forgo the background removal and just add the new Bettie art and what the bike is. Photoshop is a great program and you can do a LOT of really cool stuff with it.

Over 5,000 miles on a hardtailed Sportster!!!

Some of the Haints took off for California to attend the "Born Free" party. One didn't make it out of the state, others had issues along the route, but I'm pretty sure most of them had a great time. I know Nick did, he kept us all updated on the Haints blog (see my linked blogs on the side of the page) and posted pictures along the ride. Basically his bike is a Sportster motor in a rigid frame with just a few inches of spring under his seat. Most folks would be crippled up after this many miles in 2 weeks, but not Nick! He made it back just in time for GarCo's bike Night and hung in there longer than I did. Here's a couple of pics from last night....


Here is the tired Road Warrior taking a few minutes to relax and drink a beer while he tells us his war stories....




This is the bike that he rode. You can see that there are not too many creature comforts to be had on this one. But this is what it's all about, you build your vision of a great bike then you get on it and you ride the hell out of it. I definitely believe this trip fits that definition!

Garage Company had another Bike Night

It was smaller than last month because of the massive monsoon that came through Sat. afternoon. It finally cleared up, but by the time I got around to taking pics the lighting was getting horrible. I did get a couple worth posting. This is a sweet old shovelhead that was built out of different year piles of junk. Definitely proves that a bike is more than just a sum of its parts!






Here is Whitey's bike, you may remember seeing pics of it from last month, but it looks like it's actually finished now. At least he's riding it if he's not done. Sweet reinvention of a Triumph Bonneville America. WAAAY better than what the factory envisioned.

This is an old XLCR Sportster factory Cafe Racer. HD only made this bike for a couple of years (77-79) and it was too far ahead of its time to be appreciated then. They are very sought after these days though. This one is a really nice restoration, the reason I blurred the background is because I couldn't get the folks in the background to get the hell out of the way. Oh well, that's why I have Photoshop ;-)


Maybe next month the weather will cooperate and there will be a good turnout that will show up early enough for me to get some great pictures.

Not much done to the Triumph this weekend...

I did get the new rocker box oil feed on and the lines run for it. Tightened up some other stuff and basically farted around with the minor details. All that's left is the wiring but the guys at GarCo are going to the Horse magazine's Smoke Out next weekend and I'll be out of town over the 4th of July so it'll be a couple of weeks before i can finish. I'll update when I get her to fire up!

The latest on the Triumph

Saturday was a good day for progress on the Triumph. I was able to get the fuel lines run, the new seat springs on (still have to open the end of the springs to fit the frame mounts though), the taillight mounted, the rack on the fender straightened and I mounted the old Falstaff beer opener that I've had planned for this bike for 3 years. Getting run over by the truck really put me behind on this project and some of the stuff that I was actually ahead of the trends on now look kind of common, but that's OK. I know I had them planned years ago ;-)

You can see the beer opener on the rear axle plate in this picture. I wanted to be a "real" chopper builder just like the guys at OCC so I used a step bit to drill the holes (sarcasm off now). Actually, this was the only bit I had that would cut through the plate. (Larry won't let anyone touch his private stash of bits ) I did find out that a couple of bolt holes in the front fork legs are stripped out and need to be helicoiled, but setbacks like this are to be expected.


The new tailight is visible in this picture. It is a stock Harley turn signal with a red lens. It makes a nice clean light and does well with all the vibration choppers seem to generate. Hopefully, she'll get wired up this week and I can fire the beast up for next Saturday's Bike Night at Garage Company. Y'all feel free to come on out next Saturday to check the place out. I can guarantee there will be some really cool bikes and some good folks to hang out with. Even if you don't have a bike, just park your car out on the street and stop on by.

Larry's Shovelhead "The Spacely Sprocket"

A few shots of Larry's Shovelhead, this bike has already won a "Best Chopper" award at teh Big Mountain Run and it's not even finished. They guy who painted the tank was told to do something that looked like "The Jetsons". This is the result and you can see how the bike got its new name.


The background in this picture was WAAY too cluttered and the license plate had a HUGE reflective halo around it so I did a little cropping. The tank is too beautiful not to show off, but good pics of the bike will have to wait until I can get it outside to shoot.


I was able to get a decent shot from this side, still not the best but my camera does have limits. Pretty soon the fender will get painted on this bike and the correct seat will get back from upholstery. Can't wait to see this one finished. You can see my Triumph on the lift in the background.

Spencer's Shovel

Spent Saturday at Garage Company Customs trying to finish up my Triumph. While I was there Spencer had his Shovelhead outside so I took advantage of that to get a few pictures.


This picture is pretty much how I took it except for a some work with the cloning tool to remove a stray hand and a bunch of power lines from the background.


At night the sign over the door lights up and looks really cool, in this pic I played around and tried to replicate that look. It's not too realistic especially with the bright sunlight, but I felt like playing around a little bit.


This is the same pic with all the clutter in the background blurred out to make the clean lines of this bike really shine. For a bike that was supposed to stay pretty stock after he bought it Spencer sure has made a lot of changes to it. Luckily they are all for the better because we all know that "Stock Sucks!"