WE WON! WE WON! WE WON!!!!!!!

For the month of February there was a contest going on to get some original content into the blogosphere. The contest was being put on by the world famous Lady Hump blog. The rules were simple, post original content! Don't reblog the same crap you found on facebook as everyone else. There were 11 other blogs including the hard to beat JT's blog JBMFT in this contest and guess who won. That's right! We did!! I couldn't have done this without all my friends at GarCo and the rest of the fools who tolerate me. If it wasn't for my friends all I would ever post would be pics of me staring at my bikes. Be sure to check out the Lady Hump blog AND the other blogs in the feed on the right side of the page with the other blogs who were in this deal. They're all good FUN blogs. Support Original Content!!!!

Later.....
Check back later for more fun stuff!

Working On The Oil Tank

We made a little progress on my oil tank this weekend. I started with a really nice tank from Spitfire Motorcycle Parts. The tank was beautiful, but didn't fit well in the Flyrite Frame with a Sportster motor. Or at least it didn't fit how I wanted it to. That means some chopping was in order. You've seen the past posts where I had to cut the notch in the tank to get it to fit where I wanted it, this time I'm working on finishing it up so it will hold oil again......

The tank with the notch cut and the piece of sheetmetal I'm using to make the tank whole again.

I bent the sheetmetal over some tubing to keep it from creasing.

Trimmed most of the excess away and test fitted it.

Another view.

I marked the new piece so I can trim more excess away....

Then I cut that excess off.

Fits fairly well and works perfectly on the bike.

Larry started on the welding. He tacked it in place then I made some pieces to fill in the square cuts I had made.

The new pieces being welded on. This is the bottom of the tank so I just made the pieces to fill in the gaps. For the top I'll put more effort into it and try to get the pieces to fill in a little nicer and blend better as well.

Larry went ahead and did all the welding that he could and then did some grinding so that the new piece would be more flush. We'll be moving GarCo to it's new location this weekend, but after Larry gets settled in I'll make the last two pieces and finish this puppy up.

Southpaw Machine And Ross Are The Greatest!!!

A while back Ross and I had been talking about military stuff especially aircraft like we tend to do at times and the idea of a derby cover for my bike came up. For those of you who don't know I was a crewchief on Hueys for 10 years in the Army and I still love that aircraft. The Huey is the flying equivalent of a Shovelhead. It's a beautiful aircraft and truly simple in terms of modern electronics. It's a mechanic's aircraft though. Not a modular remove and replace one like too many modern machines are. Anyway, because of this conversation Ross said he could make me a derby cover if I gave him the art. So I started with this.....

Youc an see this Huey has the door guns and mounts on the sides and I knew they would not translate well as a silhouette so I modified the picture.....

And it ended up like this after an hour or so of manipulating. A nice clean streamlined Huey ready to convert......

Into this! A clean and simple design that is perfect for a machine master like Ross to use. You can see the process he went through to make the cover on his page (Southpaw Machine) What he doesn't tell you is that it took him a LOT of work to take my image and get it into his software and configure it for milling as well as getting the lettering to work right and line up to work with the holes needed to mount the cover on the bike. Ross went above and beyond for me and he'll do it for you too, but it won't be cheap. It WILL be beautiful though and completely custom.

Here is the finished cover, ready to mount.

Here it is on the bike. I LOVE it! The slight tilt to the lettering makes it work with the mounting holes AND flows with the angle of the aircraft making it all look like its flying.

Another view.

Ross also made me this timer cover a while back. I had asked him if he could do the HD #1 logo and next thing I know he's handing me this with not only that logo, but my name in it as well. I painted it, so don't hold that against Ross ;-)

This is an aircleaner cover Ross made for Chopper Ed. He was a helicopter pilot in the Army and flew Hueys and Chinooks.

This timer cover was made for Tim, if you're Army or ex-Army you'll recognize it. If you're not you won't care, but the point is that the work is amazing. Check out Ross' blog and contact him if you want some truly custom machine work for your bike, Stock or chopped he doesn't care. CALL HIM!!!

45dgree.com

Some of you may know Stephen Berner. He was the editor of IronWorks for awhile and now he has a new project. It's called 45Dgree and it's a fun place to look around and find cool stuff to read, to see and just to check out. It's a free site and is worth every penny of that to join. Recently Stephen asked me to write for the site and I accepted. It won't stop my blogging here it's just a chance to get a little more exposure and help give some coverage to my friends on another site. So check out www.45dgree.com and you'll see my name under contributors. My next story should be up on Wednesday. In the meantime look around and read what interests you. I think you'll find yourself poking around there for quite a while. OK, the regular craziness will continue in the morning. We had a good weekend ;- )

A Few More From The World Of Wheels

This is the last stuff I'll post from this years WoWs. Some of it is scary, some of it is sad and some is pretty kick ass. Climb aboard and let's go see what we find......

I can't believe that people still think that bolting every aftermarket piece available to a bike makes it custom and show worthy. The bike was clean and nice, but there is WAY too much crap on here.

I thought this style of bike was dead, but I guess there are still a few diehards out there.

If your tire is bigger than your girl's butt then it;s too damn wide!

This bike was featured! It's a clean build and had some damn nice craftsmanship, but c'mon let's move on from this fad please.

If your ass is so damn fat you need dual shocks then maybe you shouldn't be riding a Sportster!!!!!!

This clean BSA has been in EVERY WoW's I can remember. It helps me cleanse the images of some of the other bikes from my brain.

Big Daddy Roth's son carrying on the family business. I still have a shirt I bought from Mr. Ed Roth himself at a show years ago with his autograph on it.

The Rat Fink booth, of course I bought another shirt ;-)

And just because it's one of my favorite cars.

I don't know why I like these tailights so much, but they just work for me.

And finally a Munsters tribute kind of car. Not really close to the original used on the TV show, but still pretty cool.

Stay tuned for more regularly scheduled chopper goodness

More Madness From A Soggy Saturday

Lots of stuff was going on around the shop Saturday. He's some more pics of it. For those of you who can't ride yet I hope this will hold you over until it is time to get the bikes out. For the rest of you, get out and rack up some miles!!!

David blew  head gasket on the Pan. It takes awhile to get the bugs worked out and your skill levels up when your dealing with old iron like this. Hopefully by BMR time this bike will be purring like a kitten and will stop throwing parts at me as we ride down the road.

Poor little Pan motor.

"Y'all get your asses over there and grab a broom, We gotta get this place ready to move in two weeks!"

Cutting up a shovel frame to be hardtailed. That plasma torch makes LOTS of sparks so of course I was mesmerized.

Spray them sparks baby!

Whoosh! I was giggling by this point.

Melting steel and shooting flame!

The shop from where my Triumph sits. I'm gonna miss this place. In case you didn't know Larry is building a new shop building next to his new house and will move operations out there a week from Saturday. Gonna be a lot of work, but it'll be worth it when its done.

The bike lifts empty for a change.

Random Scenes From Saturday

Saturday started out OK, but by 11 it had turned to crap. You can see in the first pic how it was. It was raining so hard when I left around 4:30 or so that my raingear even started to leak. Luckily I was headed home and could change clothes.

RAIN SUCKS!

Bill and Chubbs killed some time by playing fetch with a damn 16" tire. Gotta love his big goofy ass.

Larry actually working while we tried to distract him. He did a good job of ignoring us ;-)

Bill's XS with a tank Spenser made. We decided to see what it looked like. It looked REAL good, but Stewie won't let Bill have it.

I posted pics a while back of Spenser making this. Since then he's added the short tunnel and finished it up.

Larry, David and Spenser. Larry and Spenser were setting up a frame jig to hardtail a frame while David drank beer and egged....I mean cheered them on.

My Triumph and the Flyrite Sporty hanging out together. I was working on the sissy bar when I took this. I'll be bringing the Triumph home soon since Larry will be moving soon.

The Chop House On Garage71 Is Worth Your Attention...

We finally have a voice on the airwaves, or in this case the Interweb radio. The show is call the Chop House and it is on Garage71, it's a part of Live365 internet radio. If you know Jeremy from Muttin Cycles and Eric "Timebomb" Trenary from the BDAC crew then you'll be ahead of the game. If you don't know these guys you should and you will after listening to this show a few times. This is a great show that deserves our attention. For all you folks not from teh South here's your chance to try and figure out how our inbred asses operate. Tune in on Mondays at 6 p.m. Eastern time. You won't be disappointed.

This is Eric, I took this at the Dixie Roundup last year. I don't have a picture of Jeremy, but I bet there's one on the internet somewhere if you really want to see him ;-)