It was 1968, a pivotal year for Dave Chapman of Dave's Cycles/Copperhead Customs in Louisville, KY. "It was the year I got my first real motorcycle, even if it was a Honda 90," Dave said. "It was the first two-wheeler without a Briggs & Stratton engine I'd ever had."
It was only natural that for his latest restoration, a '68 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide was needed as a tribute to that meaningful year. Dave told us, "I searched for a restorable '68 Harley-Davidson for a while before I found the one you see here. Believe me, this bike was barely restorable when I got it, but I was determined to do it. Four and a half months later, here's the finished bike."
Getting his hands on this motorcycle is a story in itself, best told by Dave in his own words:
"It took a long time to find a suitable donor bike for this project. Most everything I found either had been cut and raked, had the motor or cases replaced, or was a basket case with lots of pieces missing. After about a year, I found the bike you see on these pages in a little town just west of Chicago. It was a three-owner example of Harley's finest, with the clock well above 50,000 miles. OK, that's what it showed, and it obviously hadn't worked in years. Anyway, I thought the price for the bike was fair. I was excited as I left for the Windy City, trailer in tow, for the four-hour drive to pick it up. It's one of the few bikes I'd found that had all of its parts, and the seller said it ran great.
"I'd seen pictures of it on my computer and talked to the owner every day for a week before I left to pick it up. Wrong! When I got there, it was like the seller was a ghost. The phone number that I was given to talk to him and his wife was answered by someone who said they'd never heard of him. And he wasn't where we had agreed to meet. After spending two hours looking around town and asking everybody if they knew him, I headed back home dejected, just knowing that someone in the parking lot where we were supposed to meet had offered him more money than I had, and now I was going home with money in my pocket but an empty trailer.