My motto or moral for this story is "What can you do when you don't know what you can't do?"
I have never built a bike before. I have played around with my old Fat Boy, installing chrome parts here and there, but I have never built a bike. Motorcycles are my passion. I would love to make a living like some of my favorite bike builders, like Matt Hotch, Paul Yaffe, and Jesse James, but I am not a professional and will likely just continue looking up to these builders and working on bikes as my hobby. Reading HOT BIKE and watching build shows on TV gave me the courage to try building a ground-up custom on my own.
I wanted to build a chopper-style bike with a Harley-Davidson engine, transmission, and primary. Basically, I wanted a sick bike that was reliable and nice to ride. The idea was to use as many Harley parts as possible, but to have a unique custom bike. I started researching some frames online, but kept finding Evo-style frames, which were nice, but I wanted to run a Twin Cam 88B motor. I met a local San Jose guy named Steve Thomas who had a bike that housed the motor I was looking for. After chatting with him about the bike, I found out that he built the frame and would be willing to build one for me. We discussed what I was looking for and two months later I got the call that my frame was ready to be picked up. Now that I had my frame, I had no idea where to start. I put the frame on my workbench and started surfing the Web. The first thing I found was a new Harley Twin Cam 88B, transmission, primary, and carburetor. I picked it up and the next couple of months were the most exciting. As I would find what I was looking for and order it, boxes started showing up at the house on a daily basis. It felt like Christmas!
With no welding experience, I started working on mounting the gas tank. After hours of research, practice, and burnt shirts (I literally caught a few shirts on fire), I was able to MIG-weld all the mounts and get my tank where I wanted it. The tank is from J&P Cycles and has 4 inches of stretch and a pop-up gas cap. The tank is a flat-bottom style with a teardrop shape. With my new confidence in welding, I bought a $25 oil tank on eBay, cut both sides off, and reformed it with sheetmetal I purchased at the hardware store and bent over my knee. Once I had my oil tank all tacked up and shaped to my frame, I went to my friend Kyle Johnson for help sealing up the tank with a TIG welder.
Next were my fenders. I bought a 21-inch blank for a 120 tire in the front. It sits about 1/4-inch from the tire and wraps around to about 1-inch from the ground. The rolling front fender gives the long frontend a nice low look. My rear fender was also a blank that I cut and welded (again with help from Kyle and his TIG welder) to come out with a short, internal strut rear fender that mounts under the seat to the top of the frame. The rear fender is rounded to flow with the rear tire and sits at about 2 o'clock.
I then purchased the frontend, which is 41mm +10 over stock and has chrome bullet-style legs with hidden axles from Mid-USA. The triple trees are gothic style with 6 degrees of rake. The handlebars I built from 1-1/4-inch steel pipe. I built the 4-inch riser into the bars and reinforced them with a bottom plate that I cut out so that I did not have to use a cross bar. I thought it had a cleaner look that way. The hand controls are from BDL that I bought from a friend. They have hidden bolts and a real clean look up top. I do not have any mirrors because I am trying to come up with a design on my own. The grips are from Eddie Trotta (spike-style) to go along with the triple-tree design and the forward controls. They are sharp as hell, and I have caught my sleeve in the garage a number of times.