Thank you Seattle!!!

The Beezerker and I had a wonderful week end at the Ultimate Builder Competition. We walked away with the Peoples Choice award as well as First Place in the Freestyle category.... It was a kick as week end!!!!

So much to be thankful for!

Dropping Out!

A while back I drew up and had my friend Casey from Velvet Oven machine up some swing arm parts for the Ducati. At the time I had no idea what the axle adjusters were going to look like but today it came to me in a vision. Okay, maybe it was more like a drawing than a vision but regardless I figured it out. It takes some nerve to take beautifully machined parts like Casey made and throw them on the mill for some free hand machining.

I am really happy with the way things are turning out!

Speed Shop Design on Facebook

I have decided to create a separate page for Speed Shop Design on Facebook. I recently noticed that my personal page reached over 1000 friends, most of which I don't know. I want my personal page to be that, personal, so I am asking those that want to be my friend because of Speed Shop Design to like Speed Shop Design the Facebook page. Hope this is not too much of an inconvenience.
Sincerely,
The Management ;)

Finally!!!

Got the Ducati frame fully welded this week end :)

Route 120 into Nikko, Japan, fall 2011

Japan, my amazing journey:

I have been back in the states for a few days now after spending nearly three weeks in Japan. My friend Glen and I spent 14 days in Tokyo and 5 days on rented motorcycles touring the mountainous countryside.

This trip was a life altering one for me for so many reasons... Reasons I will touch on in the following posts.

Besides taking hundreds of photos with our point and shoots and phones we also had a Go-Pro camera mounted during our six hours of motorcycle riding each day. The Go-Pro was programmed to take a photo every 30 seconds so needless to say I have thousands of photo's of our journey.

I have barely scratched the surface of all the photo editing necessary and plan to spend the next week or so going through them all, posting online albums and posting on this blog.

Japan is an amazing country for so many reasons. If you have never been I strongly recommend it, you will be changed. For those who have been but never outside of a major city like Tokyo I strongly recommend you get on a motorcycle and head into the country. The roads are simply amazing, the view is breathtaking, the people so friendly, the ryokan and onsen so relaxing.

During our stay we met many amazing people from motorcycle builders to psychedelic painters to major industrial designers, all were so accommodating and friendly it simply blew our minds!

I will cover the highlights of our trip in more detail with future posts but till then here is a snippet as well as a huge thank you to all that we had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with.

Chris

The sound of crickets...

That's pretty much all you have heard on this blog for a while but let me assure you that lots and lots is happening!

The Triton and the 900ss projects are moving along well and looking more and more like motorcycles every day. Also working on a line of motorcycle components as well as some new details for the Slayer espresso machine.

I will have much more to talk about in a little bit but for now I must leave you with this little bit:

Not a Bro Party, it's a Brough Party!

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Got a nice invite from Paul d'Orleans of The Vintagent for the upcoming Brough Superior party in LA. Unfortunately I will not be able to make it but those who can should definitely check it out.

Cheers

Triton sitting up!

I know it doesn't look like much but there is lots of thought and work involved to get her to this point.

Frame shortened 2.5"
swing arm lengthened 3"
steerer tube shortened 5/8"
forks to be shortened almost 4"

Special #6.2

I have been working on so revisions to trusty old Special #6 the past couple of weeks. It all started with a new battery box and now I am building an entirely new seat. This seat is all aluminum as opposed to the original which is all stainless. I wanted a back to it as well as a bit of a cafe racer hump so here you can see me mocking up the panels with the seat travel fully compressed.


I have a few ideas on how I will do the upholstery but the trick will be designing something I can fabricate myself.


This project is a good warm up to all the sheet metal work I'll be doing on the Triton project soon!

Melt Down!!!

I purchased a couple of Lithium Phosphate batteries a little while back and recently put one in Special #6. At first I was impressed by how small it was but then almost immediately unimpressed by how quickly it melted down while trying to start the 1000cc Sporty for the first time. After a week of emails trying to ask the maker of the batteries questions as to why this may have happened I have given up waiting for any customer service. Needless to say I will not be buying any more batteries from these people... Beware of www.carbon-speed.com!

So after about thirteen hours and a bit of stainless steel I have a new battery box to hold a standard size sealed battery as well as a tool roll. The four little belt loops are exactly that, belt loops to hold two small leather belts I will make soon.

Hear the roar of the Beezerker!

The week before the Quail was a busy one. I flew to Vegas, rented a van, and picked the bike up at the showroom within the Cosmo. After driving through the night I arrived in San Francisco at HOBO SF, formerly Hollywood Bobbers. For two days Bruce and I detailed the bike, re-torqued the motor, changed the needle and oil in the carb, reset the timing and got her running perfectly. She was running okay before but now she sounds like she is truly going berserk!!!

Hear the roar of the Beezerker here!

The Beezerker in Cycle World

On news stands now!

Page One

Page Two

An Amazing Day!

more to come soon....

Holy Stoppers Batman!!!

I got a nice care package from Beringer Brakes today and I could not be more excited!



It contained all the brake components for the Triton project. Here is just a peek at the 12.5" iron front rotors... Can you say "stoppies"? :)

The Little Bits

I know it has been far too long since I posted but good things are happening and happening so fast I can barely keep track! I am not complaining but I am looking forward to things slowing down a bit after I am back from Quail.

This time last month I traveled down to Portland Oregon with a couple of my good buddies for a week end of great food, cold whiskey, dancing ladies, and lots of rusty little car bits.

The Portland Antique swap meet is a feast for the eyes and I love sifting through table after table of rusty little bits to find gems like these:



From the great little selection I scored I will use this as the headlight of the Ducati and the red lens as the tail light. I have no idea what this light is off of but it looks to be from the 1920's or so. I found a nice little 50watt haligen bulb that poped right into it without modifications. Happy times!!!! :)

What does it say!?

The Beezerker in Robb Report.... RUSSIA!

Like a glove!

The fit that is!

I totally cheated!

Yup, you heard me, I cheated!

I am a firm believer that a successful craftsman needs to be able to utilize the tools at hand.

To create my wheeled designs I have been utilizing simple machining and fabrication processes and never any CNC machining. Well that has all changed now!

I have a background in computer design and my day time design job relies heavily on hand sketching and computer drawing in both 2D and 3D. My moonlighting design jobs typically utilize lots of 3D modeling and rapid prototyping processes to help realize the functionality of a design.

Because I seem to spend way too much time in front of a computer I have always welcomed the challenge and physicality of creating pieces with my two hands. I never seem to realize a design that I can not make with my hands. Most times this is just fine but lately I am visualizing more and more details that I find nearly impossible to do freehand.

Being a believer in a craftsman needing to master his tools I see a computer to be no different than a pencil and that there is a time and place for everything. With my current build, the Ducati, I happened upon the perfect element to utilize CNC machining.



A dry clutch Ducati requires a cush-drive and the rear hub I am using had none so what did I do, I designed one. Working around available polyurethane cush-drive bushings I created a 3D AutoCAD drawing that not only hid the cush-drive bushings but spaced the sprocket for perfect chain alignment.



I do know I could have machined this part on the rotary table by hand but I wanted a more flowing and sculptural part that closely matched the original Ducati part. Careful measuring, drawing, and incredibly accurate machining created a perfect part.



Casey, thank you for giving me the opportunity to see this piece come to life. It all went together flawlessly! I couldn't be happier!!!!

Knobbed for my pleasure!

Soon things are going to get pretty exciting with the Ducati build.

Buchanan's has working on my wheels which should be heading back up this way some time in the coming week. My hub and rim combo really threw them for a loop but after some head scratching and a few phone calls they were able to couple them together to create a pretty unique pair of wheels.

I have never built a bike with the type of tires I chose this time around. I chuckle when I think about it because these wheels and tires are pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum from what I did on the Beezerker.

It's all linked...

I am building all the technical parts for the Ducati girder fork and today I put in some long hours machining chunks of mild steel into the top and bottom links. All the milling is 100% manual and my arms are feeling it after a long day like today.


The Beezerker links are aluminum and took about one quarter the time these took me to make. I chose steel this time around because I am using bushings and bearings along with some precision ground shafts in such a way that I will have infinite adjust-ability in the tension of all the moving parts. Since this bike is going to be a daily driver ease of serviceability is a major design factor.

She gets around!

The Beezerker has been getting loads of press and the requests for images and interviews is non stop.

Designing and building a motorcycle like the Beezerker, where art and design is just as important a focus as making it a functioning and street-able motorcycle, has really broadened it's audience.

I feel very fortunate to be able to push my art to this next level for it has truly changed the rest of my life in a very good way.

Step #4

Try to keep things moving!



This step has proved to be most difficult these past few weeks. Besides having a nagging cold and a day job to keep happy I have been dealing with major issues trying to source the hubs for this build. I still don't have them in my hands which is making me start to stress my completion date.

Rolled, coped, and tacked in some more tubes today.

Out for the count!

Here is Sophie demonstrating how I have been feeling the past few weeks. I have had a nasty cold on and off for what seems to be almost a month now. After another mellow week end of wearing pajamas all day, watching movies, and eating spicy noodles I think I am nearly back to normal. I am crossing my fingers I can make up for lost time in the shop and get back on track by the end of the month.

Step #3

... Get fabricating!!!


Started the frame this week after a bunch of sketching. Here you can see the down tube getting mitered for the head tube.



The frame is going to have a lugged look to it and should be pretty darn stiff even given the fact it has a single top and down tube.



I am still on the fence as to how much of this top secret AMD build I will be posting but I am feeling like I don't really care who see's the details right now.



The carbs are there as a place holder... still not sure if I will be running 41mm flat slides or some round slides. What do you think?