Summer/Fall 2010 Trip

Thinking about doing something like this:

View Larger Map

I’ve gone north, west, south and southwest. I think it’s time to go a little easterly. One of my high school (Billings) and College (MSU) buddies lives in Fort Collins. Another of my college buddies (CSU) Tony lives in Junction City, KS. Sounds like as good a destination as any.

Another Hinckley Bonnie Hardtail Solution

This time it’s bolt-on and from British Customs.

Blood Falcons: This just in!

He’s correct,  it doesn’t look as nice as the LC Fabrications weld-on hard tail, but for those of us who don’t weld (yet) it could be a godsend.

Coolest. Computer. Case. Evar.

The hardcore Harley guy will NEVER go for liquid cooling, though…

(source)

Friar’s Garage Sale in Full Swing (Updated 2/16)

[Update: This will probably be updated frequently. People keep asking me for more pictures. Stuff is going fast. The sissybar is going to Taiwan! Damn, I haven't even STARTED with ebay yet...]

On the heels of my last post about selling the D&Ds, I just listed several items on BonnevilleAmerica.com in the classifieds. Here is the gallery of images, but I don’t have the prices listed in the gallery, only on BA.com.

Current Item list:

1. The aforementioned D&D mufflers–need stripping and coating SOLD
2. Triumph tall sissybar and luggage rack–usually a very popular item SOLD
3. Stock tail light housing–good for blacking out while still saving your original chrome piece
4. Triumph chrome rear brake reservoir cover–chromosexual approved SOLD
5. Stock dash–again, good for color-coordinating with your tank or just blacking it out SOLD
6. Optronics fog lights–cheap, lots of light SOLD
7. Triumph chrome front brake reservoir cover  with British flag sticker–also chromosexual approved SOLD
8. George Foreman Grill (stock sprocket cover)–good for hacking up and customizing
9. Aftermarket horn–meh
10. Triumph chrome control levers–again, chromosexual approved SOLD
11. Phantom Pad–weird, but if that’s your thing, okay–WON’T FIT A TRIUMPH
12. Thunderbird Sport front rim, 17×3.5″, with spokes–good for you fat front tire fans, 1″ shorter than stock, 1″ wider than stock–laces right on to the stock America hub SOLD
13. Triumph tachometer–could be fried, need someone to test it for me and only pay me if it works (which means my bike is still screwed up) SOLD
14. Triumph rear fender luggage rack–still chromosexual approved SOLD
15. Someone’s interested in my effed out Belt Drive kit SOLD

More to come. That’s good enough to get started.

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D&D Mufflers For Sale

I’ve been meaning to sell some stuff. I’m not ready to list everything but I do have a thing or two with which to kick this pig.

Now that I have some Specialty Spares slashcuts, I’m going to dump the D&Ds I have. Nothing against D&Ds, I just love the sound of Specialty Spares. I picked the D&Ds up off ebay a couple years ago and they’ve been sitting on a shelf in my garage since. They have some surface rust. My plan was to have them media-blasted and ceramic-coated black (keeping the heat shields chrome and the exhaust tips polished). Since I bought these with the plan to black them out, NewSpeedmaster started selling black D&Ds but they cost some bank. I got an estimate from Jet-Hot of $115 for the ceramic-coating. If I remember correctly Wolfe will do it for less. Even with shipping you’ll have Black D&Ds for less than half the cost of new pipes. Even less if you go low-tech with some BBQ paint like some have done.

I paid $75 plus shipping for these pipes and that’s all I want out of them. Here’s a picture from the original ebay ad. I’ll take some fresh shots of my own this weekend. The Specialty Spares were shipped from Iowa to Montana for less than $20 so I can’t imagine it costing much more than that for these (though they are longer). So let’s call it an even $100 shipped.

Next I’ll be listing a tall Triumph Sissybar with Luggage Rack and my HD Hard Bags. Gotta take some pictures first, though.

I picked these up off Ebay for $75. They're supposed to be loud so I might experiment with the baffling to quiet them down a little. Currently the plan is to rechrome the heat shields (and possibly drill holes along them), polish the tips and Jet-Hot coat the megaphones black. The header pipes that these attach to will be wrapped in black tape.

Forums for Triumph Fans

I read somewhere that list posts are popular on blogs. So here’s a list of forums. Heh. However, listing them here in not necessarily an endorsement. I spend 99% of my motorcycle forum surfing on BA.com, only occasionally checking in on some of the others.

Triumph Cruisers

• BonnevilleAmerica.com
  Triumph Bonneville America, America and Speedmaster (disclaimer: I’m a moderator)
• Thunderbird1600.com
  Dedicated to Triumph’s new watercooled 1600cc cruiser.
• R3Owners.net
  Triumph Rocket III – defectors from TRat? Or maybe from…
• R3Owners.com
  Triumph Rocket III
• New Bonneville Riders
  Also defectors from TRat?

Triumph General/Misc

• TriumphRAT.net
  All Triumph Models (some more than others); draconian moderation policy
• Triumphosophy
  A no holds barred offshoot of BonnevilleAmerica.com for those who can’t abide that site’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)
• Triumph Torque
  “the reincarnation of T595net to reflect the progression of the Triumph brand beyond their flagship motorcycle model of 1997/1998″

Custom Building Resources

While most of the above forums focus primarily on modern Triumphs, I’d say these two focus on older models. Personally I just love custom bikes of all kinds.

• Chop Cult
• Chopper Builder’s Handbook Forum

Is Harley Doomed?

This guy seems to think so…

One of the things that fell apart after Vietnam was Harley-Davidson’s business. All those war surplus bikes got used up. The new bikes were no longer cheap or particularly good. Only the outlaw mystique endured and when Harley came back to life in the 1980s it was because the company was selling the idea of the outlaw as much as it was selling motorcycles. Harleys became the Outlaw Machine because that is what Harley-Davidson wanted you to think.

If you couldn’t afford a motorcycle, the official outlaw company would sell you a tee-shirt. They cost more than just ordinary tee-shirts but that was only because they included a magic ingredient. The magic was, when you put them on you became an outlaw, too.

The simple fact is, Harley stopped being a motorcycle manufacturer long ago. For decades Harley has been a company that sells magic on credit.

(Full post)

Harsh, but not without some truth. A lot of truth, in fact. Harley is flailing around in a death spasm, trying all kinds of crazy stuff, like axing Buell, ditching Lehman Trikes and bringing trike production in-house, and frantically expanding into foreign markets. It all comes off as desperation. Just because I’m a huge fan of Triumph doesn’t mean I want to see Harley go away. No worries on Triumph, however, they’re the only motorcycle company that actually made more money last year, with a substantial increase in sales.

Vintage Triumph Factory Film

Well these are a blast from the past…

And two more…
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More Pictures

I’m still adding pictures occasionally to my two gallery pages, one for what I consider to be cool bikes (mostly Triumphs-not that there aren’t other brands that are cool), and the other for my own scoot. As far as the latter goes, I’ve added a few separate galleries toward the bottom of the page showing some of the minor fabrication work I’ve done, brackets for relocating the battery, brackets for some quick-disconnect Ameritex bags I used to have and a custom lightbar bracket I created to replace the one that came with the factory Triumph lightbar kit. I’ve got a few pictures of my Harley Hardbags in the main gallery on my bike page, but no real good one showing how I combined them with EasyBrackets to mount on my bike. I’ll see about taking some snapshots of that next time I’m in the garage.

Looking Ahead through 2010

Okay, since I got through the recap of last year, I’m looking forward now. Specifically thinking about my bike and all my failed plans for modifications, and trying not to beat myself up too much. Taking stock of all the parts and supplies I have accumulated since I decided to give my bike an “Extreme Bobber Makeover™” a few years ago and upgrade the braking, I have the following:

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