The bells on the door jangle and Duke sounds the alarm and charges the door, still a bit asleep but sounding
as ferocious as he can while out of the customers sight. The unwitting intruder, otherwise known as a
customer turn and run or shriek, it’s game on, the high point of a canine customer service rep.’s day. The
disappointment of another chase gone bad was quickly replaced with a wiff of the chicken finger Sean was
waving at him as a peace offering.
Sean had driven down to my shop from the county seat, Pryor Oklahoma where he’s a tattoo artist. After a
few minutes it was clear we both had similar interests in music, art and motorcycles and this meeting was just
the first step in the journey that would become the motorcycle you see here . He had done his homework,
knew what he liked, and asked some good questions about designing a custom bike. He then pointed at
‘Bo, my turbo-charged KZ custom sitting in the parking lot and said, I want something like that. I knew right
then we were gonna get along.
"Bo?" Sean asks. I explain that each machine I build has so much time, energy and life in it, it earns a name,
just like any other part of someones life. Turning away and lifting my shirt I show him the script across the
span of my back reading "Life in All Things". They all grow their own unique identity almost to a point that they
no longer bear the core resemblance to the bikes and parts they were culled from.
After a few minutes of conversation we find a few common touch points in music and art when he tells me he’
s the tattoo artist in our county seat Pryor, OK. He had done his homework as to what he liked and asked
some good questions about designing a bike inspired by mine, but fit to his style. Where so many bikes
powered with vintage metric motors come to fruition because of coin constraints, this one came into being
because Sean wanted to ride something radically different from the standard fare found rolling down the
road. When these opportunities present themselves, I will offer up something from my vault-o-vintage-
goodies, in this case a ’73 vintage Kawasaki Z1 dragster carrying a hotrod ’77 mill that I had been hoarding
for a decade. Although about half of my work, truly some of my best, is based around the venerable Harley
Davidson drive-train, I love, and ride, metric motorcycles.
A few things that Sean had asked for first was a very low seat height, vintage style white wall tires and a
springer front suspension. I suggested wheels I had used once before in a different color combination on a
bobbed evo and they had proven themselves bulletproof under the Samsonite Gorilla of a rider for a few
years and countless cross country trips. I had an old Trumpy o.i.f frame on the counter that I am making a
swing-arm for that caught his eye, this led the conversation to trying to get the neck dropped from the
maximum chassis height of an arched back bone. Now this is starting to sound really good to me. A unique
frame will demand a free formed fuel tank as well as a ton of one-off parts to showcase some of my fab
chops. While our talk continued he was thumbing through a Roadbike that featured Slightly Blue, a custom I
built that uses the ARSE credit card ignition, add that to the list and we have the ingredients of one great
motorcycle being poured into my imagination.
After it was settled to make the entire scoot black and white as possible with some chrome accents, I
contacted Ride Wright wheels and got the wheels on the way. As the wheels were being made I reached out
to DNA for one of their budget priced springers in a custom shortened length. When it arrived, it was
accompanied by their handlebar controls, risers, drive sprocket / four piston brake and matching front brake
set-up, all of the DNA parts I bought have been really trouble free and of solid quality.
It’s one thing to have a vision in your head, entirely another to introduce it to your hands. When I make a
frame, it’s a very analytical process. Ride height and neck angle are only the beginning. To get the eye-line
flowing through the machine in my head, it has to dictate everything from a simple, single line. If a parts shape
or placement is outside the line, it must be designed and refined for this one singular machine. Where the
rider sits and where the wheels are in relation to this. When in motion, the location of the riders feet in relation
to the hands and rotation of the riders hips. All of this and so much more dictate the work to come.
Something that I notice is discounted by many in the Bar-n-Shield faithful crowd is that when you start with a
H-D based drive-train, you have a lot of the measurements already done for you through the efforts of a
century of motorcycle engineers and hacks alike.
To get the arched back bone and the dropped height in the steering head, I had to first make a pattern to
make it actually work for a motorcycle, not a simple sculpture. Plywood was cut to shape and clamped to my
frame table. Copious amounts of heat was applied by Sean as I worked it around the buck. The goose-neck
was another challenge entirely. You may notice that when perusing custom choppers, goose neck frames are
usually at an angle sloping towards the ground. This was the Fortune Cookie inspiration, a near 90 degree
down tube to a radius backbone give me the look of and fortune cookie. I filled a piece of 1.5” D.O.M. tubing
with sand and made myself a buck to form it over, after three failed attempts, each ending in a flattened
bend, I got one that sit exactly where I needed it to. Now I have the major design pieces of the frame made, I
can start using my tubing bender and dies to make the 1 1/8” D.O.M. rails of the frame as I normally do.
While I make the frame, some parts have to be designed in, like the tail lights and the hidden fork stops.
Keeping the lines of the bike clean required making my own brake lines and running them through the frame
and handle bars, joining the front and rear brakes to a central proportioning valve. With it, the other controllers
and standard variety of electrical components are squeezed into the box sitting on the lower frame rails. It
took more than twenty access holes and tabs to get everything hidden and functional from the tail/ turn lights
frenched into the rear of the frame beneath the hidden axle plates that were engraved for my by Otto Carter in
TX up to the simple headlight on a custom mount.
The next check box on Sean’s list was a jockey shifter. I’m not a big fan of the foot clutched, jockey shifted
chopper. To keep it a bit more user friendly, I used a regular hand clutch and fabbed a slick shift linkage and
bent some stainless tubing to lay in the lines of the fuel tank. Topping it off is a large dice with “Atlantic City
New Jersey” embossed on it that I picked up at a garage sale in New Jersey about 15 years ago, another
gem from my goodie pile.
Now that the controls were all worked out, the CV carburetors that I have modified to fit the old KZ motor, the
Sportster style hand controls and the sprocket cover / clutch pusher assembly is rushed out to Motion Pro for
them to make the cables to connect the respective parts. I made the cables on my chopper, but they were a
giant p.i.t.a. For the surprisingly low cost of a custom black cable, the decision to have Preston in their
custom cables department is the smart way to get it done right.
While the cables are being made, I get started on the rear fender and sissy bar. Sean wanted a small sissy
bar and passenger accommodations. I really liked the backbone of the frame and went with a ribbed steel
fender. I’ve only seen one advertised in the wider size and steel, so I bought it. I’m not gonna lie, I have had
cheap import parts come up and bite me in the butt, the rib was terribly crooked, forcing me to cut it out half
of the rib and re-shape most of it. Next I added copious amounts of heat to some rod and grew the fender
support / sissy bar to my taste and offer support and a grab rail for a passenger.
With the motor in its place in the frame now, I started cutting some poster paper to build the fuel tank. I love
sexy, natural lines. A strong back and tapered waist is what this machine was asking from me. After way too
many hours at the english wheel and hammer with sheet steel, I ended at a fuel tank that sits beneath the
back bone, tapering and yielding to the demands of my hand, the rider and frame.
Starting with a white base, crushed pearl and black were added until I had painted every part one or the other
if they weren’t chrome already. After I tore the motor down, our shop hand Travis, or Puller as he’s know here,
detailed and painted all of the parts that I didn’t coat with white as I painted the rest of the bike. Buie, our rat
Triumph riding friend who does great leather work, stopped in and took the antennae for the pass card switch
and the seat pans to cover them in laced black leather. Another in the team effort here was Brandon and
Puller duplicating the first side of the exhaust that I made and installing the baffles before painting them black
as well.
I could not be more proud now that I can see this scoot roll down the street, freed from my imagination. To
see how neutral the steering is and how light it feels in your hands, how it leans against the grain when
parked to clear space in a roadside line-up, how it is brought to life with a trick modern pass card and flies
with a bullet that is three decades old, how it is truly a unique custom motorcycle and there is not another one
like it, and how I’m going to make the next one.
as ferocious as he can while out of the customers sight. The unwitting intruder, otherwise known as a
customer turn and run or shriek, it’s game on, the high point of a canine customer service rep.’s day. The
disappointment of another chase gone bad was quickly replaced with a wiff of the chicken finger Sean was
waving at him as a peace offering.
Sean had driven down to my shop from the county seat, Pryor Oklahoma where he’s a tattoo artist. After a
few minutes it was clear we both had similar interests in music, art and motorcycles and this meeting was just
the first step in the journey that would become the motorcycle you see here . He had done his homework,
knew what he liked, and asked some good questions about designing a custom bike. He then pointed at
‘Bo, my turbo-charged KZ custom sitting in the parking lot and said, I want something like that. I knew right
then we were gonna get along.
"Bo?" Sean asks. I explain that each machine I build has so much time, energy and life in it, it earns a name,
just like any other part of someones life. Turning away and lifting my shirt I show him the script across the
span of my back reading "Life in All Things". They all grow their own unique identity almost to a point that they
no longer bear the core resemblance to the bikes and parts they were culled from.
After a few minutes of conversation we find a few common touch points in music and art when he tells me he’
s the tattoo artist in our county seat Pryor, OK. He had done his homework as to what he liked and asked
some good questions about designing a bike inspired by mine, but fit to his style. Where so many bikes
powered with vintage metric motors come to fruition because of coin constraints, this one came into being
because Sean wanted to ride something radically different from the standard fare found rolling down the
road. When these opportunities present themselves, I will offer up something from my vault-o-vintage-
goodies, in this case a ’73 vintage Kawasaki Z1 dragster carrying a hotrod ’77 mill that I had been hoarding
for a decade. Although about half of my work, truly some of my best, is based around the venerable Harley
Davidson drive-train, I love, and ride, metric motorcycles.
A few things that Sean had asked for first was a very low seat height, vintage style white wall tires and a
springer front suspension. I suggested wheels I had used once before in a different color combination on a
bobbed evo and they had proven themselves bulletproof under the Samsonite Gorilla of a rider for a few
years and countless cross country trips. I had an old Trumpy o.i.f frame on the counter that I am making a
swing-arm for that caught his eye, this led the conversation to trying to get the neck dropped from the
maximum chassis height of an arched back bone. Now this is starting to sound really good to me. A unique
frame will demand a free formed fuel tank as well as a ton of one-off parts to showcase some of my fab
chops. While our talk continued he was thumbing through a Roadbike that featured Slightly Blue, a custom I
built that uses the ARSE credit card ignition, add that to the list and we have the ingredients of one great
motorcycle being poured into my imagination.
After it was settled to make the entire scoot black and white as possible with some chrome accents, I
contacted Ride Wright wheels and got the wheels on the way. As the wheels were being made I reached out
to DNA for one of their budget priced springers in a custom shortened length. When it arrived, it was
accompanied by their handlebar controls, risers, drive sprocket / four piston brake and matching front brake
set-up, all of the DNA parts I bought have been really trouble free and of solid quality.
It’s one thing to have a vision in your head, entirely another to introduce it to your hands. When I make a
frame, it’s a very analytical process. Ride height and neck angle are only the beginning. To get the eye-line
flowing through the machine in my head, it has to dictate everything from a simple, single line. If a parts shape
or placement is outside the line, it must be designed and refined for this one singular machine. Where the
rider sits and where the wheels are in relation to this. When in motion, the location of the riders feet in relation
to the hands and rotation of the riders hips. All of this and so much more dictate the work to come.
Something that I notice is discounted by many in the Bar-n-Shield faithful crowd is that when you start with a
H-D based drive-train, you have a lot of the measurements already done for you through the efforts of a
century of motorcycle engineers and hacks alike.
To get the arched back bone and the dropped height in the steering head, I had to first make a pattern to
make it actually work for a motorcycle, not a simple sculpture. Plywood was cut to shape and clamped to my
frame table. Copious amounts of heat was applied by Sean as I worked it around the buck. The goose-neck
was another challenge entirely. You may notice that when perusing custom choppers, goose neck frames are
usually at an angle sloping towards the ground. This was the Fortune Cookie inspiration, a near 90 degree
down tube to a radius backbone give me the look of and fortune cookie. I filled a piece of 1.5” D.O.M. tubing
with sand and made myself a buck to form it over, after three failed attempts, each ending in a flattened
bend, I got one that sit exactly where I needed it to. Now I have the major design pieces of the frame made, I
can start using my tubing bender and dies to make the 1 1/8” D.O.M. rails of the frame as I normally do.
While I make the frame, some parts have to be designed in, like the tail lights and the hidden fork stops.
Keeping the lines of the bike clean required making my own brake lines and running them through the frame
and handle bars, joining the front and rear brakes to a central proportioning valve. With it, the other controllers
and standard variety of electrical components are squeezed into the box sitting on the lower frame rails. It
took more than twenty access holes and tabs to get everything hidden and functional from the tail/ turn lights
frenched into the rear of the frame beneath the hidden axle plates that were engraved for my by Otto Carter in
TX up to the simple headlight on a custom mount.
The next check box on Sean’s list was a jockey shifter. I’m not a big fan of the foot clutched, jockey shifted
chopper. To keep it a bit more user friendly, I used a regular hand clutch and fabbed a slick shift linkage and
bent some stainless tubing to lay in the lines of the fuel tank. Topping it off is a large dice with “Atlantic City
New Jersey” embossed on it that I picked up at a garage sale in New Jersey about 15 years ago, another
gem from my goodie pile.
Now that the controls were all worked out, the CV carburetors that I have modified to fit the old KZ motor, the
Sportster style hand controls and the sprocket cover / clutch pusher assembly is rushed out to Motion Pro for
them to make the cables to connect the respective parts. I made the cables on my chopper, but they were a
giant p.i.t.a. For the surprisingly low cost of a custom black cable, the decision to have Preston in their
custom cables department is the smart way to get it done right.
While the cables are being made, I get started on the rear fender and sissy bar. Sean wanted a small sissy
bar and passenger accommodations. I really liked the backbone of the frame and went with a ribbed steel
fender. I’ve only seen one advertised in the wider size and steel, so I bought it. I’m not gonna lie, I have had
cheap import parts come up and bite me in the butt, the rib was terribly crooked, forcing me to cut it out half
of the rib and re-shape most of it. Next I added copious amounts of heat to some rod and grew the fender
support / sissy bar to my taste and offer support and a grab rail for a passenger.
With the motor in its place in the frame now, I started cutting some poster paper to build the fuel tank. I love
sexy, natural lines. A strong back and tapered waist is what this machine was asking from me. After way too
many hours at the english wheel and hammer with sheet steel, I ended at a fuel tank that sits beneath the
back bone, tapering and yielding to the demands of my hand, the rider and frame.
Starting with a white base, crushed pearl and black were added until I had painted every part one or the other
if they weren’t chrome already. After I tore the motor down, our shop hand Travis, or Puller as he’s know here,
detailed and painted all of the parts that I didn’t coat with white as I painted the rest of the bike. Buie, our rat
Triumph riding friend who does great leather work, stopped in and took the antennae for the pass card switch
and the seat pans to cover them in laced black leather. Another in the team effort here was Brandon and
Puller duplicating the first side of the exhaust that I made and installing the baffles before painting them black
as well.
I could not be more proud now that I can see this scoot roll down the street, freed from my imagination. To
see how neutral the steering is and how light it feels in your hands, how it leans against the grain when
parked to clear space in a roadside line-up, how it is brought to life with a trick modern pass card and flies
with a bullet that is three decades old, how it is truly a unique custom motorcycle and there is not another one
like it, and how I’m going to make the next one.
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| Click the pic to to go to the build page with a photo-log of the build. |
By: Shoe
photos: Shoe and Bob Feather
Model: Emili Joi
photos: Shoe and Bob Feather
Model: Emili Joi
