Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Good Vibrations

When I was younger and I'd be hanging around at my dads machine shop; either after cleaning the lathe or sweeping the floors, I would find a magazine or catolog to look at. One of those catalogs was the Good vibrations vintage dragster and funny car parts catalog. My dad had dreams of getting out of drag boats and building a funny car. It never happened, but looking through that catalog made me dream too. 
A couple of weekends ago my friend Peter from Brixton clothing invited me along to go watch the March meet at Famoso raceway in Bakersfield California. This event was hands down the best drag racing event I have ever been to. It is worth the trip no matter how far away you are in California. Being there camping all weekend at the end of the drag strip makes you feel like your back in the heyday of this sport. Those were the days when most any regular joe could build a car and be competitive or just have fun.









Some how we snuck right up to the Christmas tree and got my hat blown off. My dad was jealous as hell.
This was the view from our camping spot.
Jack on the 50. We rode till it broke.
Great times with great people. Thankyou everyone.

Sunday, March 15, 2015

a little Born Free update....




































My Born Free build got off to a rough start. I kept bouncing back and forth between a few different directions to go with it considering the caliber of bikes already being built for the show. In the end, I went with what kinda fits in my skill set range and particular taste and that's just a simple, fairly stock wheelbased 60's-ish style Panhead chopper.

The basic approach is to keep the overall look like that of all those bikes we love in all the old biker flicks but throw in some little tricks here and there. The one thing I wanted to do going into this build was to do a chrome framed bike but at the same time, not build an over the top show bike.  So I'm trying to figure out a happy medium of those two ideas. I'm also narrowing an I-beam springer about a 1/2" per side. It's a lot of work for something that will probably go unnoticed. A little de-raking in the frame, custom bars, 21"+18" wheel combo, a slightly different seating deal and a tall sissybar pretty much sum up where I'm going with this thing.