Old Motorcycles

There is a small warehouse nestled in the hills of central California.  Inside a trio of mechanics rebuild motorcycles.  Not the everyday motorcycles that cruise Main street--these bikes are very special.  Most of the bikes I saw were around 100 years old (including the 1910 Harley-Davidson pictured below).  Specializing in turn of the century bikes, there are very few shops in the world that do the A to Z work they do.  Obviously, 100 year old parts are very hard to come by so they hand fabricate what they cannot find.







I was lucky enough to get a quick tour of the facility from Robin, friend to the owner and my client last week.  Walking through the facility was like a backstage pass to a working motorcycle museum.  Engine parts lined the shelves including a few four stroke engines (I wish I remember what they were for but definitely fifty years old), machining workstations cluttered up the floor and a general oil smell hung in the humid California air.  Everywhere bikes lined the walls in various stages of completion.  Projects ready for finishing touches were mounted on benches making it easier to work at eye level (including the early Indian model shown below).





Spending an hour in the warehouse made it all seem familiar.  I even went so far as to joke with one of the mechanics, "you are only a couple cameras short of a TV show".  He laughingly agreed.  Ironically, minutes later the last mechanic road into the garage on his thundering chopper--over two hours late.  You could cut the tension with a knife as the owner tried to doll out discipline to the kind of tattooed biker who had avoided it his whole life.

For many reasons, this was one of the most interesting professional projects I have ever worked on.  A big part of it was meeting people who would go out of their way to give me a peak into the life of an outlaw biker.  For questions about the shop, drop me a comment and I'll get back to you.