THE HONKY TONK TIME MACHINE.
This bike is a 1982 shovelhead build in the back garage with a little help along the way.
How this bike came to life is a little bit of a story so ill do my best to do it justice.
This bike came to life in May 2023 after pushing to try and get a 1954 pan together for the Mummas boys chopper show in northern QLD.
I realized the pan was not going to be together in time and I was starting to think I wasn't going to make the trip. I called a buddy of mine and he told me to see what I had laying around in the shed. After going through a few shelves I realized I nearly had a whole bike. I just had to get it together in 6 weeks to do the 3000km journey.
I figured I'd take a few days off and try and get the bulk of it out at my mates place so I loaded everything up and headed up to greasy trash choppers place. We spent three days in his shed fabricating all the usual chopper bits riding everyday and getting everything together.The sissy bar was on an old stainless bar he had laying around so we just extended it to fit and we sorted out the gearbox and primary.
The motor came rebuilt from another buddy in town along with the frame and I bartered a deal on the front end with a guy that was after a repop springer .
I was definitely pushing time on this build and the day we were leaving for the show I still didn't have the bike charging so I got up at 4am and went out to the shop to fix the stator plug.I made it to the meeting point in time and decided to drive the run truck on day one as we were going to take it in turns to driveon the trip.
On day two i was stoked to have this bike out on the road ready for the ten days ahead but unfortunately 150km in and i realized my bike was just pumping oil out the breather so I kept filling it up and limped in in to Augathella in western QLD it spent the rest of the trip on the trailer and i spent the trip in the run truck.
After getting home and diagnosing a few things I replaced the oil pump and this thing was ready to rip.
The moral of my story is that shake downs are important and I couldn't have built this bike with a lot of help from my mates .