We all hear about bikes that were built from a crate or swap-meet parts. We also know that most weren't worth all the headaches in the first place. Every now and then, however, we hear a good story about a basket case-built bike, and this happens to be one of them.
Throughout his life, Mondo Cavazos has barely had time to work on his own build, much less ride a bike. Yet he always held in his heart and mind a love for bikes and being on the open road. His life story, like a winding road, took him through twists and turns that many of us may never experience. Still, he finds himself returning to the one constant love he's had since he was a teenager-riding.
At 18 Mondo bought his first bike, a 141 45-inch flathead basket case (with no transmission) for the bargain price of $60. It didn't matter to him that he had to do some work on the bike. With a tranny from a trike and more patience than Mother Teresa, Mondo had his first experience with the open road.
Unfortunately, his early riding experiences were cut short by the Vietnam War. As with so many other young men of the era, Mondo had to leave the life he'd led and defend freedom on foreign soil. From 1967 to 1970 he served our country with the dream of one day returning home and getting back on his flathead.
When Mondo got back home, he found himself a 650 BSA that kept his pockets full of spark plugs but little cash. After dumping the BSA he picked up a 650 Triumph, which was fast but wasn't going to win any beauty contests.
But then Mondo had to give up the bike once again to take on a bigger project: starting a family. He and his wife Lola, who shared their 35th wedding anniversary this October, had four boys and two girls.
Sadly, tragedy struck the family twice. Mondo and Lola's oldest son died in 1993 in an accident, as did their youngest son in 2001. But that cloud had a silver lining, as both of their daughters grew up and left home as married women. This gave Mondo the extra time he needed to get back to his motorcycle dreams.
In 2002 Mondo bought a Harley Road Glide, which is a beautiful bike. Yet he still couldn't help thinking about bikes from the past after seeing so many of them being restored and hitting the road. Mondo wanted to relive "the days," as he called them, and so he decided that it was time to do his own build-that, and the fact that he was working construction at the time. It was a rainy summer that year and work was scarce, so all he had to do was sit around the house and watch reruns of Matlock.
Piled up in the backyard was a '73 Harley Sportster that he'd traded for an old boat. Soon Mondo pulled the Sportster into the garage just to take a look at it.
Asking for a professional opinion, Mondo called an old friend who owned a bike shop. Lifting the tarp from the pile of bike, his friend could only say "pitiful." Yet that didn't stop Mondo from starting his build. Using the credo of "keep it simple," Mondo got to work in his own garage, using simple tools he already had: a ball-peen hammer, a hacksaw, and some vice grips. He didn't even spend a fortune on parts. "You don't have to spend $20,000 to have a blast," Mondo told us, thinking back to that build.
Maybe even more gratifying was the fact that one of his son-in-laws, Steve Sebastian, kept getting more and more interested each and every time he came by. "He kept looking over my shoulder watching me. Then he started to work with me," said Mondo.