Back in 1971 there was a guy (Pops) riding around the island of Hawaii on a 1950 panhead: a custom chopper with a long frontend, thin tires, and way ahead of the times, just ripping up the back roads of the pineapple fields. Jump ahead a few years and into the start of some bad times; Pops' work started to slow down along with the flow of money. Add a newborn son into the mix by the name of Shannon "Coconut" Aikau, and this meant the cash was really going to get thin. Well, Pops did what any good father would do: he sold the bike to get by, but said that one day he would have that bike back and ride it all over.
Thirty years later, Shannon was working at a shop called Count's Kustoms in Las Vegas, Nevada, chipping away at a custom bike when his dad called to tell him that it was time for Pops to get back on a bike. However, not just any bike would do-he wanted the one he had back in Hawaii. It was like music to Shannon's ears; he was now on a mission to find that bike.
He had no luck in tracking it down, despite calling every and any connection he had. So at that point the two just started to plan a build around the same style of bike.
Getting the motor and trans was easy, Shannon was working in a full custom shop, so all he need to do was order the parts. This time around Pops would have a 80ci shovelhead. Shannon ordered up an S&S short block then found a set of H-D shovelhead barrows and head, then slapped in a set of 10:01 Wiseco pistons. Then the transmission was a sore, Shannon fortunately had a customer who wanted to swap out his old H-D five-speed for a new Baker six-speed. When done with the job he asked his customer, "What are you going to do with the old one?"