Looking for that next great build idea? Maybe you should stop by a real motorcycle shop. The kind of shop that really builds bikes, not just assembles parts; you might just find your next idea for your build. It seems like almost every shop we have been to has a junk bin or scrap bucket of "almost ideas." Sheetmetal that did not quite make it, fabbed parts that just missed, but always good ideas. Hell, you can always find parts that should have made it on a build but are just sitting at this point.
Well, the bike covering these pages is named the Haymaker, and it started out the same way-a good idea that took a few tries to get right. The only thing different about this bike was that Paul, the owner of Bare Knuckle Choppers, wanted to build this bike for himself, but had so many things going on with that his own projects got neglected and took twice as long to progress. So when a customer by the name of Jake ("That is all we have on him," Bare Knuckle said) stopped by and started to give a description of the frame he was after, Paul got excited. He had planned to build something along the same lines for the shop. The idea was to make a single downtube-style frame with two tubes welded together as one. This was for looks, not to add strength, but all the motor mounts and mounts for controls needed to be custom made in-house. The good thing about having a full fab and machine shop in-house is that anything you need to custom make can get done.
Once the frame was done with 31-degrees of rake in the neck and 2-inches longer than stock backbone and downtube, it was ready for pick-up. Now the shop offers this frame as the "V-Hell," and you can get one. Jake came by, picked up his frame, and started to tell Paul that he was looking for a frontend for this build but was not having any luck finding what he needed. At that time Paul told Jake that they could build just what he was after: A clean, simple, and narrow Springer with no brakes or lines. After the Springer was done and mounted to the frame, Jake came back to the shop, showed Paul the lines, and picked up a set of wheels at the same time. A set of Ride Wright 80-spokes were installed on the chassis to complete the roller.
It was at that time that Paul worked out a deal to finish this build; it was too close to what he wanted for himself. He was hoping that the build would be a platform for his next project. Jake started to look for a motor and trans as the sheetmetal was getting worked on. He wanted to keep the bike with an older-style motor-a Panhead or Shovelhead, but in big inch form. So a new motor would have to do, rather than a rebuild of an old Harley-Davidson with a lot of miles. After a lot of calls trying to find one, he was able to get a generator Shovelhead from Accurate Engineering, but was told that it was about 10 weeks to get one.