The History
Officially, Steve Glennon started this build in the spring of 2007, but in all reality, it began long before that. It started when Steve was young, perhaps three or four years old, admiring old pictures of his dad's choppers from the '60s and '70s. From an early age, Steve was raised to love motorcycles. Steve came from a long line of riders-his father rides, his brother rides, his dad's brother-in-law rides, and his mom's brother-in-law raced motorcycles. Also, his cousin is employed with the House of Harley dealership in Milwaukee.
The Mentor
Steve was very familiar with Irish Rich's work, of Shamrock Fabrication, and read plenty of Rich's articles a long time before actually meeting him. Steve emailed Rich before coming out to Denver in the winter of 2006 and set up a meeting with him, in the hope that Steve could "apprentice" in whatever capacity Rich was willing to offer. They hit it off right away, and they've become not only co-workers, but very good friends as well.They've been working together now for two and a half years. The two have traveled more than 15,000 miles on the road together to and from events, and have had more hilarious experiences than could be recapped in one sitting. Overall, Steve can't think of anyone he'd rather learn from. Rich is one of the true all-around builders, and has had a hand in every step of this build.
The Chop
Weeks after starting this build, Steve lost one of his best friends, Peter Friedrich. He was an inspiration during this project, and because of that, Steve dedicated the build to his memory. Steve wanted everything on this bike to be narrow. He originally ordered a five-speed wishbone frame to start off with, but the distributor mistakenly sent a four-speed frame with Fatbob mounts that were, to put it delicately, a little "misaligned." So, Steve chopped the frame up a bit, then he and Rich notched the seatpost and fitted the five-speed tranny as he originally intended.
Rich had a narrow-glide Sporty frontend lying around, so Steve used it and ordered 2-under tubes to shorten it up. Steve also chopped the fender mounts from the sliders and smoothed them out, while Fab Kevin hooked them up with some Tokico calipers and his famous adapter brackets for stopping power.
Steve made the top motor mount, handlebars, and license plate bracket, as well as the primary plate, and electrical box, which he engine-turned (with Rich's expert coaching) for a little extra "bling." To hide the battery, Steve chopped out the tranny support bracket and fabricated a tray to mount a Buell battery underneath the transmission. Taking the place of the transmission support are two H-D five-speed transmission-mounting plates sandwiched together.
The coil wound up under the seat to keep it out of direct sight, and Rich fabricated an oil tank that wrapped around the rear wheel to balance the negative space between the seat and tranny. The pipes are Steve's favorite parts fabricated for the bike. Each pipe is made from five to six pieces of tubing. Steve welded the pieces together, smoothed them down, and formed the "ice cream scoop" tips. After that, Steve matched both the rear fender and sissybar to the tips of the pipes.
The gas tank is a 2.2-gallon Mustang that the two "frisco'd" with a shallow tunnel, and added some new rubber isolated mounts. They also cut out the original filler neck, replacing it with a flush mounted filler, which they offset to the right. Finally, Steve told Kirk Taylor of Custom Design Studios the basic color scheme he wanted, and gave him artistic freedom from that point on to fill the "canvas". Kirk went above and beyond what Steve ever could have imagined, and didn't disappoint him in the least.
Steve built this bike to not only stand out in a crowd, but also to ride and handle well. With several hundred miles of break-in and tweaking behind him, it's a blast. Mastering jockey shifting wasn't as big an ordeal as Steve was led to believe, and it's everything he wanted for his first ground-up build. SC