Uncluttering handlebars is one of the cornerstones of chopping bikes. Most of us just chuck the brake and clutch levers all together and choose to run a jockey shift and a spool hub.
Guess what? There are some people in our ranks that actually want to run a hand clutch and front brake. Can you believe that?
Once such guy is Skinhead Todd. He and his trusty '79 FL brave the Long Beach, California, freeways all week long where he works the docks not as a prostitute, but as a longshoreman. Todd loves to ride fast and take chances, so the thought of himself busting down the pothole laden 710 in stop-and-go traffic while trying to hand shift with only a weak-ass rear brake just isn't going to happen. This is why he runs a dual disc setup in the front with a late model caliper in the rear. The only problem is since he switched to a set of Burly Brand 14-inch apes, the stock H-D controls look too chunky and funky up there.
After looking at a few aftermarket companies for just the right hand controls that would work with a dual-disc setup, we ran across a set of Hawg Halters handles. They are a simple design and the compact internal brake fluid reservoir really cleaned up the handlebars. We ordered them chrome plated and though they are CNC machined, the levers don't have any sort of billet appearance to them. We also went with a Hawg Halters throttle unit and the quality was also top notch.
Using only a few hand tools and a half a bottle of DOT 5 brake fluid we had the new handles on and bled in no time. Kudos to Hawg Halters for having just what we needed.
Like every other half-wit watching TV in the early 2000s, I decided that building motorcycles is easy, and there was no reason why I should let my limited knowledge of metalworking/mechanical inclination stop me. I had by this time cut my teeth assembling a BMX bike or two, built a ton of skateramps/deathtraps, and sank seven or so handmade boats in the lake behind my dad's house. Nevermind all the shit I took apart and never managed to return to working order, or that most of my projects were made out of wood. The time was right for something more powerful.
I just made one of the bigger mistakes in my life in the form of quitting my well-paying gig in a Los Angeles nightclub, and moving to Vegas to tend bar on graveyard shifts in a low-rent strip club. What better way to come up with the extra cash needed to build myself a custom bike, right?
Tuesday and Wednesday nights were mine. They were also the nights for the new young dumb girls to ply their trade. This concentration of inexperience seemed to attract a fair share of pimps. There were more pimps than girls, actually, which caused fights to break out after nearly every lapdance as the pimps attempted to turn the new girls. Most of my time was spent shouting for the Somoan bouncer, Steve, to come put everyone in line. Steve liked me a lot for some reason and always saved my ass. He, also, always liked to remind me that he just got out of prison and was lonely.
Somehow during each shift, I managed to eek out a meager living among the one-eyed air traffic controllers, the obese car stereo installers, and the angry European tourists who were dropped there against their will by tip-hungry cab drivers. But I was no closer to buying the parts I needed to start my build. I was actually a lot further away. After a few months, I settled into my sorry existence, and had pretty much given up on the whole bike thing. What I didn't realize was that I had moved to Vegas at the worst time possible. Due to the cold weather in October, every casino lays off their dead weight employees in anticipation of the inevitable slowing of business. Thousands of out-of-work bartenders competing for every last shitty shift at every last shitty bar left me to find work in the very shittiest of strip clubs. Eventually, I made it through the yearly hiring freeze, and landed a job in one of the nicer resorts on the Strip. That was when the money started rolling in and my bike started to take shape.
I had no clue what I was doing, so I just started ordering all sorts of parts online with my newly acquired wealth. Expendable incomes tend to perpetuate bad decisions, and I soon had a living room full of chrome bits and pieces that didn't fit together. It looked so easy on TV. But I had money, so I wasn't too worried. I did manage to make a couple of good decisions, one of which was the purchase of a brand new 96ci S&S motor. Depending on how cool you think you are, that might be a bad decision, but I figured a new engine would help me avoid the constant troubles a know-nothing would have with older engines. Plus, all those big torque numbers on the sales literature looked inviting.