Bobbers
Rich Ryan and Steve Glennon, of Shamrock Fabrications, had originally built this bike back in 2008. Glennon had been working with Ryan for about two and a half years at the time, and it was his first ground up build. About four months ago, Steve decided that since he had put about 25,000 miles on the hog in the last two years, that he wanted to completely redo the bike. According to Irish Rich, “Steve had some ideas he wanted to try so we went from there. By the time we finished, there wasn’t a part on there that we didn’t re-work or change completely. About the only things we kept were the front forks, engine, transmission, frame, and oil tank. This next time around, Steve did more of the work. For instance it was his first time to sit down and see if he could narrow the gas tank himself. He had helped me do it many times but he wanted to do it himself. So I helped him with the patterns, but he did all the actual welding on the tank. I had rolled the tunnel for him and guided him along when he split it. That’s sort of the way we worked together on this project.”
One of Glennon’s priorities for the redesign was squeezing a few more miles of range out of his mount without sacrificing the short and extremely narrow look he wanted. If you take a peak between the frame rails at the second filler cap mounted alongside the oil tank, you’ll see what they came up with. Ryan recounts, “Steve wanted to figure out how we could work in an auxiliary gas tank that was nearby a small fuel pump so he wouldn’t have to carry gas bottles when he travelled. We spent a lot of time R&Ding the right fuel pump, and trying to locate one, and figuring out how it was going to feed into the main tank. It holds 4/10 of a gallon, so add that to his 2 gallon tank and he’s extended his stops by about 25 miles.”
With the last beads of solder still cooling, the Shamrock crew took a few spins around the block for break in and launched straight out of their Rocky Mountain garage for a cruise down to the beach…in California. Irish Rich says that’s just business as usual, “That’s what we’re known for, building bikes that you can take down off the lift and put a couple of thousand miles on them. We literally finished the wiring, took it out for a few break-in miles, and headed out to Born Free 3. I don’t think there were a whole lot of bikes in the builder’s circle at that event that got ridden in 1,100 miles, and then did a 3,000 plus mile return trip on top of that.”
Turns out that after the Born Free 3 show in Los Angeles ended, Steve rode the bike up the west coast through San Francisco, Oregon, Washington, then over through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and back down to Denver, staying at campsites and with friends along the way. Ryan admitted, “I wouldn’t have put 25,000 miles on a rigid in the last two years, but Steve’s only 30 so he’s still pretty durable. That’s sort of our trademark, that we build bikes with a custom look but that you can still get stock performance out of.” Lots of builders may make that claim, but with Steve Glennon and his glutes of steel doing the road testing, at Shamrock Fabrication they can honestly say that they put their wallets where their welds are.
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