Can’t say the same for Dick Briggs and his crew at Behind Bars Motorcycle Co. in Ballston Spa, New York, as someone came up with the idea of building and finishing an Old School chop during the Syracuse Super Swap Meet & Cycle Expo event. “This bike was built at the Syracuse Super Swap Meet by my crew while I walked around buying the parts for it. Total build time start-to-finish was 12 hours and 9 minutes,” said Dick adding, “The engine we brought, along with the trans, frame, and our swap meet parts.” With the swap meet unashamedly touting itself as “The Largest Motorcycle Showcase & Swap Meet Under One Roof in the North East” there was hopefully anything and everything they needed just a dicker or two away.

 

  When you’re doing something as Old School as building a bike from extremely recently purchased swap meet parts, it doesn’t hurt to have an Old School build in mind and obviously that thought was running through Dick’s mind as he raced from table to table looking for parts. This might not be the best place to try and pull off a build of a high-tech big wheel bagger with all its furbelows and the electronic gear needed to run them, never mind the cost so Old School it was. There’s nothing wrong with that choice from my vantage point high atop Barnett’s skyscraper, who doesn’t like Old School?

 

  Scouring the grounds while the crew busied itself back at base camp, Dick gathered up bits and pieces from sellers who hopefully got in the spirit and gave him a good deal. “I got the perfect head light mount from the Boozefighters’ booth while the tail light is a stock [Harley 125] Hummer,” said Dick. “The gas tank I found there had an old Easyriders decal so we left it so it could still be seen.”   

 

   The engine they brought along with them (no, that’s not swap-meet cheating, just good sense) is no barely running swap meet special, but a surprising powerhouse of a Shovelhead that was only a shadow of its former AMF self. Built by drag racing legend, Pete Hill, famous for not only winning nine Top Fuel titles, but for doing it with a supercharged, fuel-injected, nitromethane swilling Harley-Davidson Knucklehead of all things. So, it’s no big surprise that the 1974 Shovelhead now displaces 125 cubes of nutty race motor power for a pretty damn radical Old School chopper. I never would have guessed any of that lovely Shovelhead silliness by looking at photos, I just thought it was some old stocker and I apologize to the horsepower gods for thinking otherwise. Maybe it was that air cleaner I couldn’t take my eyes off. “The air cleaner is a repurposed strainer from a Safety-Kleen parts washer. With a little love from Jay Griffen, it became a Rolling Stones’ tongue,” said Dick.

 

    The rigid chassis the Shovel got stuffed into sits aggressively nice with a raked out front end for the springer of unknown origins to strut its stuff. The flow from front to back is Old School cool with no bad lines or proportions. It just looks right. Sitting atop the springer is a set of pull back, buck horn-style bars that gives the build some altitude as well as attitude. Plus they’re perfect for the preferred laid-back riding position this Old School bike demands. Rolling stock consists of traditional stuff Dick found on site. “I found a mid-60s juice rear wheel and a no-brake spool front wheel ─ just what you’d want on a 130mph chopper. Death wish maybe?” said Dick. After blowing up Mitch’s pics and seeing all the dry rot cracks in the swap meet 21-inch Dunlop tire, maybe putting a lot of braking stress on the old tire might be a good excuse to run brakeless. And, definitely keep it well under 130.  

 

  After checking out the finished Behind Bars build, I started thinking I’ve got to get up to that swap meet. There’s a ton of cool vintage crap (my loving term) everywhere you look. Things like the King & Queen seat that sure looks like it would suck being the queen, but it’s perfectly fit for the king. Or the square-tube chrome trident-style sissy bar or maybe those crazy-cool bicycle pedal foot controls somebody came up with that match the kicker pedal. Or those dual small round headlights that I like so much better than a set of old Aris triangular headlights that were so popular with everybody but me. I’m sure some had to be there somewhere for sale for some exorbitant price, but they were too newfangled for me during Old School days and I still feel the same way. Maybe I’ve got to give them another 40 years and I’ll feel differently.

 

   At first I thought that Dick had scored the score of scores with the Rat Fink-inspired tank. I’m always on the lookout for old custom paint tanks for bikes and for just having kicking around. All I thought was that this was some wicked cool paintjob from back in the day that was discovered by a motorcycle archeologist, but I was wrong. “The paint job was also done entirely by hand at the show by my friend and my painter, the great Jay Griffen, who used only brushes to give it the perfect paint job,” said Dick. Jay, who is Quick Draw Design in Troy, New York, did an absolutely fabulous job. The complexity of this brush-bound scheme really surprised me with its colors, layers and depth of detail. And it’s not just the tank, but the oil tank, fenders and the too. Can’t imagine what he could do with a paint booth and an air brush.

 

   Watching his crew scurrying around the bike to get it completed, Dick had time to do a little motorcycle musing and come up with a name for the bike. “I looked at the crew building this bike, Scott Ferarrah, Jim Pucello, Repeat Wyzinski, Bill and Theresa Sick, Ogre and Brian Bagley of Satan Cycles fame and Jay Griffen of Quick Draw Design and realized probably none of us graduated high school. The term Old School has been used to death so I named it Quit Skool.”

 

   That high school thing may be true of these guys (and if it isn’t, talk to Dick), but they’re definitely not quitters when it comes to motorcycles with the crazy build time of 12 hours and 9 minutes. That’s almost the motorcycling equivalent of fast food, but this bike is much tastier than any fast food could ever be. Well, maybe, it’s the East Coast New York swap meet equivalent of a West Coast In-N-Out Burger. From the secret menu. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

 

  For more info on Behind Bars Motorcycle Co, you’ll have to hook up with them on their Facebook page or just Google to get a phone number.