Like his others, this bike is for sale. It’s Ben’s personal bike, and he rides it all the time. “It’s my every day bar hopper so to speak. I’ve probably got around 5,000 miles on it now. I finished it last March, so I’ve had it a little over a year now,” he said.
Beginning with a 1949 Panhead he bought from “a guy in Wisconsin,” Ben took his time gathering just the right parts for the bike. “I took the year scavenging parts at swap meets and whatnot, most all the parts I use in my builds are used parts,” he said. “I try to use as many original parts as I can. I picked up the parts all separately from various people and places, trades, and bartered this, bartered that. It’s how we do it. But to get the custom look I want I have to use stuff I make, but I like to use a lot of original Harley-Davidson parts. That’s where the frame came in, I found that frame, which is a 1955 Harley-Davidson frame, and restored it and brought it back to life, and then the Harley-Davidson Big Twin springer, which is also an original part I restored, and the motor, which has a Harley-Davidson transmission with it too. I just kind of merged it all together to get what you see now.”
Attention to detail is what sets this bike apart. “The frame had been raked, and the tank mounts were cut off and the backbone had been messed up too,” Ben said. “Basically we put a whole new front, a new neck and backbone on it where it had been chopped out before and brought it back to original specs.”
Take a close look at that 1949 Panhead. “It looks a little different because it’s all powdercoating I did myself,” Ben said. For the rear tire, he chose a 16″ Shinko. “We used a vintage reproduction tire, trying to capture that ’60s chopper-style look. In the front we used a [21″ Avon] Speedmaster, which is a real vintage tire, and merging that with a later style like the Frisco tank that would have been done later in the ’70s.”
Ben’s design esthetic is a combination of old and new, and it works for him. The spoke wheels, for instance, Ben painted himself. Every. Single. One. “It was a lot of work, a lot of detail work in it,” he said. “We’re just really trying to merge the different styles together, taking some stuff from the ’60s and taking some from the ’50s and the ’70s and then try and blend those together with the stuff we’re doing today. I think a lot of people are really stuck in one groove of what’s hot right now, and I’m not saying my bikes don’t represent that, but I was trying to make our own style instead of copying exactly what they did in the ’70s on the whole bike, or building a perfect bobber from the ’50s, or a chopper from the ’60s. We wanted to make our own statement, merging styles is what we’re trying to do. I wanted a vintage feel, but then I wanted a modern-type paintjob on it just to throw it off a little.”
The paint is a special silver Ben often uses. “It’s not a straight color, it’s actually a mix where they take that color and mix it with other paints to get that vivid look,” he said. “We’re in the painting business and that’s just one of the colors we’ve learned from use over the years. We took that and accented it with other different colors to really give it that sharp look.”
Ryan Young, Ben’s friend who is a talented graphic artist and owner of Indocil Art and Design (visit his site at www.indocilart.com, it’s worth it), which specializes in race and NASCAR helmets, painted the graphics. “Me and him worked on the paintjob for almost a year,” Ben explained. “While I was building the bike we were reviewing how we were gonna paint it. It’s a combination of my wants and his, and we just kind of merged the styles together. We were looking for basically a counter-culture tattooed-type look.”
As a fan of Old School nautical tattoos, Ben wanted the graphics to reflect that. He went with the nautical star, which sailors once used for navigation, and sparrows, symbolic for sailors before modern navigation technology when these birds were usually the first sign that land was near. “We merged those vintage tattoo styles with some of the newer type of tattoos like the flame and the spider webs and things of that nature, and blended it all together. I was real pleased with the way it looks, the way it turned out.”
There are brass details to the bike that are both unusual and personal. “The brass PIMP kicker pedal was made for me by Fabricator Kevin,” Ben said. “He gave it to me as a present, it’s a personal touch. He always calls me that, it’s kind of a funny, fun deal, just tacky enough. I had another bike a couple years ago called Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy and he made that kicker pedal for me so I kept it and put it on this bike, too. It’s just to show it’s my bike.” And that’s an old brass door knob you see as the shifter handle. “I go to antique swap meets and antique shows and I buy these door handles that came off an old house or whatever, and they happen to be solid brass,” he said. “They look really cool when they’re polished up. We travel all over the country going to bike stuff, so anytime we get the chance to go to an antique swap meet or antique show we go. I’m really into turquoise jewelry too, so that’s a good place to find it, and when we find these antique door knobs we pick them up and put them on our bikes. It’s a kind of personal touch.”
The bike’s name, Basura Blanca, means “white trash.” “I’ve always had trouble naming my bikes, I was never really into that,” Ben said. “My graphic’s guy, he’s really into naming everything, so we knew the bike was gonna turn out pretty nice but I was really trying to come up with a theme to work with the paintjob and the name and the kicker pedal, and it also kind of goes with the seat. It’s got snake skin in it. I had a good friend of mine who passed away, and he was real big on wearing snake skin cowboy boots and things like that, a kind of over-the-top dude, so I did the seat as a tribute for him because it was the way he dressed and it wasn’t white trash but it was just over the top enough. That white trash was just perfect for the bike because it’s loud but then it’s kind of subtle. You wouldn’t think all those details would come together like it did, you would have thought it was too much. It’s just a little bit trashy, so that’s where the name came in.”
The builder’s favorite aspect of the bike is the paintjob, and the speed. “It runs great at a hundred,” Ben said, laughing. “There’s nothing like building something with your hands and then goin’ a hundred miles an hour.”
If Ben’s bike is just something you’ve gotta have, drop him an email at powderman02@yahoo.com and see what it’ll take to make Basura Blanca yours.
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Tag: Wendy Manning writes about a 1949 Harley-Davidson Panhead that gets a makeover, blending both old and new school for one heck of a ride.
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