Now we get amazing bikes seemingly one after another and needless to say, that only makes it tougher for the builders. It definitely doesn’t stop them. Take the case of this absolutely unbelievable bike built by Kyle Shorey of Shadetree Fabrications in Dallas, Texas. Built from a pretty-decent shape 2007 Saxon Crown owned by Bill McNabney, little was used from the original...

  Dar is only one half of the story; the other is three-time Top Fuel World Champion and legendary frame builder, Sam Wills of Racing Innovations. Sam’s been building frames for racers and custom builders for years and had a shop that Dar frequented. Dar wanted to build his own custom bike and “harassed” Sam constantly to show him how to build it. Sam finally caved and worked with...

  Most of the feature bikes we use have a name, but it usually has to do with a design theme the builder’s have chosen. Bail Money got its moniker by way of an event that happened years ago. “I went to high school with a cool guy named J.R. Dart, who was kind of a troublemaker, so his dad sent him off to boarding school across the country somewhere. Anyway, he calls me in the...

   Maybe, just maybe, it’s because they are now vintage bikes and that automatically adds a cool factor to start with or maybe they give an undiluted feel of what being a biker back in the glory days was like. Or, maybe it’s the sound as Shovels just make a sound that is totally their own as far as I’m concerned. Or, maybe it’s the ancient engine architecture that looks so...

 Unfortunately I didn’t have an alternative (pride will do that) so this sidewalk/street garage of mine stayed randomly open as necessary for five years until I had enough and moved back to the country. Today there are some alternatives in big cities I would have killed for like the unpretentiously cool Lowside Garage in Baltimore, Maryland. There are so many things right about...

    Justin and Jarrod Del Prado are those ‘mischievous lads’ who are constantly turning out one delectable (and affordable) custom out of their shop in New River, Arizona, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were just buttoning up another as I write this. Anyway, the initial story behind this story was reported on by Barnett’s Magazine Online back in November of 2013 so if you’d...

     The way I see it, T.D. is the motorcycle equivalent of TV chef, Emeril Lagasse, famous for his “Kick it up a notch” and “Bam!!” catchphrase slogans. Working out of his St. Louis-based shop, Rides & Rods Motorcycle Company, I see T.D. mentally kicking his bobber called Golden Rod up a notch until, Bam! it became the overachiever 330mm fat rear tire bobber with a mutha of...

     Jon did what any prolific and talented builder of show bikes would do with a brand new free engine and started to ramp up a ground-up board track/bobber build utilizing that 135hp SE Pro 120R engine for the next event. Talk about getting a head start! Needless to say, there was no teardown or hopping up involved with this engine that’s theoretically an off-road-only (yeah,...

       Holy City Designs’ Robbie Closson is responsible for both bikes and that’s something to be damn proud about. The Nonpareil Knucklehead was a delight to look at with all its spindliness and line-drawing aesthetic that Robbie cleverly kept from becoming a cartoon of a vintage board tracker/bobber just by being honest with itself. Put simply, he let the clean and sparse lines...

    What I’m seeing is a bike that I personally don’t characterize as a board tracker or a skinny wheel bobber or whatever typical category something like this would be placed in. Nope, what I’m seeing is a motorcycle that looks like a 3-D line drawing of what an absolute minimalist hot rod with two wheels looks like. The finished result looks as pure as a black and white sketch of...