One guy who always illustrates that point with each and every build has been Lucas Joyner of The Factory Metal Works in Concord, North Carolina. Somehow I feel he designs each bike by not looking at what he has to work with, but has a design in his head he clearly sees and just happens to use some of the donor parts to get there. What he doesn’t have or needs, he fabricates...

   The story goes that after graduating high school he got an itching for a bike, a fast bike, to help let out his teenage angst before he got himself into trouble with doing things we all did but shouldn’t have. Something to focus on. He’d worked all through high school and had a bit of cash stashed – enough to pick one of the two bikes he had narrowed his choice to. Plus...

      That’s not so for metric builders other than maybe Triumph twins which have a big following and a big aftermarket following too. Usually the only things we see other than Triumphs are old CB750 or XS650 builds, anything else is pretty unusual and open to even more criticism than usual as admirers of custom motorcycles are wont to do. Building around anything other than our...

       This highly-modified Ducati is a big no-no in the classic bike world as far as purists go and as far as keeping its value. A stock restored 1973 Ducati 750 GT like this bike is based on has a hard core following and hard core pricing for one in pristine condition regularly going for 25 grand or more. Changing the basic bike into a one-off custom is not something most...

     One more thing Motorcycle TV did was introduce us to builders we might never have known about otherwise. Such is the case with Torch Industries out of Phoenix, Arizona, who built this pretty rad (time frame again) Shovelhead tail-dragger beginning with a 1966 Harley-Davidson FL that morphed into a Softail. According to Torch’s Justin Coleman, “The frame is built using the...

       After seeing Jack Cofano’s photos of another mystery owner motorcycle that was built to a budget probably by the owner himself, you’ve now seen simple in a one-off bike that’s built for the street and not some glitzed-up show queen. In this case, it’s not a Harley, but the chopper choice of metric customizers worldwide, the would-be-British-twin-except-for-its-birthplace,...

        There was something vaguely familiar about it involving the lines of the bike, but there was nothing that would make me absolutely sure whose bike it was. I had been blowing up Jack’s photos looking for clues like maybe a painter’s name in small letters (they often do that) or some engraving where the company name showed up, but no.  But, then I got it ─ mystery solved....

       Somebody out there (and I do wish we did know who to give him a righteous pat on the back for a job well done) probably ran into a basketcase Norton that they couldn’t pass up and began with whatever they could scrounge up out of the mess they bought. In this case, I gotta go with the 750cc Norton Commando engine and 4-speed tranny and just about nothing else from the...

     Yeah, yeah, I know this is a Harley site for Barnett Harley-Davidson and you’re looking for anything 45-degree V-twin, but this little anonymous-looking 233cc vertical twin probably got a pretty big percentage of current Motor Company riders their motorcycle endorsement and their asses on a motorcycle that made Milwaukee famous. Unlike a lot of the H-D riders I’ve met who...

    But even that’s not what this story is totally about as much as who or what the owner and builder of this heavily-purplized hardtail is all about. The only information Mr. Cofano could provide with his photos from the Daytona Rat’s Hole Show was the name of the owner, one Crystal Hooks of Kennesaw, Georgia. Turns out, Ms. Hooks is a professional stuntwoman extraordinaire whom...