Happy New Year 2009!

Have a bromantic new year, from your friends at Biltwell.
.
.

Cycle Source Jan 09 Issue

This month's issue of Cycle Source had a great little article from Brew Dude called "Chains for Dummies". Well, I guess I'm that dummy. I've always known that a master link has to go on the chain in the right direction. I didn't know why, so I could never remember which way was right. I'd have to check on another chain just to make sure I had it right. Brew's reasoning for the open end of the master link to always face away from the direction of chain travel is so it doesn't get unclipped when it hits something. Makes sense to me! Thanks dude, now I'll always remember.

Coolest Christmas Presents Ever

Check out these nice little units that our friend Kim made for his dad and brothers. Kim has a serious Scotch Brite fetish so this is a good outlet for him and benefits his family at the same time.
Visit: BCM
.
.

Another Cool Sporty

TJB sends these pics of his late model sporty with some cool mods that don't require a lifetime of fab skills or your own personal machine shop. Just clean little tweaks that can be done in the home garage. Here's what he had to say: "...No machine shop here. Just a 2 car garage in the NJ suburbs... I cut the fender with a jig saw and the fender struts with a sawzall. Now I need to grind the fender struts round with the finest Harbor Freight grinder China can produce. The exhaust was a cheap chrome set up that was way to long and had a bunch of brackets and what not. That changed one night in my kitchen. I tried to make my own side plate mout but it got loose when grinding it with a power drill and grinder disc, hit me in the face and I got mad and bought one off ebay..." Looks good dude, send us some more pics when you have it back on the road. See Biltwell Items: 1" Clubmans, Exhaust Tips & Registration Holder.
.
.

Photos from Eric

Eric Penrod out in Vegas has a nice photo collection on Flickr.
.
.

Have a Classy Christmas

First one to email with the name of the magazine and cover date (month/year)
when this pic was originally used, wins a helmet.
Send your answer and choice of color to: billb67@verizon.net

That was quick! Free gloss black lid on the way to RM in Dago for guessing Supercycle Dec 1978.
.
.

Cut Down

This is the coolest thing I've seen posted to the JJ in a long time. Cool enough to poach it and put it up here. Thanks, Dale!

More here: Wheels Through Time You Tube Collection.

Also, check out this multi-part series about a crusty '49 Pan that sat on the porch for 40 years and the WTT guys get it going again.
.
.

Bar ends?

What are you supposed to do with the left overs after you trim a couple inches off your new bars? After JL put a set of Aces Bars on his Triumph, he put the extra bits to good use. Thanks for the tip JL, and the bike looks great.

Teach's Sporty Project

Looking good Teach! Those Keystones look great on there.
Support the Kennedy High School Shop class here: Raffle.

.
.

Joe Strummer

If you have not seen The Future Is Unwritten go buy it now



A Fuckin Ruler!
John Graham Mellor
8/21/52 - 12/22/02

Wow.

G O E
,
,

Ad in DicE 23

New ad in DicE Issue 23. Some of McGoo's finest work. I hope it confused a few people. More to come...
.
.

HIPPY KILLER GARAGE SALE

Kutty Noteboom is having a pre-Christmas garage sale at his home shop.
See you Saturday morning…

Winter Workshop

Compared to everywhere else in the country, we obviously have some great weather here in So Cal. Even so, cold nights, the pace at work slowing down, and a great project like this old 45 Solo add up to the prefect combo for some late nights in the garage. I've been stalled on this bike since about last spring and finally drug it home and started chipping away last week. Seems like every night something else comes off the damn thing and I get farther from actually accomplishing something productive.


Today was good. Tins came back from paint, and I finally got the shifter linkage and handle dialed in. An old chrome knob with a 3-speed plus reverse pattern on it gets me stoked since it's an old servi-car 3-speed trans with reverse removed. Sometimes it's the little things. I wasn't going to mess with the wiring but Guy at Greasy Kulture sent me this sweet old brass WLA ignition switch. I hated where the old one was anyway, so out comes the cloth wire and friction tape. Maybe this thing will be done by this time next year...

Yay, something to scratch!

Thanks, Guy, I promise to put it to good use.
.
.

CB450 Streettracker Update

This baby is moving slow, but the holidays are upon us, so I plan to get some serious work done between the X-Mas and New Year break.

Last night I installed the modified CB750 swingarm. Kutty did an awesome job narrowing the swingarm, and DMF in San Marcos, CA, came through with some equally stellar polishing and plating. This weekend I'm going to build a brake pedal, mount the pegs and glass and install the carbs so I can start on a battery box. Stay tuned…

 

GK8

Greasy Kulture Numero Ocho is out.

Get a sub.

Mooneyes Christmas Party

Chris pretty much summed up the David Mann Chopperfest, what a great venue and we really lucked out on the weather. This was Biltwell's third year vending there and it was the best to date. That first year I think we had a seat bracket and some t-shirts. This time we had a whole bunch of junk to show off.

Stumbled on this neat Beezer for sale at Mooneyes.
Stoked to see he was running the seat bracket in chrome.

Breakfast with Chris from Cycle Source is a good way to start the day.
I wish we had a chance to hang with this dude way more often.
Positive vibes, endless work ethic and a love for all things motorcycles is a good combo!

Found this outstanding duo in the Irwindale parking lot. Class!

McGoo, BF Josh and I hit up the annual Mooneyes Christmas Party before hooking up with Wes & Jedd for a late lunch. Mooneyes was packed. I had hoped with Southern Californian's weak tolerance for rain that the dark clouds would thin the herd a little bit. It didn't seem to. I loves me some hot rods, but about ten minutes of immersion in a crowd this size is about all it takes before I feel like choking someone. Ran in to a bunch of friends, peeped a few cars, caught a couple of cool bikes and saw a gaggle of semi-hot Santas running around. What a scene. The drags of course were neat, I'd have liked to have stayed and watched that for a while but we had shit to do so we bailed.

Finally an honest company name!

Chopper Fest

This turned out to be a great show this weekend. I didn't make the Moon Eyes show but heard it was fun too. Everyone was scared because the forecast was for rain this weekend. Turned out the rain held off and it was beautiful Sunday. A little chilly but great overall. The bike turnout was really good in my eyes. So many good bikes and Thanks tons too the Foundry crew for all the hospitality the whole weekend! I didn't take too many pics but here are some I took and some I stole. Chris Callen from Cycle Source was out and runs the best mag in the business! What a humble guy with such a great passion for bikes and what he does. He totally puts his heart and soul into his magazine and you should buy a subscription if you don't have one. Chopper Fest is definitely one of my favorites and everyone that came out was great.




T-Bone


Love


Foundry


Love

Chopper Fest

David Mann Chopper Fest
Come rain or shine we are on our way there now so come out Sunday

Thanks Butch!!!

"Uncle Bitchen" or Butch here in Temecula by the shop did some striping for me yesterday and I'm Stoked!

Blogomatic

Our first blog was the EDR site way back in the good ol' days of 2005. That's 100 years ago in internet time. Since then (and maybe before) everyone and their mom has a blog. It's a cool way to check up on what's going on all around the world in your particular little universe. I'm too sloppy and unorganized to have them all neatly bookmarked, blah, blah I just peruse my favorites from memory (and cache) until I get tired of it and quit. Today, a friend of mine who is much more savvy than I, turned me onto something called RSS feeds. Maybe I'm the last one on the planet to discover this damn thing, but I doubt it. I had seen that little orange or blue icon a million times and just disregarded it as some silly time wasting shit like Twitter that I didn't need to investigate. Not so, grasshopper! We've since added a RSS feed to this blog, just click the little icon on the right, or go here. Here's the scoop on how it works:

Sign up for a gmail/google account (there are other ways, but this is how I did it)

Go to google, find the "more" link and go down and select "reader". This opens your "Google Reader" page.
Open a new page and go to one of your favorite blogs.

On my mac, the little orange icon is in the address bar, it's probably somewhere similar on PCs. Click on that icon. On the Biltwell page, it's over there on the right of the blog since ours is "embedded" on the site.

Then click "add to Google Reader".

Do this over and over for all the blogs you visit.

This will send all the new info posted on all the blogs you selected to your Google Reader page so you can check them all from one spot. You can tweak the settings to customize things. I just set mine to show all items. I checked "Mark all as read" on each after they loaded and that way new content will show up on the left with the number of new entries posted with a number in bold like (1) next to it. This way you can just check one place and if you see a new bold number, there is a new entry to read.

Probably way old news to lots of people and serious geek shit to the rest, but hopefully this is helpful to some. It was to me once I figured it out. Anything that means more time riding, and wrenching and less time being a keyboard commando is a good thing in my book.

While we are on the subject of blogs, let's talk doing your own blog. Updating your blog once a month = no class. Having zero original content = no class. If you are going to poach something from someone else's blog or website, give credit and try not to do it too often. A lesson can be learned from Chopper Dave, nude or partially nude girls, especially posed with motorcycles are pure class and worth sharing! Also, set your blog to archive every ten days or so. I love Max's blog like everyone else, but it crashes my machine because it's so damn long. (Google reader fixes that and only loads ten posts at a time.) Also, I personally dig stuff like Special 79's where he shows works in progress. Also CZ's where some super rad bikes and parts are often for sale.

OK, enough about computers, back to motorcycles now...
.
.

Trash

Thanks to Hal Robison!

There Ain't No Need For Ya

Luis' Pics

of Caleb's bike

Linkage is a game

In the Garage at Chabott

Fine Art You Can Race!!!

Chabott