Thanks for stopping by my site. I hope that you will visit often so that you can follow along in the progress and frustration of building a very custom bike on a very tight budget. Make sure that you check out the roadblocks pages so that you can see some of the hurdles this project has to overcome.

As always drop me an email if you have a suggestion or maybe some parts to donate. Also feel free to ask questions about the project or just to ask me, "What in the hell are you thinking?"

In case you did not know, the image of me on the custom bike to the right is not the bike I am building or even my bike. That picture was taken on a recent trip to a bike shop. There are some pictures scattered through out this site of some of my past bike projects and motorcycles I've owned. As much as I like the style of the chopper in the picture (a customized Texas Chopper made by American Ironhorse) it has a raked and stretched frontend that makes riding with even two healthy legs and a good back tough.

My project will be more "old school" and what some folks call a Bobber, as opposed to a Chopper. Just to clairify, a bobber actually predates the chopper look by a few years. It was started right after World War One when people took items off of their Harley (and Indian) war surplus bikes to make them lighter. The term Bobber came from bobbing or cutting excess metal off of the fenders to also lighten the bikes for race day. Usually the front ends (forks) were shortened instead of made longer like the chopper to lower the bikes stance and in theory make it quicker and easier to handle on the dirt tracks of the day. The Chopper borrowed the "bobbed" fenders style but because they were not used to race, handling was not quite as important. There are a lot of theories as to who fathered each style but both originated out west in California.

As you can see I tend to get long winded and ramble. But I just want everyone to know the terms I may use on the site since they will help you visualize the finished bike I am building.

Back

Warning, this site uses real language. Consider it rated "R". All content © 1995 ~ 2006 to Mike Mann. Don't steal my shit!!!