Speed Dealer Performance & House of Speed #440

What's up, everyone, and welcome back to the Fast Life Podcast.

On today's episode, I'm sitting down with Frank from Speed Diller Performance out of Joplin,

Missouri, and we're sitting in his new building that he has been working on diligently for

the last three years, I believe, called House of Speed.

And I can't wait to see this place completely completed, even though it is very close

to getting to that point.

Frank is very well-known in the performance motorcycle world for his custom swing arms,

his billet parts, and a lot of other accessories that he creates for the motorcycle community.

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Let's go.

Hey guys, you ready to let the dogs out?

It's pretty mind-blowing how different it is in here now compared to how it was.

You gotta get close to you guys.

But I hope this feels good, fingers crossed I guess, so we don't waste two hours of

our life.

It'll be fine.

Just seeing you for two hours is good enough, buddy.

Well, yeah, man, this is super impressive.

I mean, just seeing it over what the last three years, essentially how it's slowly but surely.

Not necessarily your fault.

No, not necessarily my fault.

Suppliers in the city and just life gets in the way.

Would you rather build buildings or bikes?

I have a passion for both.

I always tell everybody this is my 6,000 square foot 92 FXR.

Once you get in the history, like all of us architect Frank Lloyd Wright, fan for sure,

you get it.

And then the passion of a building built in 1885, the history and the ghosts for voices

you hear, the dreams that were, this is probably his sixth generation now of me becoming

a motorcycle shop from a famous bar to a haberdashery, it just goes on and on.

The dream starts and the dream ends and then another one starts and you just see this whole

evolution of this thing.

How much of it is like trying to preserve it versus also trying to put your stamp on it?

It's a balance.

We try to make it.

Me and Megan and the whole team has talked about it as far as the color palette like

you've seen in here and keeping the historical bricks that's been here since 1885.

But putting a modern twist on it, I call it's kind of like a retro rod.

Yeah.

On the outside, you have all this technology of mini splits and the highest technology for

as HVAC and insulation in the floors and durability of floors and the floors were there,

but we went ahead and over it.

It's a 50-50 deal or a balance of like, you mentioned yourself, it's the machine,

CNC aluminum railing instead of the Victorian spindles that was in there before and

years.

RC is anyone in the motorcycle industry.

It's a good blend between our modern technology versus 1885.

That glasses in the front, that was an iPhone 17 in 1885.

That was crazy.

No electricity in this building for 20 years.

It's just crazy.

It's a balance 50-50 at the best, but usually leaning towards a 70% of technology, the glass.

It's fun.

It's just like building a retro rod FXR or chopper or whatever.

You got to have that motor gadget, NAMS wiring harness because it's not going to work.

It's also photogenic too, which I think including Megan into this conversation with what she

does with the media side of the speed dealer, I think, is that just a part of what you do,

I would assume?

Yes, sir.

When you have a place, and this is something I've always felt like in my shop, even though

it's typically just a 10-building out in a lot of other 10 buildings, it's like

the inside.

For me, I need to be around something that inspires me, so I have to put things

up and decorate it in a way like my teenage bedroom when I was a kid.

But also, it helps when you create content for your brand to show the world who you are

when you have these photogenic spaces to help sell the lifestyle, I guess you'd say.

That's what she's always said.

She can speak more for herself, but there's so much opportunity for content in this building.

Every corner, it's like going to Rome or somewhere.

Every balcony, every flower pot, every little spring-fed fountain is photogenic, especially

if you're in the photography.

Me and Megan and her husband Cody was here the other night, and the sunsets on the west,

it was unbelievable.

She got up and was taking pictures, and with the Christmas tree lights, the Christmas

lights for Christmas and Main Street Joplin, she came here Saturday night.

We got them put up here Saturday.

There's so much content here, and it makes it feel like home.

It really makes it feel like you're worth.

It's hard to walk away from this place that night, and that's what you want.

As anyone that's in business for themselves, it's not a 40-hour deal.

Burning paint jobs till one o'clock in the morning, you look up, I got to go home four

hours and rest.

This industry is 70 hours at minimum.

You can talk to Brian Clark or Jessup, any of them guys at home.

It's not a 40-hour deal, but it's our passion.

Luckily, we get to make a living what we're passionate about.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's like anything.

When you're in it, you're not thinking about how fortunate you are to be a part,

to wake up and do something you love.

But at the same time, it's easy to be jaded by it as well.

So there's like a, in my experience, I just feel like there's a balance of,

that's why I ride motorcycles so much, because if I didn't ride them,

I would resent them from all the stress in my life.

It comes from them, but when I'm out there enjoying it, it balances out.

Because I understand what they mean to me, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I do.

When shops stop riding is when they usually fall out of touch with it, you know?

And that's when we ride motorcycles, whether it's me and Cody or me and

Megan or Cody and his best buddy Rusty.

I mean, Megan's put probably 6,000 miles.

She wanted to sturgis with Cody and went past Sturgis and back.

They went to the Smoky Mountains deal.

I mean, that's what I want to do more this year with them guys is do that.

Because it took a lot of capital, a lot of attention to get this to where it is.

All the heavy lifting's done.

Again, I couldn't do it without my team to get to pull it all off.

But when we ride and we understand what we're, what we love, you know?

That's riding those two wheels.

And especially when you stop and people see Cody's custom bike or

Megan's custom bike, it's not only bad-ass people riding, but

they're beautiful bikes and they think, oh, that's a show bike.

Well, they look like show bikes, but just like your bikes, we ride the shit out of them, you know?

I get so many compliments on my FXRP.

Is that a brand new Harley?

No, that's an 84X, an 84.

You know, I freaked out about it, you know, because it's pristine.

That's what I feel about it.

Like if I get pulled over on one of my FXRs, like, man,

they're not going to believe me if I say this is a 1984 or 91.

They're going to want to look at everything.

I'm like, man, yeah, but yeah, it's like, unlike a bike,

if you're doing a project like building this place out, you know,

if you get to a point on the bike where you're snagged up on it time,

whatever, you can push it to the side of the shop and you're not like thinking

about all the investment you have into it and how you need to move on it.

You need to get things done.

And this is a collection of a lot of different people coming together to make this happen, right?

Yeah, the biggest part of it was hooking up with Chris from Sendit Construction

and Chad Tandy.

He kind of took over the deal and he's one of my best friends' son.

And with that, he collaborated and got all these people.

There was a couple of bad apples in the deal, but we pushed hard to get to the east

coast, west coast deal that Jeff Holt and Maggie put together.

And we just all collaborated together in a very short period, 45 days,

something like that, Megan.

And we pull it all together and that's what really pushed us to the point of fighting

the city about the smell of fumes.

They put a stop order.

Unfortunately, City Hall is right next door.

So when we go to the permit, we just walk out our back doors,

literally 10 steps and go up to the four floor and get permit.

So with that, they can smell a fart, literally, you know?

What, are they just the gas fumes or what?

The paint fumes.

The odor, yeah, that's what we said.

How are you supposed to get the paint on the wall?

We had to do it on the weekends.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, that was just, that's just one little tip.

We got past all that.

We did have to paint on the weekends.

And Billy and his old crew from the Hillbilly painting, they were able to go.

They did all their staining and stealing all the bricks.

We literally had to pay money to do it on the weekends.

Yeah.

They just were, they were not going to allow it.

It's like the back of this building, it's a three store building.

So the brick has been here since 140 years ago.

And unfortunately, a couple of times they painted the back of the building in the alleyway.

So we had to strip all that paint off because 50% of it was already gone.

Yeah.

So they didn't like the paint chips because the municipal parking lot is behind

our, there's an alley and we're the city hall parks back there.

So there was little paint chips falling on people's cars.

So we had to stop and do that on the weekends, you know, so.

But we, we, they're, they're friendly to us now.

They seem, you know, we pushed on and this hard-edded Dutchman wasn't going to

freaking stop, you know, and we've went through it all and we're,

all the heavy lifting is done now.

All the, we got some small permits to give, but we've got it all figured out.

So again, the, the fun part, which this, there was fun parts of it that we did

and we got to do artistic things to it, you know, and redid a lot of stuff.

The stairwells per code and the handicapped bathroom, which took part of

our little machine chop away.

There was stuff that we had to overcome.

I wasn't happy about it, but it is what it is.

And I got past it and had to get a structural engineer.

Yeah, there was no need for bathrooms back in the 1800s when they built this thing.

No, exactly.

Yeah.

So I was just thinking about that when you were saying that and I was like,

wait, there's no other, there wasn't a bathroom down there, right?

So it's like they probably had an outhouse or something out in the back over there.

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah, well, we just went to the Verizon store to get new shop phones and stuff.

And we were waiting in the Verizon store and we were there a couple of hours.

So we got to go to the bathroom.

We don't have public bathrooms.

What?

I mean, this is a big Verizon store.

And then we went to another store the other day and it's like,

they don't have public bathrooms either.

It's funny that like, it's like when a, when a small business tries to go

in to build their stuff, they're required to have all these ADHD or...

Yeah, yeah, handy cap.

Which one is it?

And a handy cap, yeah, I'm bad with that stuff too.

I forget the acronym for it, but it's like ADH or I just go straight to ADD or whatever.

But they want you to cross all these, you know, check all these boxes.

But yet the Verizon store doesn't have to provide a bathroom for anybody.

No.

The, how many places have you gone where the parking is just insufficient?

Yeah.

Huge place.

You're like, man, why the hell am I having to park way down here?

Yeah.

But yet if I want to open up a business, I got to provide 20 parking spots for somebody.

It did work out for us.

We were a little hesitant and kind of pissy about it and stuff.

But now that we're downstairs and we got to go to the bathroom,

we don't have to go to the third floor.

So we're all, it worked out fine for us.

So we're, we're good to go.

How much like, would you say the vision of this place has kind of evolved since inception?

Like, like, because I'm even this up here in the speakeasy part.

Yeah.

It's different than the original goal.

Yeah.

So how did that process kind of go through, you know?

Well, when I started bringing contractors in here, and there was two walls in here

before because they had apartments, rooms.

Yeah.

When this was a famous bar was called Merchants Bar Saloon with Rooms.

So the third floor had renting rooms by the hour by the day.

Who knows what that was all about?

But when I seen, once we started laying it out then, I just needed more

square footage and we found this bar up here.

So we, then we figured out how that went.

So we just start taking out walls and then we, this used to be a burlesque stage

back in the day.

So with this, well, we'll just make this a sitting area.

So then from that, we've all, we'll just take that other wall out and then

as a team, we like kind of saw the vision.

She came up with ideas.

Other people in the shot came up the ideas and we thought, yeah, well,

we can do that.

And it was cost effective just to make it bigger, to make the vision of what

we have here is just going to be a BS room and never be open to the public.

But with that, we've seen that the possibility is to have podcasts or

birthday parties or Formula One watches and it was just friends and stuff, you know.

And the downstairs was pretty laid out.

But with that, we had to start putting bracing up for the,

it's got a big mezzanine shelf that's a mezzanine deck that's 800 square foot.

Well, we had a couple of meetings up there and it was kind of bouncy and stuff.

So with that, the city, we had to get an engineer and put support beams in it,

which I wasn't happy about.

But then today, the investment we had, it's solid now.

Yeah.

It'll be there for another 200 years or whatever.

The vision didn't change a lot.

We were kind of forced to change, huh?

Just kind of refined.

Yeah, refined.

Yeah.

More structurally sound instead of spending a whole lot of money that I

didn't think it was necessary that kind of fine ed was, you know, I wouldn't

happy about it, but we paid the bill and went on with it.

And it's better than the original.

How much of the actual machine shop are you planning to move over here?

Just the manual stuff that I have a manual shop or have a bridge for

just where I build my own motorcycles.

Okay.

Because we have 11 C&C's and our manufacturing facility is probably 20,000

square feet, something like that.

So they're monster machines.

Yeah.

They'll all stay there.

This will be just a retail front, the destination.

Yeah.

Megan will work here, Kim will work here.

And then I will work here.

And Jason Hampton has always helped me build all of my motorcycles

from my Triumph to my Sturgis FX, or we call it.

He's always been my right-hand man.

So he's come back and worked for me 20 to 30 hours a week to help me.

He'll be here.

And we'll probably have a couple of retail people, girls.

We're kind of looking at people right now to fit that deal.

Because we'll have hard parts, you know, we're a drag dealer.

And Megan wants to do a line of women-inspired deals.

There's a lot of women writers here, you know, Chelsea,

Rusty Lee's wife.

She knows them all better than I do.

There's, you probably ride with eight or nine girls around here that ride hard.

I mean, Chelsea and her gang, Megan being one of them girls, they freaking,

they haul ass.

And they go to Florida, they go to Sturgis, they ride to Sturgis.

You know, there's a lot of male writers around here.

They got bad-ass bikes, her husband Cody does, Rusty Hutchison,

Rusty Lee, they got real high-end bagger-type bikes.

So it'll be a good place to buy Dickson's or get to put a Simpson helmet on

instead of, you know, extra-largest too.

That's kind of her business plan, but mainly just the destination to come,

see what's hot in the speed dealer line, stuff like that.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a, I'm definitely that kind of a consumer.

Like I like the feeling of walking in somewhere and putting my hands on it

before I buy it.

Yeah.

As much as I know the world's going the other direction.

Yeah.

It's still, man, every once in a while, like camera stuff, for instance.

Like, I have a, the whole reason I have nice camera gear is because I have good credit.

So I have a credit card for a camera company.

Yes.

And I just keep a $4,000 a year, you know, investment basically.

Yeah.

So, but I do, it's so impractical, you just, you hit add the cart, click to buy,

then you just kind of wait for a week and you're like, oh cool, it finally showed up.

So that you don't get that instant kind of like, excitement of like,

I cannot wait to get home to tear this out and go, go play with it.

You know what I mean?

I think it's better.

I mean, we've all grew up with the guy getting the box and open it up,

whether it's an RC car or a camera or FXR apart from us or whatever.

But there has to be some return in that, you know,

just like we always try to support the mom and pops deal stores like this

and supporting local businesses that you can actually,

instead of getting door dashed or whatever to actually go out and socialize with people.

Yeah.

You know, I think that's the thing that, you know, we're a lonely company trying to do that.

But that's has always been my dream for people to come in and meet Megan in person.

We always love socializing at events, whether it's Daytona or Sturgis.

And we've always said this, Megan said it says it all the time.

It's not about the sales, it's about meeting people, seeing Jace or seeing the FXR guys

at the Dyna Mixer and seeing Joe or going to Buffalo Chip at any show,

whether it's a chopper show or Maryland show, the Evo show, it's just the connection.

Sturgis is about connecting with people.

Yeah.

We do get on selling products, but it's meeting that customer for the first time in person,

you know, seeing his bike, you know, every day, two, three times a day,

someone's like, I just want to kind of bring it up and taking a picture with you.

You know, that's a deal.

I feel we'll have a customer for a while.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, just speaking on that, like the whole Sturgis, like the,

and this has been a type of conversation with a lot of, you know,

the Bob K's and the older guys in the generation, we were talking about it this weekend.

There's a version of Sturgis where I think maybe my generation will figure

out how to be a part of it because we can't afford to go do what Covington does.

Yes, exactly.

Or what, hell, I mean, I'm realistically, I don't, I can't afford to even go

set up at fucking the FXR show because that requires me to bring a truck,

trailer, now I need to have someone to put it.

Like, I only go to Sturgis every year because I sleep in the dirt.

Yeah, yeah.

And what I put on my bike is what I can take around, you know,

but also I don't sell products.

So there's not a point in me putting up a vendor space,

but there's a lot of brands that are trying to figure out how to,

how to like be present there because, I mean, you've been around long enough

to remember like it used to be like you, you walk down Lazel and there's brands

like the custom motorcycle brands everywhere, like right there.

And you can see all their bikes and then they kind of all went to the Iron

Horse because that was still there.

Now they're all kind of like, you know, blackheads hardly.

That's rare at performance row.

Yeah.

And the same with Daytona Daytona is a little bit different Sturgis

because Sturgis has, has this 85 years of history downtown Sturgis.

Yeah.

You know, and especially dealing with the people, you know,

one of my good friends is Iris Rich.

He tells me about the good old days when they kicked him out of Sturgis.

You know, he's got, you know, Iris Rich.

He's got a memory like an elf.

He tells all the stories and the people and probably even remembers

their license plate number.

You know, he tells about all these great fights between clubs

and city council and then Woody find the property and finding water

out there on all that land where he could have running water for bathrooms.

And it just the evolution of Sturgis is way different than Daytona.

But yeah, getting to fitting in selling product and still enjoying the ride.

Yeah.

As part of the, we just talked about this a couple of nights ago,

what we want to do this, this next season, 2026 Sturgis Daytona is definitely

we're going to try to do something once a month somewhere and set up

and sell parts and hopefully we can ride doing stuff,

whether the logistics of I drive one time and her and Cody drive bikes.

And then we kind of, you know, mix that interchange who's driving

and who's riding bike kind of deal.

But yeah, I really feel that you have to be out there.

I definitely have to say thank you for pushing me to go meet Rich

because that's been a great relationship and he's a solid dude.

You know, the first podcast did very well.

And then the second one I thought was a great podcast too,

but it's algorithm shit right now.

You know, you know, but man, he's got so like he took me down into the basement.

Sounds kind of weird saying it like that.

But we went down to the base of his house and he was showing me all these

old Mac, he gave me a couple old magazines that he was in from back in the day.

And and just to just actually besides just what he's been around,

he's fucking talented.

Like he's a talent.

He's a skilled dude, very clean, which is something I really admire about him.

He's got that kiss system.

Keep it simple, stupid, very, very classy, simple, simple, but very refined.

Simple, you know, he's not into the, you know, not to take anything

one from a nice paint job.

And so he's got nice paint jobs and stuff, but he's a he's a crafter.

He can take a hacksaw and a drill press and three different sizes

of fucking drills and freaking figure it out.

You know, he comes, he's old school, but he's super educated.

I mean, he was just he was he's brought a lot of articles.

Him and Keith Ball are best friends.

He's done a lot of stuff for Easy Rider, which I'm glad that's coming by.

Yeah, I think he's been a big help with what is it?

Not Frank Ball, but is that Keith Ball?

Yeah, which I've we've been we've been talking for two years now

about doing a podcast that I finally got to meet him with Rich this year.

Yeah.

And I've obviously I've already met his grandson and got to do a podcast with him.

So yeah, her killing it out there in LA with that five ball stuff.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, he's good vibes.

That Hellraiser show they put on seems like that's one show that I see

that happens that I feel like I legit have FOMO.

Like I feel like I just missed something that's kind of in its inception.

It's it's a really bad ass gig, you know.

Yeah, Keith has a really neat one.

I told you about Rich's blog.

Keith's got a blog to old school type of a set up kind of like

Chopper Dogs type deal with technical support.

And a lot of people know that I forgot to mention that to you.

I mean, if putting mirrors on to put an open belt on a shovel.

Is it the biker net? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a big deal. Bandit.

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When I did the Ramjet podcast earlier this year, Tony.

Yeah, we set a similar setup.

And I never hit record on the camera, but we had the audio.

So we did an hour and a half, no nothing.

Well, I had the audio, but I was trying to get the video aspect for it.

So doing the single camera setup, I don't have like the computer

and all the stuff right here to look at.

Yeah, to make sure it's on.

And this fucker don't have a light on the front of it to let you know it's recording.

Recording, yeah.

You know, so I don't know. It's all good, though.

Yeah.

But yeah, Keith, I mean, I think it's that, you know,

like Easy Rider, like I I feel like I'm preaching to just a dying thing

because I love magazines and I mean, I love podcasts.

I love everything that's going on.

But the thing is that, like, you know, how do how do how do we keep these things alive?

I don't know. I mean, I got a shout out to Chris and Heather from CycleSource.

Yeah, they've kept it alive and they're passionate about it.

I mean, it is the technology that seems is gone, but we're in CycleSource this month.

I love magazines.

I love watching just Jesse Ripps.

Russ Ripps is into this this month, too.

And I love the history of that.

So it's paper, just kind of like people coming in and putting a sense in Hellman.

I love showing people the paper and it's a big deal.

There was nothing more prestigious just 20 years ago of being in a magazine.

Yeah.

That was the pinnacle of building a motorcycle.

Yeah.

But now you and me, we can look at Instagram and look at everyone's bad ass bike.

And it's kind of like we're over it in five seconds.

And I've mentioned this to other people that have magazines as well.

And and because the argument is, well, you could easily see everything on Instagram.

It's like, yes and no, right?

The way you photograph something and the story you tell in the magazine with intent.

Yes.

Is what you can give somebody that they don't have.

Yeah.

Yeah, the bike might already be shown and be pictures of it.

But if you do real photography and go shoot it and you go spend time with that person,

I just catch in 400 people at a bike rally and go sit down,

write a real article about this that's interesting.

And that's what we did.

Missy that did our photoshoot, Megan went with me and Cody and Megan was just amazed.

We were there maybe an hour, Megan, something like that.

And she learned so much just the way she stabilized her camera and her angles and stuff.

And Megan was 20 question.

And Missy was just so, you know, so that she learned from Lictor.

That's who she studied under, right?

She was an understatement for him for two or three years.

So she learned from the best, obviously, you know.

And she's the next generation.

She's a motorcycle enthusiast and she picked the,

we kind of had an idea where we wanted to do at the reservoir 30 or 40 miles.

We were north of Sturgis then.

And we're the cabins were just a mile away.

And we went there one night and Bullshit talked.

And we suggested that and she put us on the other side of the lake.

And it was just picturesque.

It was really pretty.

And we learned a lot from here, from her.

And again, Chris and Heather have got the passion for that paper.

It's just something different that we sit here on this ottoman and just have it out.

Just like I was sure it's giving you this, it's history.

And it's paper and you can exchange instead of phones that are only one inch by three inches,

you know, six, nine inches by 11, you know, it's just good stuff.

When a lot of people come and they stay at my house, like,

if the vibe's right, they will end up sitting on the couch just like this.

And I got music on and they're looking at all my,

because I've over the last three years, I've collected a lot of books,

photography books, especially in the motorcycle world.

And it's like, there's two places I go for inspiration out.

Because Instagram's kind of, you have to look really hard to find it.

Because it's overwhelmed with shit that I never chose to follow.

Me either.

But I stay on Pinterest a lot now.

Yeah, me too.

And then my old books, man, like when I'm like not finding it digitally,

there's flipping open a book I've seen a hundred times,

you see it as something different.

You know, it's like when you watch a movie,

you really like over and over again,

you start to notice other little nuanced things.

And that's going to be the kind of vibe here.

We're going to have a lot of old magazines and stuff.

And then we'll have a lot of art, modern art and old art.

We're going to do a lot of Victorian stuff up here.

But we talked to Darren from Des Moines.

We went to a show up in St. Louis and we sat with him.

We bought some of the small art, which is super colorful.

So we'll have it down on our mezzanine,

which will be mid-century modern and stuff.

So the aesthetics of just art, like Missy took pictures of our bike.

And like, as you know, photography is art.

It's a big freaking deal.

I've been telling all the diverse stuff.

Print, go print the shit and look at,

when you print something and it's, you know, 24 by 36 or something,

like it changes your like your connection to that motorcycle image or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and that's, it's something I want to push

because I don't want it to die.

You know, I just don't want it to die.

Yeah, well, I mean, what is it?

Gen Z is getting into the 90s shit right now.

So like deftones are coming back.

Well, they never went away from me, but you know, so my son who's 15

wants a film camera for Christmas.

So possibly there's hope.

But I mean, it goes, it all trends back to like what we're talking about.

Like if you can just buy everything online,

then some people might not ever get the real experience

of what it's like to go see something on the shelf and want it

and then like figure out how to get the money to get it.

Or like there's something, I don't know.

Well, it's, it's kind of the deal that I'm in the old 60s, 70s, 80s.

I go to vinyl records.

I love the album covers, which is art.

And then the music itself, listen to vinyl versus

something over your Instagram on Shopify or Spotify.

That's what we're going to have downstairs.

We're going to have an old turntable with JBL speakers

and Kenwood or a Macintosh amp.

I want all that stuff to survive in this building

so people can appreciate it.

Some people like, I remember showing some kid this album

and said, what is that?

He didn't even know what a fricking album was.

You know, like, what is that?

He's like, really?

Now I was wearing a jacket the other day

and it was a denim jacket.

He goes, what's with the jacket made out of jeans?

What is that about?

I was like, really?

Yeah.

I don't even get it.

Or an old phone.

It was pretty crazy.

Yeah, just the old hang up, pick it up.

I haven't seen like a home phone in a minute.

Yeah.

Every once in a while, I'll be somewhere,

I'll see a commercial on TV.

I don't ever see commercials anymore

because I don't watch a lot of TV in general.

But if I do, I'm on like Amazon or Netflix

or something like that.

YouTube mainly.

So it's like, I watch,

I see commercials on regular TV now,

like the way you would see Super Bowl commercials.

Oh, shit, like, I'm interested.

I haven't seen any of these in a while.

Usually you're fast forwarding this stuff, you know?

But how's, like, just with the business of, like,

what you guys have been creating

over the last couple of years,

obviously the swing arms,

you swept the entire industry and pretty much covered

all the models that needed to be covered

and you have that out there.

Like, what's next or what's left?

Or how do you evolve that?

Or how are you planning?

I won't talk about much

because we've got a whole bunch of new parts

coming out around Daytona in March.

So just stay tuned for that.

We're kicking the door down on a bunch of stuff.

So it'll be really cool.

And the big thing about our new products

that all be, since we anodize in-house,

everything will come out the same color.

Yeah.

So whether all these products that we're going to announce,

so if you order that with a swing arm

or all of the other components,

it's going to be in one, one lot.

Oh, match, yeah.

So it'll be all red.

It's the same red as your swing arm.

Yeah.

All these new products.

And it's going to be a big deal for sure.

Nice.

Yeah, I've noticed,

I've noticed not to throw shade at anybody or anything,

but I've noticed a lot of people's packaging

has stepped up over the-

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we-

Definitely set a trend with better packaging.

We, there's two stories with that.

The story of it that we did it anyway,

and John Jessup and Brian from Clockworks,

like that, that's just ingenious.

And there's one particular girl,

she knows who she is,

and she bought a swing arm and stuff.

She's, I love your swing arm so much,

I put it up my headboard.

So that way when I'm doing my boyfriend,

I can do it because I'm looking at your box,

you know, like stuff like that.

Yeah, that's different, but-

Yeah, yeah, I thought so too.

But yeah, the response is too,

is like I bought a $2,500 box,

and I got a free swing arm with it, you know?

Everyone hangs it up in their garage.

Yeah.

A couple of the ladies that bought them,

and one's wife puts it in their living room, you know?

So it's pretty cool.

And we're really getting good.

Billy, one of my best friends,

he just lives up the road and does it for him.

He's got certain logos,

and Megan real works real hard to get the people's logo,

and we size it and stuff.

So we're really getting really good at the custom logo stuff too.

Yeah, that's cool.

We sell them all over the world,

Japan, Australia, Germany,

and to Harley dealerships,

which is becoming a really big deal.

Nice.

Yeah.

The, yeah, like I said,

they've just kind of definitely made the mark.

You were doing the sub frames too

on the baggage for quite a while.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, and that basically like eliminates that lower rail,

basically, and you have the prongs on the bags.

Yeah, we have hangers for the bags,

so it eliminates the bag support on the bottom.

Yeah.

All in all, Megan, what is it?

13 pounds just on the sub frame savings?

One minute, yes.

Yeah.

And then it's almost 30 pounds

if you get a swing arm and a sub frame.

And then we came out with a soft tail fender struts,

and we got some more soft tail parts coming out,

which is going to be super exciting for the soft,

soft tail guys.

I'm excited about the soft tail line.

I was actually talking to some people from Harley

at this show this past weekend,

and I really, you know, I do want to get another

newer modern bike again next year,

and I really don't know what I want to do,

because the ST, like I feel like I didn't really get

a chance to enjoy the one I had long enough,

and then the new roadblood,

I haven't even had a chance to touch that yet,

so I'm torn because I don't know which one I want to do,

and the soft tail thing, like I feel like it was like,

now that I'm used to much smaller bikes right now,

it's a nice step up versus the road glide,

which I'm very familiar with over the years,

is just like, I don't know, I'm really lost.

Well, I've fallen, Megan and Cody.

Cody's got a big road glide,

and Megan's got a soft tail and stuff,

and it fits her well.

We rode the floor together and stirred us together,

all three of us and stuff,

and Megan, she could ride as good as 99% of the guys out there

and see how she proportioned for a shorter person

and a female fits that ST.

I mean, it's just proportionally a nice fit for her.

And she sits on Cody's road glide,

it just looks a little bit too big for her,

and it's probably another 225 pounds heavier or something like that,

and it accelerates hard with her.

She can outrun most guys, I mean,

it's just a variant.

She just got a pipe and a Cam, a 30-30 Cam.

That thing freaking runs, dude.

I mean, it freaking hauls ass.

I mean, it's really impressive with $2,000 of pipe,

but you got a Thundermax tuner too.

Yeah, I mean, that freaking thing.

That's all they need, and when you, you know,

Cam pipe tuner, they open up, you know.

Oh, they do, it's enough.

It's got to be popping 125, 130 horsepower,

something like that.

That was kind of my argument of like maybe,

because the new like low rider ST and everything

has that high output motor.

Yes.

And that with a Cam, and basically the same setup I did

on my other ST, you know, injectors, Cam, computer,

you know, air cleaner exhaust, that stuff.

It's like, I was at like almost 130 horsepower on the other one.

That's what I'm saying, yeah.

And this one's supposed to give you more.

And 200 horsepower, 200 pounds lighter.

Yeah.

Approximately, I don't know the numbers,

but it's considerably lighter, you know.

See, I haven't had any, I haven't had a bike with gauges at all,

like nothing.

Yeah, I know, yeah.

And so I'm actually, a lot of people would ask me about,

I was like, how do you, how do you ride all the country?

And I was like, man, like, you know, you just know,

like when you stop at a gas station

and you're going in a straight line to someplace

or whatever, like you just figure out what,

I can do 130 on this tank.

Yeah.

I'm going to find something between 90 and 120.

Exactly.

You know, you know, the speed, you know,

like usually if it's somewhere where I really need to be on it,

like, you know, you Google maps or whatever it says

you how fast you're going.

Yeah.

But for the most part, man, like if you're not hauling

ass past every car, you're not going to get fucked

with a lot of cars, you know.

I got pulled over in Sturgis this year.

Really?

I was going out towards Buffalo Chip,

coming out of the little canyon.

Yeah.

And I didn't, you know, obviously didn't know

how fast I was going, but I was just not going

around anybody just putting along,

but got pulled over for doing like, I don't know,

five or 10 over.

You let me go.

I was like, yeah, I didn't know how fast I was going.

Yeah.

But, you know, it's just one of those deals,

but I like the fact that there's nothing,

I'm just engaged in the road.

I totally agree.

I watch Mospedo a little bit,

but usually I'm traveling between 80 and 85

just all the time.

Yeah.

And that's good enough on an FXR in 84,

not that it's not capable of doing 115

on a cruise like that.

But there are some times you just need

to enjoy what you're seeing, you know,

that way you can look at the mountain ranger,

the sun setter, and keep tabs on the traffic around you.

I don't freak around when I'm near a truck or a car.

I've always passed everybody.

I'm not hanging around any car.

Anyone's done this a little bit, knows all that.

But I'm like you, I just judge my speed in my mood

and where I need to be for sure, you know.

But there ain't nothing like riding a 84 FXR

and people just stopping.

It was like thinking it's a new bike.

Yeah.

You know, like anyone that's not knowledgeable,

you pull up on your FXR like that.

That looks like, is that the new 2025,

something dyna or something?

You know.

But it's the sports question a lot.

Yeah.

But the FXR just finished, man.

I had a completely built, not huge,

but just a polished motor, like poured polished motor heads.

The guy that built it, Russell's like really good.

He does nitro bikes.

So he has little tricks he does to the rods

and everything.

Perfectly balanced.

And I'll tell you what, it's one of the best feeling EVO.

Yeah.

80 inch EVO.

I love it.

It feels so good.

I don't do anything but EVOs and FXR just like that.

I do new SNS motors, but I just like the aesthetics

of an EVO and an FXR.

I ain't got nothing against twin cams or M8s

and anything like that.

But there's nothing wrong with a good built EVO.

Yeah.

I can ride 80,000 miles on that motor

if I change oil regulation and stuff.

And it's still, my 111 still puts out 120 horsepower

on a light FXR.

It's insane.

If we drag race, it's going to be like,

who's going to be revving 200 extra RPM on that race?

Yeah.

So I love EVO motors.

But again, if you ride Megan's soft tail

plus Megan's soft tail is balanced.

It's internally balanced.

So that bike on any soft tail,

it pulls with no vibration in the handlebars.

It just feels like a sport bike if you ride a soft tail.

It's a balanced motor.

A lot of people don't know that.

But it's got solid motor mounts,

where the M8 and the baggers still got isolated rubber and stuff.

That was the first thing that,

like I had a hard time going from the roguelite to the ST

because you do feel it more in your handlebars.

Yes.

It's just because of the hard mount, right?

Yeah.

But I quickly got used to it.

And I always run grips that have some kind of rubber in it.

Yeah.

You know, like some PM or something like that.

But yeah, that was the only thing

it took me a while to get used to.

Yeah.

You know, like now the shovelhead chopper, like.

Oh, God, yeah.

That, I rode it for the first time this weekend.

And that actually, that was a different experience.

Yeah.

In a very positive way.

Even though it makes no fucking sense when I tell people.

I know.

I never even got it to the show.

I took my other two bikes because the morning of the show,

it didn't want to start.

Yeah.

And I kicked it for about 20 minutes and said,

fuck this, I just left it at the Airbnb.

Yeah.

You know?

But I still, I'm still breaking it in and getting,

getting everything done.

Every motor has got its own technique.

Yeah.

Whether you want to squirt the, squirt it one time

or a quarter of time, then kick it through twice.

And that motor will tell you what it likes.

And I haven't had enough times to figure out it's.

And it's got its own feel.

Yeah.

And you'll, it's, it's a conversation between you and it.

Yeah.

And it'll tell you when you get it right.

And you better get it right.

Yeah.

The first night, I actually rode it like, you know,

you know, the first ride always is.

Oh, yeah.

It's a trouble, just nervous.

You're just, you're so in tune with everything.

Do you hear crickets?

And I did this little loop around my house, man.

And the sun was setting and I was just like,

this is different.

It's like I don't want a whole ass.

No, that's what I'm saying.

You don't need to, dude.

That, that's, that's my biggest contradiction to

my brand and me.

I feel like I'm going to have to do a rebrand,

like called Slow Lack Garage now or some shit.

But, but it's just like everything that I enjoy right

now is a cruise.

Yeah.

That's what I'm saying.

Like you were saying, like going to these beautiful places,

it feels good to just kind of step back a little bit,

especially with photography.

Yeah.

And I think I was eluding this whenever I came,

we had lunch last summer.

Yeah.

I was like, man, like if I'm just tunnel visioned in it,

everywhere I go, like I'm never going to stop

and go take a picture of that scenery or that area

or whatever.

And that was the point of this,

going this direction is to slow down.

Yeah.

At 90 mile an hours plus,

you're just looking at the highway 20 feet in front of you.

Yeah, and looking at cops.

Yeah.

You're looking everywhere.

But yeah, that, I like that 80, 85 and sometimes slower

because now I'm understanding about the,

the photography part of it, you know,

and learning from her on social media deal.

I trust her completely on all her social media that.

But when I review it, I see her aspect of writing

or a sunset or the sun coming through the

present glass in the front.

It's just, you just slow down and enjoy your surroundings.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's been a big thing for us.

Like you have said it a lot, but basically whenever me and

Jaden were spent a month on the road together,

we were riding down San Diego going to meet some guys

the next day to do a podcast.

And like we just, I saw everybody driving their car

to just go watch the sunset on the, on the coast.

Exactly.

I was like, man, like that, that was the intentional,

hey, let's go, let's go run to the beach real quick

and watch the sunset.

Exactly, yeah.

How many times, I mean, there was a meme about it,

I think once where it's like, you go to this famous place

in the sunset, it's like blah, and then you're like,

in the grocery store parking lot coming out of the,

you know, the grocery store, it's like a fucking majestic.

That's where it was here Saturday night.

There's a place I love going to Hawaii all the time.

It's called Sunset Beach.

It's on North Shore, Oahu.

And people would just go up there.

It's pretty, it's a big high-end

surfing spot for sure, but about a half hour before sunset

and the sunset's real fast because of the way the horizon

so far away from Hawaii.

So the bottom of the sun hits the horizon.

It's literally 35 seconds till the sun's almost gone

or two minutes or something.

But people just gather there just to watch the sunset,

hundreds and hundreds of people, you know?

That's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's definitely like just over my eyes.

You just, like photography helps you kind of like

see the world differently.

Yeah, yeah.

And you know, I think you're searching a little bit more

or just trying to be aware.

You're looking for that moment.

Yeah.

But I've been stuck in a shop trying to be a bike builder

for the last four months.

So I've barely used my camera

and I've been really wanting to get

re-inspired with it somehow.

So I'm hoping this trip, I was planning on riding,

driving my van on this trip.

Yeah.

And it's, I haven't had the money or the time to do the LS

swap on it that I wanted to do.

Yeah.

And I just don't trust an old TBI motor

exactly to go a thousand plus miles.

And it's like, if I take it, it was this last minute

decision to not take it.

But I was like, man, I got all, every, every,

I have two podcasts a day.

Yeah.

Plus a 700 mile drive in between the two of them.

Yeah.

So, and then tomorrow I have a podcast.

They're actually two tomorrow.

And then every day there's a podcast.

So it's like, if I, if I'm fucking around this van,

not getting to the next destination,

it's, it'll make this trip a bust.

You know what I mean?

Well, it kind of, it's kind of like the

problematic of any old car or bike, Porsche or whatever.

They're all problematic.

Yeah.

That problem's just going to rise older and gets,

whether it's the coils or a spark plug

or the fuse box or whatever.

That's why I say, the purest on the FXR deal,

well, they can just, you know, shut up about it.

Because we're going to build retro rods.

It's going to have NAS wiring harness or modal gadget

with an SNS 111 and stuff like that.

It's still going to look old.

Your van, what is it, 79 or 80?

It's a 95.

So it's that TBI fuel injection.

Yeah.

So it's, it's got the look of old school,

but it's pretty fuck.

It's fuel injection.

Yeah.

AC, all that shit.

But if you put an LS swap in it, you know,

and an update transmission and update the wiring harness,

no one's going to know it's going to be non-problematic.

Exactly.

You know, you'll be able to drive it 50,000 miles.

My wife and I, you know, my wife's getting better

at driving it herself because you can't see it.

Oh, you can't do that.

And every day we're like, man,

we should have just got a Sprinter van.

Yeah.

But I keep telling everybody that like,

man, the thing is that me and my wife will go

and cruise the van.

Yes.

We'll jump in it and go ride down to the cruise spot

in Dallas and go have lunch and we'll do that

in the van.

But if it was a Sprinter van,

like, we won't take that big ass thing down there.

Well, yeah, especially as a talent of yours in paint,

if you put some period correct paint flames on it

from the 60s, 70s and go to the bottoms down there

in Kansas City, there's photo ops and there's a story.

It's cooler to go to California in 95 band

and sleeping in camp and then an air conditioned,

you know, air ride beds and stuff.

So the choppers, like I have a 49 inch opening.

Yeah.

So I made sure the chopper bars like could go into it.

Yeah.

And it's so narrow that you can kind of push it to the side

of the van.

Yeah.

And still have plenty of space to sleep on the side of it.

Well, back in the day, I'm still in the Yamaha dirt bikes.

They had a van.

Oh, I think I remember that one.

The Yamaha hauler.

And it was yellow with the black and white.

Yeah.

So that was a, that's growing up in motocross,

those vans.

And one of my good friends, Gary Gray,

he was the president of the Van Handlers van club.

You know, with the big murals on the side and all that stuff.

So that was a big deal when I was growing up.

The vans were all the shag carpeting and the water beds.

And we just said this the other day, a couple of months,

the van be rocking, don't be knocking.

There was that whole keep on trucking type deal back in the day.

That's a whole nother culture.

I've tried not to get into the culture of it

because there is like clubs and stuff in Dallas.

And as much as I liked the van,

as much as I would probably want to nerd out

and I just, I don't have the attention span

to be a part of another subculture.

Because then you guys travel.

I mean, like, it's kind of like being an emcee.

Like, we're going to go travel with our vans every month

if you don't want to be part of the deal, then you're out.

You know, it's, they're, they're passionate

about whatever they're in, especially the van guys.

Yeah, it's a, if I were to drill the van up here,

I would have had something to use in like,

when I do go, I'm coming through Kansas City on the way home.

And, you know, I had some to take a picture of in this space, right?

I'm not really one to be good at like,

like architecture, even though I like to shoot it for just,

oh, this, I think this is cool.

Problem is it all looks good.

Yeah.

And you're like, I don't know if this is like good or not

because that's that, that view is sick

and everybody else sees it.

So I'm like, well, this can't be like a thing.

This photo can't be like some badass thing.

It's like, it's everybody, everybody's got this photo right now.

So at least that's my overthinking way of going about it.

But yeah, the, the, the one thing I've been super,

just all about like, all I think about now is machining,

like getting a lathe, not so much, I haven't got to the point.

Me and Corey talk about this a lot, like the bridge port,

you know, the mill, like I haven't, I haven't had a,

like since the last two bikes we built, the mill has been more

something like, I could probably get away with like a drill press.

Yeah.

You know, but the lathe, it's like, God damn dude,

if that's not something that has been used so much for the last two years

on bikes that we've been doing.

Yeah.

And it's like the ones I want are like the old ones.

Yeah, that's all I got.

All my lathe, my bridge port was built in the 40s.

My lathe was built in the early 70s.

They built stuff good back then.

Some of the bridge ports, the old round rams,

they're not as good as the J heads they call them,

which are probably the 60s and 70s.

But, you know, the more you get into the custom deal

and building your own wheels or tree, triple trees

and stuff like that, a bridge port will become more in fact.

But the lathe is making little spacers and bushings

and stuff like that, anything that's round.

It's a tool that you have to have, you know,

even if it's a little bitty mini lathe.

Yeah.

That's kind of one of the deals where I could probably get away

with the mini lathe, but like I'm trying to hold out

and just get like something big enough.

If you're going to spend $1,800 on mini lathe,

just wait and have $4,000 and that way you have something

that's got 15-inch swing with maybe a gap lathe

so you can put a wheel in there.

And you can get a good lathe between $4,000 and $5,000 that'll do

everything you'll ever need to do for the rest of your life.

Yeah, that's the hope.

Yeah.

Just the whole bug of fabricating and getting down in there

and it's really, it's hard not to just want to go down that path.

And the problem is that even building this last chopper,

there's so many little things that a lathe is required.

All these skills that I know that you guys and your peers,

just you had to, this is how you had to do it.

I mean like the product line that you have,

I mean just all the spacers, like the whole kit.

Yeah.

Like those kind of things are like real helpful for a guy like me

that doesn't have a lathe because then we can kind of figure it out

and then you know, but then again if I just had a lathe.

Yeah, I get it because that's, if you're building custom bikes,

that's what's custom.

Even if they're manufactured parts and we try to manufacture

to everyone's requirements, but we ran into a deal,

a guy bought a special hub for his wheel.

Yeah.

Which is 3-inch thicker than a regular brick and hub

from anybody else.

So we had to machine some stuff for him.

Yeah.

It's custom, baby.

Get used to it.

It's not OCC stuff.

It's, you know, West Coast chopper,

you're going to have to build it yourself somehow.

Yeah.

And they get a little bit pissy about it,

but it is what it is.

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Located in South Austin, Cowboy Harley Davidson

has become a hub for killer events and provides a place

for the motorcycle community to call home.

Cowboy Harley has something for you every weekend of the month.

On the first Saturday, they will host

the cars and copy style meet and hang.

Then on the second Saturday, it's Ink and Iron,

a local artist show where tattooers, painters,

pinstripers and all artists are welcome

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No, it makes sense.

That's probably the next move, I mean for sure.

The only problem is I do enjoy the time

I get to spend with Corey at his house.

It's a drive, but he's very patient

and he takes the time to show me this and why.

He's like, don't ever do this.

He's a good teacher.

Yeah, he's very patient in that regard.

It's like I haven't physically touched the lathe yet,

but I've seen it work so much.

It's kind of like once I get one,

I feel like I'll be so familiar with it already.

You know the mechanisms and understanding everything.

And he's already got me kind of like schooled me on the brand.

I actually just had to order him from this guy on Marketplace

so he's supposed to be shipping them,

but some old steric calipers.

He's like, go find the old tools, the old machinist tools.

And you're going to save a lot of money

than if you go buy brand new stuff,

but all manual stuff.

Depth mics, I have a pair of depth mics

on my guys work in the main manufacturing part of them.

They got all digital.

So they always, batteries last like six months

and they got to get into batteries.

And I got my old just hard school stare depth mics

and they changed my stems.

And I got, I got a pair of Vernier calipers,

which is the generation four dollar calipers.

And anyone that comes in my shop

and sees my digital calipers, they take them.

Johnny Ray takes them all the time.

And then they never take my Vernier calipers

because they can't read damn things, you know,

because it's kind of lined it up and stuff like that.

So that's always where I leave them.

No one ever takes that stuff.

So the old school stuff is really cool.

Yeah. When I went and did the podcast

with Cody Childress a couple of months back

and I got to see his, his tools and I was like,

damn dude, I've known Cody for so long.

I've known him too.

And I never knew that he, and this is no dig at him at all.

But I just didn't know he was like that.

He's talented.

Talented, you know, and I feel bad.

I just thought he was a real dapper man, you know,

the style, you know, but all the fat work

he was doing on that bike and, you know,

he did well at Born Free.

He got the San Diego Customs pick on that thing.

And, you know, I'm just so happy for him,

like getting that bike done.

I've known Cody now for almost two and a half decades.

Bring this story up.

We were all chopper dogs back in the day, you know.

And he's his own worst critic.

He does.

And I've been, I love him

and I'm always brutally honest with him,

how good he is, but he just needs to get over that.

He's a very talented.

He's just, he's in the upper peer.

He's just as good as Jesse or Billy or any of them guys.

He's a capable man.

He's going to build some very legendary motorcycles, for sure.

Now he's just getting started.

He's just now got his game.

He's got his confidence now.

The only thing that holds any of us back

is the time in the capital.

Because we talked about that.

That's an expensive bike to build, you know,

in the time, you know, the thousands of hours

and then the redos, like, okay, that didn't work out.

So God dang, but we've all learned that.

If it don't fit, stop, just throw it in the trash.

And that's hard to do sometimes.

But he's raised the bar on that bike.

You know, I've built some really nice FXRs.

And every one of us go to that plateau

that Cody's put the notch on the high jump

just a little bit higher.

I never even noticed this on his bike at Born Free.

But then I was watching like a Born Free recap video

and someone he had pointed out,

he has a skid plate on the bottom of it.

It's all like billet and has some stuff done to it.

So I don't know, I think that there's,

it goes back to like what you're doing here

with the building.

It's finding ways to use the different techniques

from doing building, like doing billet stuff,

to then finding a way to do some more hand form things

and blending everything together

to have like something that just really cohesively works

together.

Yeah.

You know.

And yeah, his bike came out bitching and you know,

are you, you're supposed to be having an FXR chopper.

Is this thing going to?

Yeah, it's going to.

That's, yeah.

We got one other bike to build from then.

It'll, it's going to be.

Yeah.

It's going to be about that.

I think Booster Brad's doing one too.

I think Cody Childress is doing a frame for him.

Mm-hmm.

And then you and,

you're just going to have like a chopper dog,

FXR.

Exactly.

Like a chopper group.

Yeah.

Dude, they ride bitching, man.

You have the look.

It's tough as hell.

And you still have suspension in your swing arm

and ways to put the performance into it.

You know.

Yeah.

That's the thing that we were all raised on that West Coast chopper look

and we still do that, you know, just like Williams built his tank

and the chopper dog.

We, we were raised with that look

and we were passionate about that in the early 20s

and that's how we kind of do our own twist on it, you know.

Yeah.

For sure.

I'm like, I can't wait to get my FXR West Coast chopper look.

What's the next build?

Bagger.

Lightest bagger ever built.

Okay.

What year?

Brand new.

That's a brand new one.

So you are R&D'ing for different stuff on that bike.

You don't have to talk about the products.

Yeah.

But is that what we're going to be looking for?

Yeah.

For nice.

Yeah.

It'll be the lightest bagger ever built.

Nice.

It's on frame.

Yeah.

That's super, the frame's done.

Yeah.

That'll be rad.

All carbon?

Yeah, all carbon, chrome molly frame.

Frame's 40 pounds lighter than the stock frame.

Goddamn.

Yeah.

We're going to have to weigh down the front end somehow.

Yeah.

We're going to do everything that's done except figuring out the front end.

If we got to build titanium triple trees to get under 550, that's what we'll do.

Yeah.

It's going to be a deal.

And you can get titanium like, blocked?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

We do a lot of aerospace stuff in titanium.

You can get titanium in nine inch thick, four foot by four foot.

How is it machining titanium?

Like, you know how staying this is a much harder steel?

Yeah.

Is titanium a hard steel?

Yeah.

For instance, like if you're machining aluminum, there's a certain rating material,

surface feed per minute, how much material can move.

So aluminum is around 400 to 500, sometimes 800 surface feed.

You can remove material.

Stainless steel with carbon or carbide tooling is around 200 to 225.

And then you get to titanium, it's only probably 130 surface feed.

So you have to machine it slow.

You can remove a lot of metal, but it's going to be 20 times slower than machine

and aluminum.

But it's going to be the strength of steel.

And you can get down to unbelievable wall thicknesses and still be,

it's as strong as, oh it's rigid.

It's everything in a fighter plane is made out of titanium.

Just like we're getting into titanium bolts.

Every hanger, every landing gear, every freaking switch on an F1 or F16 or a new fighter is titanium.

So it's super lightweight, super strong for a structural and the integrity and the

lightweightness.

There's no other material that is like titanium, for sure.

That'd be pretty crazy.

It's going to be crazy.

We already got our wheels and stuff, that's all done.

One pound lighter than carbon fiber wheels.

It's just as strong.

It's going to be a fucking deal.

Yeah, like you said, you're going to have a hard time keeping that front end down that

thing.

We'll figure it out.

Yeah, we got the best motor builder.

Mike at A1 Cycle has built our motor for it.

It's a normally aspirated 128, it's 165 horsepower.

Damn, yeah.

And how much weight are you shaving off of it?

So you're trying to be under 500, so what?

We're going to be between 500 and 550.

So the regular full dresser bagger weighs about 880, 890.

So it'll be 350 pounds.

It's like this weight of a Hayabusa, basically.

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah, that's going to be insane.

Still like fully functional, all the stuff's still there.

We're going to ride it to Daytona, and we're going to ride it to Sturgis.

It'll be full bags, better camping gear in that, and go.

Nice.

Yeah, that's the only thing that was holding me back from getting another road glide is

I don't know how much I'm ready for that much information on the screen.

You know what I mean?

Because I think it's a better design overall.

Like I think it's perfect.

But going from nothing to then like that much is just kind of a lot.

Jeff from NAMM is helping us with all the wiring.

The wiring harness is done, the gauges is done.

Minimalistic, enough information on one deal.

We already got the chrome molly fairing supports done.

The instrumentation is something that we needed.

We want to prove that a bike like this can be built and ridden hard

and still have all the modern technology.

Minimalize something like the MotoGP bikes and stuff like that.

Super lightweight, and we'll have a MotoGP gear pattern instead.

It'll be a reverse gear pattern.

We already got that figured out.

How much do you think like with the RR coming out and then people being able to see

like playing his day like the R&D that's gone into like the race bikes and

you think that affects like some of the direction you might take on some of your design work because

we're going to up the I get that but as you and me know anything that doesn't have

mid controls or rear sets to us really in a race bike yeah something with

not forward controls but not mid controls and doesn't have the ground clearance to

have someone like Cody Haggard or Rusty Lee or any of the

performance biker guys that you know to go down to Arkansas and lean that thing

any harder than Megan can lean her raised up low rider there's that that's that's a sales pitch

it's a limited deal whether it's a Porsche or a Corvette that's 133 bikes you're not going to

see that tearing up pig trail in Arkansas yeah it's not a me and you we're educated on that

that thing needs to be five inches taller for 130 grand we can build two nice bikes without

performing yeah it's just uh not that I would buy one for some kind of investment but I wish I had an

82 XR750 you know flat track bike that springsteen went on that would be worth some money but

I think it's just someone that says I own one yeah they're not going to ride it

it's got some neat stuff on it that inspires me but other stuff on it just disappoints me

badly if I think I'm just as educated as anyone that builds bikes like I get it but I can build a

bike not to brag something twice as good as to have the price yeah and perform and that's kind of

what we're trying to do for sure now that's that's interesting I you know as someone has written

I've written with three different brands and make controls on my bagger and yeah essentially the

the FXR chopper is a bagger yeah train drive training I got boosted brad's mids on that one

and of all of them I would say that brad's mids have been the most

like worry-free yeah consistent shifting not not binding your all kinds of oiling and stuff

like that yeah but they're still kind of traditional like plate metal versus like

something newer that's got the billet kind of edge to it stay tuned yeah okay

would assume that we were going that direction on some things yeah but um yeah it's like one of

those things where you look at these road glides and it's like you I feel like if you ride them

and this is just like a hypothetical idea that I have in my head I don't know if it's actually

factual but like when you're riding a bike like these then you can start to figure out what you

can change as opposed to if you just park one in the shop and look at it for 15 minutes go we

could make that out of billet we can do that out of billet yeah so if you ride you like you

know these like the first thing I noticed when I rode my low rider st was I felt like the bar

for further away from the seat they are then my bagger was yes and I'm like man if the trees

just had options to get the bars back further yeah that would make me more where I want to be instead

of like this and right you know and the first thing I noticed on because I want to is the pegs

are probably an inch and a half higher up which is short legged person no no disrespect

but a long legged guy with me with a 33 inch inseam like dang man my upper leg is not parallel

no more it's like two inches up my big muscle starts cramping almost immediately you know

so there's a lot of stuff but Megan she's not tall girl either she's not a short girl

it fits her perfect yeah you know because her inseam is not 33 inches but yeah there's

there's a lot of stuff that we're going to fine tune and with Megan's bike and my bike to make it

a little bit more long distance comfortable you know that her we moved her bars back two inches

and she really liked that and her pegs need to be dropped down just a little bit but she's

super aggressive for a girl and she scraped in the dragon did you scrape your pegs in the

tail of the dragon here yeah so we can't really lower her pegs much more higher she needs them a

little bit higher but she's got enough short notes on her legs it's not going to be comfortable but

she rides long distance too like she rode to Yellowstone and she rode to Sturgis and stuff so

she does long in Cody her husband so I mean she got to be badass to ride up with him because

he don't freak around I mean he's doing 110 and I rode behind him Sturgis when we stayed

up to this last Sturgis with Matt he rode his old clapper dyna which is not a real clapper dyna

but it's an early model dyna and that boy can you know he can ride you know and that's the way

you have to set up your product between the non-aggressive riders and aggressive riders you

know so that's that's always looking at product to see who can prove it but there's always a

point that if you raise it too high there's comfortable and there's aesthetics and all that

stuff yeah but me aesthetically like I'd I just have a hard time looking at bikes that are so jacked

up you can see through every I was like aesthetically now obviously it's like Steve Chamberlain's

bike you know he needs it that high to do that yeah but I mean I I have no desire to be

that aggressive on the road yeah yeah I don't know man like I I'm traditionally like a low guy

like I like lowered vehicles and lower things yeah but I found it without lowering bikes if

you do the 1821 kind of setup you get that up yeah it's a taller look even though it's still

all tucked and everything and I like that look more yeah that's kind of what we are in the

back of it we just modified our race version of our swing arm because we've got guys putting

15 to 17 inch shocks there's a whole bunch of customer base guys now that are just getting

into the the performance bagger deal and they just want that ground clearance so our swing arm now

clearance 17 inch shocks but that's always a big deal finding that happy media so you're when

you're doing the higher shocks I said on the newer bikes are you just basically

I mean your old pan is a good problem that's what we did we clearance our swing arm so that

it's okay yeah Steve was the first Chamberlain was the first one to do that so now we've

modified them so they can put 17 inch shocks yeah because we've got a couple of guys now

that are racing on the soft tail side and there we've got 17 inch shocks on two races

because I saw them have another have another another pivot point that like in front of the

swing arm okay that you got a clearance out and there was a couple guys that helped it with that

and they've had great success like great improving parts performance on lap times and stuff

far as

the height of the bike helping in corner and all yeah

yeah I wonder if they uh like I said I feel like you're there I get the point like you need it

high and stuff but I don't know I struggle because I want to be in that middle ground where you

can kind of enjoy it when you get the nice roads yeah but when you stop at the nice outlook you can

then walk back and your bike doesn't look like it's yeah about the tip over and you need all these blocks

everywhere they keep it from tipping over like that and then I can't touch the ground anywhere

like a dork riding the bike yeah that's why I never rode dirt bikes is because I was like man

I'm not fucking climbing a ladder to get on a bike yeah I'm used to the dirt bike deal

for sure tippy tone even as long as my end seam I got a 250 and a 451 Honda and I got a tippy

tow that so it's kind of like damn I couldn't imagine being short bird you got to have a milk

crate to jump on it and a milk crate to get off that's not masculine man I can't pull that off

yeah so yeah that's I don't know that's just kind of choppers are low and everything

have are you still like still producing most of the stuff that you have through your chopper parts

we've been in our catalog a little bit uh Megan and Kim handle that stuff we've brought some took

stuff out of our catalog then just here recently in the last two weeks we've had some influx of

stuff that we discussed like maybe we need to put that back in catalog like the villain

bungs and the villain gas caps because bill everyone's into the chopper deal but yeah

there's there's some stuff that we've dropped out but I think we brought three products in and

just in the last quarter yeah because we get calls they still do the throttle housings and

stuff like that because I feel like that's one of those things that I was when I was looking for

mine I tried to yeah we think Renny had one from you on his bike yeah we quit making those

we've discussed that we talked about that just a couple weeks ago that's still we'll see what

2026 because there's only so much time machine wise and it's capital intense to buy stuff and

we got a keeping up with our product we make now for the Roman Spagger and the product that we're

going to add on we're going to put our capital in the newer stuff yeah and there's still people

to make throttle housings but I think Arlen Ness is the only one that ever competed against us

and we just did that just because we wanted the knurled look that matched our grips you know

but you need to get a foundry going at your out in the back of the shop yeah

and pour some castings out there we're doing our seric coat stuff right now so we're getting into

that we're going to try to push that versus anodizing so we're doing that so we're expanding

and other stuff so it's it's yeah I've had a lot of people reach out to me about

like though I I refuse to paint one of your swing arms yeah it's not not at any fault of

the swing arm it's just it like the wireframe depth in all those things trying to get color

consistently through there it's very complicated for someone like a paint gun it's powder is easier

because the powder like the the static electricity yeah it sticks to it yeah um but the problem is

you're trying to get in all these cracks and grooves and then or they want all that taped off

the way y'all do some of the custom stuff yeah and then I'm like dude like you really want to

spend three thousand dollars having this thing the amount of time it's going to take me to

tape all this off yeah and then it's going to get fucked up when you ride it so now I have to have a

warranty aspect onto this yeah it's not worth it for me we have a customer base probably 10 or 15

percent of paint or powder coats or swing arms I mean there's some hungry people out there and

I'm glad they're out there yeah I'll probably just have them paint for me yeah yeah well it's

just like I said you know when you're like it's never hey I want to paint it you know gray

yeah no I want candy with flake and then all this extra shit that like has so much mill thickness that

I mean trust me that I've seen a lot of them done some of them not so well you know

but when you're seeing it on instagram it all looks perfect you know what I mean yeah there's

some some combos that we thought but there hasn't been one customer or a combo that when we get it

because we usually try to get them to paint it then we send it back and we assemble it to make

sure nothing's in the bearings it's all aligned and all that stuff but there's a couple of them

there's one girl Stephanie that did a pink one which came out badass on instagram and looked pink

she sent us pictures when it got to us it was metallic pink which was super freaking cool you

know yeah to us so there's a lot of Jesse she hers is pink too I think yeah there's

there's so many girl riders now they're and luckily Megan can relate to those girls not that I can't

either but and it's just incredible in the last four or five years the girls that we talked to

individually that build badass custom bikes and riding you know there's a bunch of them out there

and they're it's not a rarity anymore it's I don't know the percentage but it's it's double

digit for sure well I've definitely noticed some chicks putting way more money into their bikes

and way more uh just doing better jobs on some of their bikes than some of the dudes do yeah you know

it's like it's like they get it like like Jess's bike it's a custom painted custom motorcycle big

motor yeah all things done right yeah and then you know this dude's mad over here because she won

a bike show and this dude's just got a black bike yeah it's like yeah but mine's this this is

like nobody fucking cares about a solid color bike man in a bike show yeah exactly you know

on the track one thing or for you personally one thing but yeah you want to win bike shows you

got to have custom motorcycles yeah yeah there's a lot of there's like there's I can name probably

20 right now that her customers are there 80 thousand dollar bills easy you know they ride

okay yeah exactly yeah she's a good guy she rides a heck out of her bike yeah I think it's

just a it's just a matter of like I mean we were kind of talking about this down down

stairs it's just about how much people want to invest in this and if they and using the word

invest is the wrong way it is look at it like I want to get the most out of this and if you're

willing to spend the money yeah to have nice things or to learn how to do these nice things and

you know fuck man like I encourage it but you know this isn't this isn't the real estate market

you know it's not if you if you buy and you spend a lot of money these bikes and you

don't want to ride it you don't want to get a rock chip in it you don't have anything

because you don't want to lose any value of it yeah it's the wrong it's the wrong mentality in my

opinion yeah it's not something you need you're not going to get return on investments it's it's

it's not going to happen I think every once in a while you might get lucky like for instance like

we could build an FXR that you know we have 20 grand into it and it's a nice bike yeah and then

we could probably sell for 25 or 30 depending on yeah how nice it is what it has and if the

customer is willing to spend it right yeah but when you have a roguelite it's a $30,000 roguelite

off the rip and then you have $50,000 in parts not even labor anywhere yet like that's a that's

an expensive motorcycle it's like you need to do that because you want to want that yeah you know

yeah and I totally agree with that that's just the only thing I've noticed is that

you know a lot of people got a sour taste in their mouth when they built bikes in 23

yeah came out in Daytona and then right then is like the new body comes out there there's a customer

base out there that'll do that you know David Covington and that whole Covington crew they've

got a good clientele Colton from Woodland Byggers they can figure it out that's that's

if you don't have that clientele it's capable of spending $80,000 to $100,000 at a whim

be done with it after a season or two and come back as a repeat customer

those guys are capable to do because they make a good product for sure and good customer service

you have client bases there too like those guys are like yeah that's a one percenter yeah those are

one percenters in this in this motorcycle industry to buy a product that's a hundred

thousand dollars and just like do you mean going to lunch type exactly yeah yeah yeah and like

those I mean I've been fortunate to do work for a lot of those guys and they're

they're really badass they're really awesome guys they are they're they're people on the internet get a

little but hurt whenever like the bike shows become them but yeah what I say I've had to

check a lot of people just privately like yo man like you don't understand you don't understand

that like those are the guys that are keeping us together yeah because you want to build a bike

like Colton you want to build a bike like Dave you can't afford that but you're going to do

the best you can yeah piece by piece even if it takes you two years because that's what's inspired

you yeah they're inspirational in this industry they don't people don't understand how they do inspire

the other part of the industry that will build they finance it yeah I mean they finance it too

because if if if they're not if those guys are not out having these bikes built by by these shops

yeah that's your parts on there that's tons of other people's time and labor yeah and tons of

other people's parts and stuff it's like literally keeping the industry alive it is you know the guy

that has the black bike with uh he'll never get it anyway no he'll never get it he's he wants attention

and he does you know he's slashing out online because he's not getting attention anymore it's

a 2016 dude is 10 years old now you're gonna have to either sell it for five thousand dollars and

build another 40,000 on a bike or just be content with it and be like personally happy with it

yeah you know like yeah I mean it's just we see we see that a lot and I think people

there was people throwing a lot of shade after y'all's party this year right yeah yeah 800 bikes

yeah it was crazy we had the whole main street blocked off from 7th street to 4th street

and Maggie was Holt was my idea and Jeff was just all about it and Jeff's been so inspirational

helpful us with our product and helping us figure out this you know centralized location of house

of speed to vitalize it in the industry and to you know get a return on investment it was a

great success that's what he told me he goes I don't know the number that he he said remember

Born Free California the first year it was started was only like 50 bikes we had 800 800

bikes here on Father's Day weekend you know Saturday before Sunday and this is the back

parking lot we had people from all over dropping like they've never seen craziness you know we were

doing burnouts and wheelies we had a 12 o'clock shop here from the Springfield in northwest

Arkansas Dylan CJ and a kid that I raised Adam they were up here doing wheelies they were

changing tires they were here from a 11 till dark and the whole city was around it was four

500 people like what they've never been exposed to this crazy bike culture it was really really

a good deal the lot party concept is like that's that's fun yeah I mean like that's a that's a

good vibe yeah this is kind of a funny story Jay so me and Megan and the crew went to the

city to get all our permits and stuff so the city council or some higher ends and city hall was

supposed to be there and they were too busy and route 66 committee Pat Togo he was there and he

come in to introduce us to the city people and so he had to excuse himself so they left this kid

Dakota Dakota with us you know and he's just a younger kid so he was giving us our permit

for the bike show and he gave us a permit to block off the streets and our pylons and stuff

like that so everything was good we paid all our permits and went on our way so we have the

municipal parking lot behind us it's a block long and a half a block wide so 12 o'clock boys

showed up and they started doing burnouts and wheelies and stuff and we had it all blocked

off and we're kind of tearing up the parking lot a little bit putting rubber on the on the

parking lot and stuff well some people were called the cops were called like what is going on here

well we got a permit like really so Lou showed them the permit and stuff and okay whatever

so we called some people and fortunately we knew somebody that knew somebody and

a street sweeper came by from the city on a Saturday and cleaned the whole parking lot up

and I took a video of it and saved it and pat tugle at Monday morning at o'clock like

they ran up to that Dakota kid like what the hell is that and said what their cops were called the

rubber all over the fucking parking lot and stuff like that goes I don't know what a bike

show is maybe that's a bike show that's what I gave them a permit for so when the city

comes Saturday and clean it all up I showed the city like you guys must know this because

you have a street sweeper come clean it up so it's all good they blame it on themselves and

went on with it they're gonna let you kind of go forward there well we don't know yet we'll

we'll see how that will be a fight but yeah I'll get it done yeah can you track how much like

business you brought to the area absolutely kind of leverage that yeah I mean I believe when if

you get some of these other businesses attention it was at least 80,000 yeah because we went

personally and told everyone what's going on and then mrs. Hackett that's got the barbecue

place that we had a beer with one night 609 I know Russ and Jess and Jeff Holt and his whole crew

they's probably spent I mean I think Russ's dad was 3,300 some shit like that you know for

two days so we figured 80 grand between all the restaurants and stuff and they got 10% of that

so they made you know $10,000 $7,500 just in taxes the whole purpose of not having

food trucks because you know we want our downtown community to feel that we're not just here for

ourselves we want to give back to the community we want to rise up all together yeah people that

invest in the brick and mortar so that's why we went and the people at Blackthorn

Jopley Avenue coffee has been always good to us and they were overwhelmed you know

Melody and her husband that Steve said like it was one of their best nights ever because

you know with the right corner and the Italian store next door they were good and the pizza New

York pizza they were like overwhelmed yeah all with them one and a half blocks so it was easy

to add up the tally real quick they just told us it was their best Friday night ever for Saturday

night Friday and Saturday all day long they were the left lane syndicate boys they bought

11 12 pizza pies from neither they loved it so they were like eating all day long

those New York pizza pies you know like that and that guy is from New York so he makes a good

and then Blackthorn pizza they make the best New York pretzel outside of New York City

seriously yeah it's damn good it's addictive as hell they're good people you know they're

there's a lot of potential with uh with the event and you know with you having this space

and the as much as you can get approved for that yeah I mean you can really turn this into

like like like you were saying like a mini born free kind of exactly that's how born free was at

the beginning it was it was a block party and right out these two windows is an art art center

what's that place called Megan uh complex yeah the complex uh so we're going to try to do a

winter bike show you know we know Scott and Warren for mama tried and they're going to

help us with something doing off uh schedule of their deal during the winter because it's a

beautiful complex so we can probably have a hundred motorcycles in there in uh April or something

when the snow's still flying here and it's just across the parking lot and it's a 22 million

dollar building they just got done and it's all brand new artsy fartsy and got plenty of room

for stage for motorcycles and the parking lot which is adjacent to our parking lot so we're

going to try to do a lot of stuff that the industry's done so the midwest from Kansas City

Tulsa Oklahoma City can come here during the winter and have a mama try type show you got a good

like if you drop the pin did a 300 mile radius because I'm I'm just over 300 I think I'm almost

like 380 or something like that um but then you got St. Louis Little Rock Memphis Oklahoma City

like you got a good range of cities that can draw to it I mean you saw that with the amount

of people that showed up to it yeah that's when Maggie seen that we were so centrally located

she always wanted to do an east coast west coast competition and she kindly told if I remove the

story she went to Jeff and told her this concept that she wanted you know then when she's seen us

the house of speed her and Megan's become real good buddies and they just kind of

tween her and Megan to kind of evolve this whole thing to where it was in literally 45 days

yeah it was a really good deal and we're just going to try to make it bigger and bigger

you know even we got other parking lots as close to the city and hopefully the city will

understand what we did for the deal and rubber on the parking lot is no big deal yeah it cleans up

and it shouldn't be a problem it's well just like our alleyway right now just we've been working

on getting a utility pole for 400 amp free-face service here for two years we finally got it

set two weeks ago and they've got the whole alleyway painted where the pipes are so they

can miss stuff so that red orange blue paint is going to be there for several years so I don't see

what they got a problem with some rubber that's going to be washed away literally like that yeah

I don't know what it would be it's almost like a producer you know how they get shit done yeah

like they go in there and argue it for you or like a lawyer type situation yeah she's a pretty

good arguer she's done real good in the last month I've kind of put that on her lap and she's

got stuff done that's been taken it's literally a year or two so she's got a pretty good

rapport with people now she knows who to talk to and everyone's been really friendly in the

last two months because they realize that we're not going to give up you know we are an asset for

sure that's good yeah yeah it's got potential I mean like I said the city's got a vibe you've

got plenty of places to eat you know I see there's plenty of hotels around here oh yeah

especially because I 44 is only three miles up the road yeah there's a conglomerate of hotels here

yeah the casino is always fun too yeah exactly yeah yeah it has potential I think that we

you know like you just got to do it you got to do it and just let it similar to this building

like you had a vision but ultimately it kind of revealed itself to you as you

build layers back and the same thing with that event you know you'll do what feels right

what feels necessary you know we definitely need stuff but we also just we need to space it out well

enough to where it's not you know the hard part about like you know as I'm getting more involved

and more involved with like Born Free and now the Stampede thing it's like yeah the one thing

whenever I consult with people on the the the event so it's like look like the the

Sturgis like to the end of the year is just it's stacked yeah right because people are getting

your weather's cooling down and people want to put their events there right you know

September and Texas is hit or miss on the whether or not it's okay and whatnot but

the first half of the year is very light yeah like I mean you do have Daytona yeah you do have

Mama tried you do have uh you know parts and labor down and bill well now yeah um the

Hellraiser show model one in the east one photo is like April I think um so there's there is that

and then you got St. Louis right here with the Cycle Showcase Donnie Smith yeah you know but then

you hit like April and May and it's like there's not a lot right you know and then May kicks off

and I think a lot of people I know like me like I'm a Born Free Cali every year person yeah

just there's no other event where that many of the industry people are in one spot yeah that

you can see everybody it's like if you took everybody from Sturgis that's in the industry and

you put them in one little just in the Buffalo chip right there right yeah you know so it's

a good opportunity to network and then you know show face show your bike off all that stuff you

know um and we've talked about this too as a team that we want to go to Cali we've talked

about just riding there this year but we go back and forth that we're on the on the fence whether to

ride and bring product we want to go there for sure we want to get the vibe of it but as business

people we want to go there to sell product like Cody and Megan has both told me like we

have no western exposure we have good exposure and good dealership uh disposition in Florida the

Carolinas and our biggest one get lowered and stuff all on the east coast our west coast deal is

we got a couple of strong dealerships but we're really really pushing to bring our product to

Born Free Cali yeah well the thing like well you guys would probably get have to get set up with

like San Diego customs in their little area but the most part or the other part is because

San Diego customs has the bike show like it isn't a bad idea just to go there and show

presence you know um yeah we got second place there uh last year in Texas you know Chip and

Mikey was really impressed with what we call it our Sturgis bike the bike that really got me going

they were the the shock on the motor in the FXR deal them guys build bikes and know enough

something that's different you know they're yeah Mikey was down there like like in his you know

southern african accent like what the fuck is that thing you know he was really impressed

with that there's Chip shook my hand it was a great build dude and he seems like a really cool guy

it was the first time I've ever met him in person yeah you know he's pretty famous on the internet

but he's a really cool guy yeah they're good dudes dog lovers all like that about it yeah yeah

yeah I mean the California one is just a good vibe have you been to California yet uh oh it's

it's yeah completely opposite of Texas yeah um but yeah like going out there and I mean it's

just it's a good thing for content as well because even if you don't ride out there once you drop and

you hub out of that area you have coastline you got Neptune's you got all the stuff in LA

you can hop over the mountains go into the central not necessarily Central Valley but like

you're you know I can show you a great hotel that does uh some pretty cool um

if you're one of the Palm Springs really yeah some fun stuff out there yeah um well that's

what we talked about just this last Saturday we're gonna add a little group meeting that

if we go sell product we'll trailer bikes there because Cody Hagger him and Rusty just went that

whole delay went almost to Canada and back home you know so we'll bring product stay there for

four or five days goes north as time allows us and then head back yeah yeah so we have probably

what we'll do we're thinking so she can ride with us we'll bring four bikes all product

do the show Saturday Sunday then head north to the redwoods and come home oh yeah that'd be super

nice yeah yeah I have a I think the best redwoods because I've ridden I think all the redwoods spots

in California I think the best one is just Avenue of the Giants and that's all the way at the top

corner but yeah the trip to get there and back so it's amazing see I I'm planning on riding my

job yeah I'm planning on riding my chopper to California for Born Free this year yeah and I think

it'll give me enough time to really get familiar with the bike because I really want to be able to

whatever it you know it's it's dialed right but if something was to happen I want to be

competent enough with the shovel heads and the four speeds and stuff like that to kind of

dial it in but there's a just north of San Francisco I think the best coastline riding

is north of San Francisco yeah because of the big cliffs the big well you have that in in between

Monterey and San Luis Obisbo but that area is so over on with tourism and then it's almost

always got a rock slide on it so the openings of it it's always kind of hit or miss

I've ridden it a couple times I'd always tell people hey like you need to ride it

but if you ride that and then ride the northern part you'll probably be in the

same boat as me where it's like the northern part has more variety yeah you know and less cars so you're

not what sucks is like you'll get stuck behind like one of these like rental RVs and they're huge

and so your whole front is like blocked and they're going slow and it's all it is is like

dipping in and out and in and out because it's like the you're on the side of the mountains

right and so you on the outside of the mountain then this comes in and out and I don't know I've

it's it's sick but from LA it's like other than Neptune's like you just almost want to skip all that

and go to San Luis Obisbo really and then go north because otherwise you'll spend hours and hours

and hours trying to get there you know we'll take your advice and route that that way yeah

pull the trailers up that north that far north and then unload and then go up there

yeah it's super nice man like because you can do the central valley up to like

you know like where nests is and Dublin or whatever and riding in San Francisco is pretty badass

I'll bet you know like watch a max shaft all those years yeah yeah 100% yeah open the bridges

and it's such a photogenic city you know there's lots of view points and vista points and the

hills create a lot of uh you know layers oh yeah and then you see just the angels having the

frisco cut tang yeah mid controls and all that stuff yeah so that's kind of I think of the

you know a jockey shift no front brake I want to go ride it in the hardest place you can think of

dude I got a shovel head bobber I built back in the day and it's I got some pictures of it downstairs

I was going to show you for leave I built that bike with no front brake thing that's cool

and I took it the bikes piece and barbecue like I cussed myself so freaking bad sitting at a hill

and had mid control so I'm trying to hold on front brake balance my bike with one foot and then

jogged the shift like okay I'm never going to do a bike without a front brake I don't care if I

got to build a little magnesium thing off the Yamaha dirt bike just to be able to not roll backwards

down in Fayetteville because it's all it's kind of like San Francisco not at scale but

I'll never do that again see I thought about on this build I thought about putting a brake lever

up there and then just having a dual caliper on the rear definitely but definitely wanted it to

be the hardest thing you could ride yeah well that'll definitely be hard that's definitely not easy

it's just a different experience man like I was talking with Larry from chopper you know

lone star shoppers he was down in Texas with us all weekend I got to hang out with him quite a

bit like him a lot he he shut down the bars with us at every night yeah um and I was telling

us like man it's like it's the shovel head and the chopper shit ain't really about trying to prove

anything it's just like when you tell me about the choppers y'all used to ride and build or what

I've you know listened to rich and all these people I've met like I they're telling me about

something that I can still go experience yeah it still exists and it's not expensive it's

it's not like that chopper didn't cost me that much the effects are cost me a lot yeah especially yeah

especially if you find a shovel head that you can rebuild you know like you and me I got an 82 shovel

head FXR it's just sitting there waiting like maybe a decade from now yeah that I'll build a

retro rod with a shovel head yeah and FXR full touring deal you know so it's sitting in the

corner it's pretty ragged out but I've only paid like $1,800 for it no that's fine that's

my birth year when I got to get one one day yeah originally that's what I wanted to do on the FXR

chop was an 82 I got it on sale today for five grand if you want it I think it would be some I'll see

if I can affirm it yeah yeah but yeah that's uh that's kind of the gist of it all you know

but yeah I think you guys want to borne free I think that'll be really good um like you said

exposure out there yeah um I would say that like uh Arizona bike week is kind of going through a

identity restructuring you know because there's there's so many big powerful brands out there

and I think uh I think the rally itself is kind of losing its uh stronghold and it's starting

to just become like a lot of different things a lot of pockets of shit going on well that's

what happened the bikes blues and barbecue it was a really cool deal downtown Fayetteville but the

bikers started mixing around with the it's a big call it down there and so they started having some

issues like hey this is our turf like come in here on the weekend so you're not going to tell

a biker this is his turf so there's a whole bunch of police drama so that they broke it all

up into three different places that are 30 miles apart and uh and uh it's just kind of a big

old mess yeah like some you know Bob Kane I were talking about this this past weekend there's just some

events that in the certain areas they are they the towns get too big for the for the events to

be like rot rally down in Austin there's no way it could be there anymore it's just Austin's

kind of way too big way too populated and the events knew that either migrate to somewhere

where they can still have that kind of like you know like filling or whatever you know and

then a place that wants you because that's the other thing that's my only gripe about Daytona is that I

don't feel wanted there yeah you know I feel like the cops are there to get get you you know unless

you're on the little strip like the rest of the places seem like they're just like over it you

know it's like I don't that's just one year that I went so it could be completely different

that's still that way yeah I feel like Daytona will be one that is shut down and it will be

because of the community and the police yeah yeah see I haven't done Laconia yet either that's what I

want to do we want to do yeah yeah your problem is Laconia is like it's either the week before the

week after born for you yep I know the opposite side of the country so that's why West was right

in the middle of both of them yeah yeah we're trying to figure that the logistics and sit down

with the holds and see if we're gonna do the same date or not or whatever they're not yeah

it's it's the Saturday before father's day yeah I mean early May's not a bad no it's I mean the

weather it's it's cooler weather up here but it's not like no the reason why we always did our camp

out at basically the end of April beginning of May yeah is it it's the it's like the earliest

for like north of here yeah people can usually ride yeah and sometimes they would still be riding

a little bit of snow flurry or coming home to it but yeah but then the weather there camping

it was like the perfect and you know campfires and stuff and I guess the only thing you got to

worry about here is like how much do you feel like you get like the rain season's pretty heavy at that

time here yeah it's off and on we have our biggest like storms are coming through snow storms in the

late March early April believe it or not we think you know Christmas New Year's Valentine's Day but

our biggest snowfall ever in history here in Joplin Missouri was like March 17th and we got

three and a half feet yeah yeah that was crazy it was snow flurries tomorrow so you know make sure

your kids are bundled up like we'll wake up and the bird bath is buried underneath the snow you know

it was like dang that was crazy yeah and we have really bad ice storms that part of

year we usually have power lines and schools are out so we're going to look at the history

of Joplin and figure out a date that's going to work us I mean July I mean June isn't a bad date

I guess it like I said it just kind of starts to infringe on all the other

not that you know like like I said it's just I guess I'm being selfish here because I'm thinking

about like my availability because I really wanted to go this last one yeah and I actually uh I was

I think I wasn't even going to go to Born Free this year but I ended up buying a plane ticket

last minute and just flying out there so yeah um yeah it's like uh my gold bike needs a complete

overhaul because it's it's like 35 000 miles on it and it's just been

rowing putting garage yeah then the new bike the new FXR is not it's a it's a cell bike like

I'm just getting it dialed getting some content and then it's going for sale yeah the chopper's

you know forever it's well the chopper the the new one the show it chopper like that I want

to ride that yeah but that's where the whole getting a newer bike comes into play where it's

like okay yeah I'm going to run up there real quick like the chopper I'm gonna have to plan that

all right let me make sure this is good go through it yeah but if I had a new road glider a new st

yeah you know I'm just like quick once over and just throw my shit on it and go yeah especially

if something does happen you know that you can just pull on the dealership and get a fuse or a

new tire or whatever a couple of our friends have bent wheels Devin and Rusty wasn't Chelsea

that bent a wheel yeah well that took forever just to find a wheel on a light model bike you know

they were in town for a day and a half don't dealership to dealership they don't stock wheels you

know and then a custom wheel like that's too much you know yeah luckily they all had friends that

kind of helped them figure out the wheel situation you know but even if you were on a shovel that

it's still kind of an issue that's something they couldn't get her to dealership yeah I'm

doing it right now like driving up here this morning once the sun finally came out dude the

fall foliage is happening right now it's pretty sick that's real that's gorgeous yeah I want to be

I probably won't see much of it but a little bit of the I'm going to Kyle's tonight yeah so he's

kind of you know off in there but oh yeah he's he's starting in the hill he's at the very

northern part of those are kills and him and Barry and Uncle Paul both are the when you start

getting to St. Louis you start noticing especially on the motorcycle elevation dropping going just in

the St. Louis yeah yeah and we just went to St. Louis to a Hell's Angels show which was kind of a

funny deal for sure yeah one best to show we're in the clubhouse and the guy had some badass

choppers and the guy that won best chopper he was kind of like you know and he they're all

very really cool guys Garrett was a cool guy Ron from Springfield and I said I won best to show and

the guy leaned over and said what caused your bike because they ain't got no pain on it goes huh

like he they walked by my bike yeah and he said I won't look at your bike when you get done so

they went out looking and show them all the details oh I get it now but that's the people

that you know that don't and in you want to be one of the best pagers in the industry that

does draw people in yeah but when you're judging a bike and you walk up to each bike then you start

knowing some little details of a mountain bike shock to take off you know the vibration out or

things that are totally custom then a true builder like Darren was a judge there from

McCabe art and Garrett's you know they they get that but a lot of people walk by

unpainted bike and that realize it it's got as much custom parts as anybody else you know

yeah the paint helps like it helps get the it helps draw people to your bike you know and it

and I've been saying this a lot lately or just in general like you don't have to go that far no

you know you you don't have like it needs something it needs some kind of identity and

the paint can help you achieve that identity it doesn't mean that it needs to be a flame job or

a panel yeah paint job or any of that but it needs a nice touch and I've always said that

Loker I always felt like was one of the best at simplicity but cleanliness yeah and he does

he's always had a good job of like you're not having to cover the bike and graphics to have

a good flow to it he just painted our low rider we just got our paint job back yeah it's

really nice so yeah that's kind of the thing is that like I just like it needs something you know

if you do a lot of metalwork and you have the ability to expose that yeah then that that makes

sense but yeah you know if you do a lot of metalwork or if you just paint you build your

whole bike and you're got a fucking roguelite and you yeah all you did was bolt parts on it

and you're like I don't want the paint to take away from the bolt-ons that I did like get the

fuck out of here with that shit yeah I was always inspired about some of them Japanese guys

that do so much metalwork but a lot of their bikes are just art they're not rideable you know like I don't

I can't remember his name zero engineering that all this brass and really crazy headlights and

looks like a fighter out of the Julia Caesar freaking air and all that stuff and it's like

it's all cool and stuff and never was my deal but I was trying to do a blend between

real good metal art and engineering and stuff on stuff well that's I mean I think you achieved it on

the FXR I mean I love the way the rear fender is with the piece that the seat sits on yeah there's

a lot of things that people don't understand why I did but people that do build bikes like Garrett

and Darren's been a lot around he's a good builder too or knows that he's got an aisles

obviously uses an artist so yeah it's it's still it's still fun to bring that bike out

every once in a while I can't wait for the next build you know my building's done so I just can't

wait get the back to bike building and stuff this this was labor intense capital intense mentally

intense it was it's been a deal but we we got it done yeah it's gonna be right man yeah thanks

well I appreciate it guys I'm glad to finally be able to do a podcast in here well I appreciate

I can't wait to come back next time yeah I mean it'll be at another level when you come back yeah

I'm like I said I'm it's since I know it's on the calendar yeah so whenever you guys end up dropping

the dates for uh you call it the east versus west yes okay yeah so I think what the west last year

just uh yeah Sinclair just goes on when it rode out yeah and it wouldn't be awesome and yeah we've

talked about a couple things maybe in five years it'll be north against the south yeah you know

the or Florida Cali you know I don't know what Maggie's intent was it but the east coast west coast

deal it was a pretty good deal we were super excited about it the success of it you know she did

99% of the legwork on it and she was stressed out but she pulled it off you know she's a rarity

that she's a hard rider good at social media she's a she's a good friend she loves the industry

and rides as hard so she's passionate about when you're passionate about it's just not a job

yeah and it was stressful at the end of the day it was a big high five for everybody because we

we just pulled it off yeah and anyone just like your campground stuff that's a lot it's freaking

labor intense yeah I mean that's why I don't do it anymore yeah well I you know not to it's just

it felt it feels really good sometimes like the camp out was was a perfect thing for that time

you know it was and I I'm glad that it's it was so simple it really just anybody you can go do that

anytime right you don't really need the camp out to have that experience but I think it gave people

a chance to connect and do stuff and you know after like things settle down the industry

kind of figure out where what what identity it wants to happen you know we'll find a way to

kind of bring something together bring people back together again in a new way that's unique

and different but yeah you know at the time the camp out was good it served our community for a good

you know seven years and then you know and look at the FXR community now yeah not that yours was

specifically FXR but with that there was a lot of FXRs that show up just like the Cali deal

with San Diego customs I feel like our the camp out was was really one of the cementing

things for the performance bagger community it was you know because it gave a chance for

you know guys like Kyle and Justin my machinist and yeah you know Steve Chamberlain came to every

one of them you know road down and and it really gave people a chance to to see some of these guys

and for them it just it was a big connection for a lot of people you know and and I'm I'm

thankful everybody came out and and did it you know and same thing that's going to happen

with you know the event you're doing here it's like it just brings people together

and the more we want to build it you can add to it especially in the mid in the middle of the

country you know the east coast has got a good solid base but the west coast is you know 20 times

fold better you know you got all kinds of people out there they're just really cool builders and

cool people and stuff like that so all you're riding they get I know yeah I was thinking about

man I there's a part of me that wouldn't mind moving a little bit further north than

where I live and then this cold front that just came through is essentially the one that we have

down there so that's our first time yeah getting down into the 30s and then then when I got out

of the Jeep to go to the gas station to pee I was like damn it's still fucking 30 degrees out

here I was like I don't know if I'm ready for this it's just like it was 20 degrees here this

morning yeah and but it was just 70 it's been pretty good for us here lately but right now

it's on now winter is here yeah all right guys well I uh I appreciate again man I'm very

when when you say I'm proud of you and you're like you're older than me it feels weird I just

but I am I think that just knowing you for the last couple years and seeing your vision come

together yeah it's inspiring that's a better way to put it I try hard it's been it's been a

struggle but you know again I'm a hard-headed Dutchman it's going to happen yeah it's a legacy

yeah I want this a legacy again I want to be uh Arlen S has always been a great example I explained

that to a couple people but I appreciate you supporting us too Jase over the years yeah I'm a

biggest fan of you or as you are of us thank you I appreciate it yeah we'll have to do another one

next time so you can talk more absolutely don't maybe come on we'll just talk cameras Friday or

yeah yeah if I have one so we'll see all right I appreciate it man thanks guy I hope you guys

enjoyed this episode I want to thank Frank and mega for sitting down and spending the afternoon with me

talking about motorcycles and all the things they've got going on there in Joplin Missouri

hopefully you guys are having a good one getting prepared for the holidays I want to remind you

guys that we have a cool thing going on that's been the backbone and support system for this

podcast since the day we started uh it's our patreon there's a link down in the description

and uh yeah that's what keeps this thing alive the economy is definitely tightening up right now

and uh it's getting a little difficult I'm not going to lie to keep the show rolling not saying

it's going to go anywhere but your support can keep this thing going keeping us giving us the

opportunity to go and share the stories of the many different brands craftsmen's riders and

people within this motorcycle community your support makes that possible for me to share that stuff

really appreciate all you guys listening if you are listening on any of the apps please

take a moment to rate the podcast or give it a review or however they ask you to do it it once

again helps get traction and helps us keep this thing going so again appreciate it I hope

you guys have a great holidays and we're going to catch you really really soon I got another

podcast drop and probably tomorrow with my boys over there at forever rad mr insta havin kyle

and steve chamberlain we'll see you guys on the next one peace

Speed Dealer Performance & House of Speed #440

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