The Brough Superior motorcycle was built with quality first and foremost, to the point that the famed car manufacturer Rolls Royce allowed George Brough to use the phrase, “Brough Superior – the Rolls Royce of Motorcycles” in his advertising material. Well, shamelessly paraphrasing that bold statement, I suggest that Joel Felty’s Headwinds headlights are the Rolls Royce of motorcycle headlights, such is their quality.
Over the years I have written up many a top shelf custom bike for HEAVY DUTY magazine which featured a beautiful shiny Headwinds headlight to light the way, but only recently did I have the pleasure of visiting the Headwinds facility in Monrovia, California. Now I’m always mighty reluctant to leave the Bikernet Cantina with its assorted delights, but head honcho Bandit growled something to me about the Code of the West, put me in an unbreakable headlock, dragged me out to his pickup and in company with buddy Glenn Priddle, we promptly headed north from Wilmington on the 710.
Arriving at a somewhat unprepossessing frontage in an old 1940’s building block maze, in an industrial section of one of the oldest cities in southern California, my first impression was that this would be a quick visit and there probably wouldn’t be all that much to see. How wrong I was! It was a jaw-dropping experience to say the least. You know I’ve always I kind of thought of headlights as fairly simple things, a shell, a reflector and a light source of some kind. Can’t be too much to it, right? Wrong again. Very wrong.
The entrance too is similarly modest in keeping with the frontage, but once inside it the building widens out to reveal a wonderland of machinery which kicked my expectations into high gear. As well as being a die-hard motorcycle freak I’m also a machinery junkie and the spread of high tech machinery that lay before our eyes was mighty impressive. All this just to build headlights? You bet.
Joel led us on a tour of his shop machinery pointing out the various CNC machines and describing their various purposes, and also past band saws, mills, specialized presses and the (in my eyes anyway) the crème de la crème – a metal spinning lathe. Now if you’ve ever picked up a Headwinds headlight, you would have been impressed by the weight and feel of these impressive units. Like a lot of people I guess, I always assumed that they were carved out of blocks of billet aluminum, but in fact they are spun from flat sheets of it.
Yep, finding this out blew me away too. How the hell do you get a flat sheet to become the super smoothly contoured and flawless headlight shells Joel turns out? Well you use a modern version of metal spinning, a technique which dates back at least 2000 years BC but whose origins have been shrouded in the mists of time. Certainly, the ancient Egyptians practiced the technique, although the Chinese may well have utilized it even further back. Closer to home, revolutionary hero Paul Revere was a metal spinner, and much of his hollow wear can be seen in museums.
However, this is the 21st century and Joel uses a high tech spinning lathe for the purpose, a nifty device which comes in around three-hundred and twenty big ones in case you thought you might like one for your home workshop. A comprehensive description of the metal spinning process can be found on the internet, so I won’t go into too much detail here, just to say that Joel begins with a sheet of .125″ aluminum, which, after spinning reduces to .113″. Watching the flat sheet transforming on the spinning lathe is a fascinating experience as is handling the cone shaped piece of metal that a short while ago was just a flat piece of metal.
Apparently, the mechanical working of the metal during the spinning process provides natural metallurgical benefits, with a refined and strengthened grain structure. The heavy pressures required to produce a plastic flow of the metal during spinning cause an orientation of grain parallel to the principle axis, in much the same manner as a forging. Cold working of the metal work hardens the aluminum and also increases tensile properties appreciably.
Now you don’t get to be able to use these high tech machines without considerable knowledge in the field and Joel’s background leading to Headwinds is impeccable. He holds a degree from Cal Poly in Mechanical Engineering and gained a huge amount of manufacturing knowledge during his time at another Californian company known for manufacturing excellence, Performance Machine. Joel was the chief engineer at Performance Machine from 1988-96 and credits his mentor, PM’s founder Perry Sands for much of his manufacturing expertise.
Joel founded Headwinds in 1992 and the business has grown from a part-time, one man start up to a 10,000 square foot facility which at its peak a few years ago employed 23 people, though with the economic downturn that number has almost halved. However, there is no substitute for quality and although total numbers may be down there is still a strong demand for these top of the range products, both in the custom bike arena and with riders wanting to improve over the mediocre stock offerings so often encountered. Switching over to a Headwinds can not only add class and superb style, but provides superior lighting as well, a double-plus.
Joel runs a tight consolidated business which he is proud to say is, “all vertical” – by which he means that everything is done in house. Headwinds has the expected front office set up including accounting and the multiple manufacturing machinery I have described, but they also have more, a lot more.
All design work is done in house via CAD drawings and engineering programming, along with all welding, polishing and other manufacturing procedures with the single exception of chrome plating. There is a small but relatively sophisticated photo studio for product promotion, whether for web use or product brochures and Joel even designs and silk screens his own t-shirts. Headwind’s co-owner and Joel’s wife Julie plays an key role in the administration side of things and appears to be just as dedicated and hard working as Joel.
Some years ago Joel correctly assessed that there was a market also for headlights that are more budget priced than his top shelf items and he produces them under the name Tradewinds, but make no mistake these are still beautifully made and finished items in their own right.
Joel demonstrated and discussed Halogen lighting and also the very high tech H.I.D. (High Intensity Discharge) Xenon Plasma H4 Headlight Bulb. The HID Arc-Lamp Joel supplies is four times brighter than its Halogen equivalent and fits into a standard p43t base H4 reflector. No modifications to the bike’s electrical system are required as the bulb comes with a conversion kit. The HID Arc-Lamp boasts 90,000 candlepower, 8,000ºK color temperature, a 48W arc lamp and promises a 5 times longer life than a 55W halogen bulb is likely to deliver. I thought this to be remarkably economical at a price of just under 100 bucks which includes bulb, wiring harness and conversion black box. You want bright? Go Xenon HID!
Now not all Headwinds are finished in lustrous show quality chrome and Joel offers a range of “Black Metal ” products in a range of finishes including shiny black, krinkle black, black nickel and even carbon fibre, one of which I’ve had on my hot rod Dyna for a couple of years and believe me, it attracts many positive comments. And not all Headwinds products are designed for motorcycles. No sir, not by a long shot. Headwinds also offer a range of products for both Street Rods and for Big Rigs so not only can you have the coolest lights on the planet on your two-wheeler but also on your rod or truck.
Headwinds market their products to the wider motorcycle market, not just to Harley-Davidson and other American big twin owners, but for various metric bikes also. Anything from a light bar for a Springer to a dual headlight set up for a Yamaha Road Star and much in between is available.
Asked to summarise what makes Headwinds so special Joel said that, “Our headlights feature smooth, non-wavy surfaces with mirror finishes. Innovations that do away with exposed rivets, bolts, and flanges like our threaded housings with screw-in bezels and billet brackets with hidden fasteners are only part of what makes our product line the finest available anywhere.” You can find Headwinds on the web at www.headwinds.com and it’s well worth a mouse click or two to have a look around at this range of innovative and top quality range of products.
Heads spinning from information overload Bandit and I staggered out into the bright sunshine of a Californian midday and headed back to Bikernet HQ, both of us greatly impressed by the Headwinds facility and thankful for Joel’s time and patience in showing us around. And despite my still sore neck, I was super glad the big fella had dragged me out of the Cantina.
