I don’t know what gets into that bastard, Bandit, he’s got way too much going on. The one thing about working with him is that we can say anything we want, like the time Zebra blew a hole in the headquarters because he was pissed about something. We let this jerk know what’s on our minds. So when he started another motorcycle desk, I got in his face, just like I do whenever he starts anything. When Jon Buttera of Lil’ John’s Customs saw Bandit’s desk and wanted one, the big bastard said, “No problem, I’ll make ya one.” Sure, it’s not like running out and building a new bike, but it still is a helluva lot of work. So I got right into his face, but it didn’t do much good. Fortunately for the crew around here, NuttBoy had the time and a pickup to pitch in, so they went to work.

The first aspect of building one of these puppies is finding the parts, and Bandit is known for collecting junk. There’s one firm rule for these projects: There shouldn’t be any working parts on these puppies. I ride Bandit like a mad dog on this code. It must be built from junk, or forget it. We’ve got staff members who need bikes. We’ve got crew whose bikes are broken. I can’t allow anyone to put a proper working component on a desk. Got that? Besides, if I let the rule slip, Bandit will start taking parts off bikes behind the bar.

Years ago when Bandit built his first desk, he asked long- time friend Ron Paughco for frames and front ends that could not be sold to the public. Ron went into the basement of his Carson City manufacturing shop and found two such animals. That was the beginning. Then Bandit contacted engine builders and dug around in his garage for shit that would never run again. It’s actually not hard to do, and soon he had enough components to begin the process.

With the frame and front end assembled, NuttBoy and Bandit strapped it to their lift and stood back. The front end didn’t reach the ground so NuttBoy went to work cutting and brazing bits of tubing to form a stand under the front end. In order to make such a stand work, the frame must be pulled tight to the lift, and it’s not a bad idea to make sure that it’s level. You need to put bearing cups in the neck, old bearings if you have them. If not, wrap the stem with strips of beer cans until it’s tight.

In this case, Bandit got the shell of a blown-up engine from Marty Ruthman of High Tech Custom Cycles. The head gasket had blown and the rider didn’t stop to check it out so the stream of leaking fire had shot a hole from the headbolt stud hole through a couple of fins on the rear cylinder. Bandit and NuttBoy bolted the engine together with heads, barrels, a JIMS cone cover and lifter stools. They found a couple of defective Custom Cycle Engineering finned rocker box covers from the late ’80s and bolted them directly to the heads without the use of the bottom or center rings. I thought they’d lost their minds and started to scream and throw shit at them. Bandit ignored me and mumbled something to NuttBoy about no valves, no need for the bottom two rings or the lifter axles. Now if you look close you’ll see that it looks as though the engine was channeled. That lame bastard pulled the valves and springs out of the heads and discovered that the top rocker box cover would fit down against the head, which accomplished a couple things. One, the frame was built for a Pan or Shovel, so now the Evo had no problem fitting. It gave the engine a tight, squat look, although some Mickey Mousing went along with the fastening of the finned cap and realigning the holes. I took another pull on my flask, sat back down on my milk crate and shook my head in disbelief.

The transmission looked brand new, but was a Rev Tech reject. Bandit made the tranny plate out of flat stock and put the tranny in place. NuttBoy’s curiosity got the best of him and he asked, “Where the fuck will you put your feet?”

“Hold on,” Bandit said. He took the tranny case and the left engine case next door to James Famighetti for a plasma cutting job to open up the back of each case. I shook my head again and complained about the structural integrity of the engine, but Bandit ignored me and muttered to NuttBoy, “This will allow John a place to kick back or stash spots behind the scenes.” For years Bandit kept a .38 stuck in the back of his transmission.

NuttBoy got crazy once the engine and trans were in place. Painter Phil wandered into the garage and started talking about sheet metal, wheels and other strange shit. Phil even suggested a smoke machine attached to the exhaust system. They started digging through parts boxes and bins looking for weird old carbs and jockey shift levers. I jumped into their mugs if they reached for a box stuffed with good parts. I forced them to use a smashed Bendix carb, but they went to a lot of work shaving, stripping and polishing it. “Damnit Renegade,” Bandit snapped, “It’s just a desk. We can cut busted wheels in half, make 2-foot-long intake manifolds our exhaust pipes, or put purple running lights on it if we want, now back off. It’ll never run.”

They stripped the frame of unnecessary brackets, even eliminating the top motor mount. Oil pump holes and top motormount bracket holes in the engine were filled. Bandit took a 5-ball, drilled and tapped it and made a jockey shift knob, then welded an arm to the ratchet top.

Bandit called his connection in the JIMS machine warehouse and asked for another lifter stool and a set of pushrod covers. The stuff arrived chromed. Although deadlines loomed all around the staff, the two bastards from the harbor kept working in the Bikernet garage. Since the finishing touch for this puppy is a 3/8-inch thick piece of glass the shape of a surfboard with a hole in it for the springer and handlebars to protrude through, there must be supports. Just behind the neck, NuttBoy cut a chunk of bar stock 1/4-inch thick and about 2 feet long. At its widest point, the glass is 36 inches wide. The t-bar was checked for level then two supports of 3/8-inch round stock ran to the down tubes for support. At the rear, the pipes hold the glass and that entailed a trip to Samson’s Exhaust in Anaheim.

Kenny opened the door to his warehouse, pointed to a dented and rusting bin and said, “Go for it.” NuttBoy climbed in the back looking for the proper bends. This bin was the size of a full length truck container and two-thirds full of scrap 1-3/4 inch pipe material, yet there wasn’t a 90 degree bend in the mix. With the nineties pulled from another bin and a selection of header pipes, they brought enough scrap back to the garage to build several systems. Bandit went to work cutting and welding chunks of pipe together, then brackets to the frame to support each piece. A level was used several times to make sure the system matched the t-bar and the glass would be level.

Bandit considered another aspect of this high-profile pile of junk while fabricating the components to support the glass. He called John, “How tall is your current desk?”

“Twenty-eight inches, why?”

“Never mind,” Bandit responded abruptly. “Bring mo’ money.” He hung up. Bandit has noticed in the fourth version desk that the neck area of the desk is very close to 30 inches off the carpet. Most desks are between 28 and 31 inches. This was his chance to adjust the height.

These two nut cases have no business building a desk. Bikernet is not a fuckin’ furniture company. I got fed up and wandered to the bar up the street while they hauled the cases, heads, tranny case, frame and springer stand to the sandblaster for a fine blast. Then it was off to the powdercoater for a durable dark metallic silver finish. The pipes, carb and brackets were hauled off to Chris Hill at Chrome Services, and the barrels were taken to Joe Stubblefield to have five fins shaved off the base and the barrels polished. With some new fasteners a week later, NuttBoy and Bandit were back in the garage immersed in final assembly. Oh yeah, they also ordered the glass.

It pisses me off, but it will probably be sharp when they’re finished.

–Renegade

I almost quit over this one. Bikernet was in the middle of year-end taxes and financials. We were about to launch the Cantina. Nyla was shooting photographs of the new line of Dragonfly shirts with near-naked women and the Digital Gangster was working his fingers to nubs trying to get everything launched. Where was the big guy? Out in the garage grinding on the frame for John Buttera’s desk. He brazed, welded and fucked with the parts so much that he ran out of oxygen and acetylene, and since his tanks were stolen, no one in town would fill them. He had to pay the local muffler shop to complete the final brazing.

Professor NuttBoy and Bandit ate up a couple of days just grinding and rubbing their shitty welds with wet and dry sandpaper. Their notion was to powdercoat the frame, engine and tranny cases for a durable finish, then chrome the rest. First, all the parts were taken to a sand blaster, then directly to the powdercoater for a charcoal silver finish. Of course Bandit had to drop off the parts then vacillate about the color. He took Sin Wu across town for her opinion, then Layla, then some girl he picked up on a street corner. Finally reaching a consensus, they made a decision on the gloss silver. Then the chrome was delivered to a Corvette behind a diner at midnight and that sparked another major problem–getting it back.

With the chrome and powdercoat finally in hand and the glass people screaming at us to get the glass out of their warehouse, Bandit picked up the final fasteners from California H-D and the local hardware store and began assembly. With the business faltering and the IRS calling, we couldn’t get the big bastard on the phone. He had kidnapped the professor and his new truck for glass duty. The crew at the glass company was astounded as Bandit and NuttBoy tossed the delicate, 3/8-inch thick, surfboard-shaped chunk of glass in the bed of the truck and peeled out of their lumpy driveway. They weren’t surprised when Bandit called the next day about the broken glass. It split near the hole and the sun’s heat caused the fissure to creep to the edge of the glass. That was a cool $350 out the window. Bandit ordered another sheet and the photo shoot was canceled.

Bandit and NuttBoy made a container for the glass with the bottom of an old H-D shipping crate, a couple uprights, tie-down eyes and some old carpet. This time it would be moved properly in an upright position. So Bikernet came virtually to a standstill while Bandit and NuttBoy finished little John’s desk. Can we get back to work now?

Nope. NuttBoy dug out a mammoth Headwinds billet headlight shell and pointed out that they had forgotten about support for the glass in the frontend. NuttBoy made the headlight bracket and Bandit arc-welded it. They tightened it up but felt that it would pivot too easily, so another hole was carefully drilled in the back of the bucket to create more tension to the top of the nacelle. With a screw in place, the load could be adjusted to support the glass. The project was complete. John’s son, Chris, came and the crew loaded the finished desk.

Damn, we were finally out of the woods. We mustered the crew to fist fight these bastards back to their keyboards when the phone rang. Seems there will be two art exhibits in Rapid City during the Black Hills Rally this year. One is called MotoArt and submissions are being sought from far and wide. In addition, Mike Lichter is having an exhibit with motorcycles from some of the top names in the industry, and they saw it in their hearts to invite Bandit to enter one of his motorcycle desks. Goddamnit, we just about had him back at his own Panhead desk, and now this… What the fuck?

–Renegade

Welcome to the inside of the Bikernet Northwest Garage. This is where the next project begins. The goal – To complete one bad ass, mail haulin, knuckle draggin’, speed bump scrapin’, rip the skin off your face, back breakin’ rigid scoot.

This bike is going to be ALL about mailorder. Since many of you don’t have shops in your area that are versed in how to build a custom scoot, we thought you might like to know how we did one without the help of a local professional shop. Buying parts is easy. Painting, powder coating, and certain sheet metal fabrication and modification however, can pose particular problems when you, the builder, do not have the ability paint or weld. Watch over the next couple of months while we put this beauty together (without the help of a local shop) and tackle some of the hurdles of a ground up – mail order custom.

The following is a glimpse of some of the stuff we have so far. It should be noted that the most important piece of equipment here IS the cooler pictured in the first photo (above). You gotta have beer to properly build and test a rigid…..

This is the single piece Softail tank with welded shrouds on the front and in the seat pocket. This particular tank is available from Custom Chrome. Since this is going on a custom frame with a 2″ backbone stretch, we made some minor mods that required some welding and finishing. More on that later.

The Baker Six Transmission. This is the Softail version. These amazing pieces of engineering come with full width Andrews Gears. They’re tough. Damned tough. One of these took Zebra from Florida to Sturgis at a non-stop 110 MPH last year.

The above photo details the back end of the Atlas Precision ‘Roadrunner’ frame. Attached is a 9″ wide stubby fender, also supplied by Atlas. Both the fender and the frame are designed to handle 200 mm meat. We’ll be using a 180 for the project.

Since wide tire aftermarket frames require special fenders, you have to be careful to select the proper width fender and fender struts because stock fenders don’t often fit, even if you run a stock tire.

The Atlas Seat pictured above is by Danny Gray, built specially for Atlas to fit their frames. It’s pretty bare bones, but fits the ‘Roadrunner’ like a glove. This seat also came with an optional pillon pad. I got it so the wife could tag along. I have a feeling, it’ll get used only once. A note about the seat maker. Danny uses all European leather to make his seats. He does this for a good reason. Since European cattle ranchers don’t use barbed wire, the cattle don’t get any scars. This means, you get a seat without any irregularities in the leather.

See the open BDL drive in the box? Stop drooling – it’s mine! We’ll be putting one together in detail for you.

In addition, we’ve got a LOT of Joker components for the project including the hand controls, wheels, pulley’s brake rotors, etc. We’ll detail ALL of the goodies when we pull them outta the box and mount them to the bike.

Stay tuned boys and girls. When Oz gets me the engine, we’ll really start to rock and roll!