I was posting in another thread and it reminded me of my trip to the Gold Coast Bike Week festival in September.

I was actually on the Aussie Streetfighters stand if anyone went there.

Anyhoo, coming from a little known country town called Perth, Western Australia, I didn't really know what to expect when i got there, but what I was greeted with was umpteen million dollars worth of shiny bikes and shiny bits for bikes (on a side note, I fucking hate the word " bling " )

I was quite surprised at the amount of companies that build full custom bikes.

Now I can appreciate the fact that someone can afford to open their wallet and lash out a hundred gorilla's on a bike, but would YOU do it if you had the cash???

I like to mess with bikes and have done a couple of half reasonable jobs and I love a shiny motor bike as much as the next monkey, but would i like to walk into a shop, point at lots of shiny things, hand over a cheque and come back six months later for a bike that someone else built ?

Hell no !!! I have a bike lift at home and I am NOT afraid to fuck up a perfectly good project with it !!

So my question to youse is....

If you had ooodles of cash to spend and could afford to have someone build you a fully custom, long forked, fat tyred, mega motored, chrome plated, vagina moistening bike, (or whatever style bike that blows your hair back) would you do it ?

Or would you build it yourself in your own garage (which would obviously be well equipped) maybe farming out paint or electrical or something else, but essentially building the bike yourself?

On another side note...is it just me who is becoming immune to bikes with 680" forks, 1600mm rear tyres and 427cui V-Twins ? Honestly, I was underwhelmed by all the big dollar bikes at the festival. With the exception of a couple of old school looking choppers and modified Harleys, I preferred half the stuff parked in the public parking area.

My answer is no, I'd get heaps more satisfaction doing it myself. I'm not the most technically gifted person out there but I rekon I could manage it with like you said help with things like paint and the more technical mechanical stuff. I think some of these freaky show choppers that you see on tv shows and and at bike events are good to look at for a few minutes but what annoys me is that most of them focus totally on the look of the bike and not on the rideablility of the bike. I don't see any value in a bike that doesn't ride as good as a bike you could buy for a third of the price.

I think the best custom bikes are the ones that have a good custom look and not too over the top, but are still built to be ridden.

I'm with you Rocket. IMHO the " bling bikes " are mostly owned by people with too much money and usually show up on a trailer or in a van, not to keep them clean but because the thing is either unridable, uncomfortable or doesn't go. The premier catogary should be " pro street " not  " custom ". I get to a few shows and walk straight past the custom choppers and look for the neat ridden type bikes, the carpark is usually the best place to find them. There is an old shovel that rides with our club, built from the ground up by the owner except for the paint, air brushed onto the tank is not the usual HD lettering or logo but a simple statement  " built not bought " and that just about says it all.

Owning a Harley doesn't make you a biker, you need to love it, love riding it, love the life style and at least once slept next to it.

I would prefer to build my own. $100G would fit out a nice workshop. I also prefer the old school style of bike as well.

Greg

Replace the word chopper with hot rod and I have had and heard this argument a few times...

Let me start out by saying I paid a pro builder to build my car and he built it just as I asked including a number of things he didnt want to do my way. OR I could of:..

seen a nice car i liked built by someone else pro or not and shelled out the cash then never acknowledged the previous owner. OR I could of...

Bought a crap load of pre made parts and bolted them together and had someone else paint them and an upholsterer do some work and here is a car I made. OR I could of...

Handbuilt almost every part in the car including beating sheets of flat steel into panels from scratch and sandcasting or cnc'ing a motor of my own design.

I know a very talented man who built a steel two door sedan body of 30's origin from a rust cowl. Very few people have this much talent. If he bought a fibreglass body would it still be all his work?

You need to work out in your own mind where what you did starts and what someone else did finishes

cheers

Surly

 

Surly is absolutely correct, and mate I had considered the situation with your car before I put my thoughts into words.

Your point about how much of the build is actually your own work if a bike is completely built out of catalogue parts that (hopefully) simply bolt together is completely valid but I left that out of my original post because, well...I'd put enough in the thread to get the conversation started and I didn't want to make it a full page read.

As Surly says, arguably, you could buy an entire bike in boxes of brand new bits and just put it together, does this make you a custom builder or just someone who knows where the parts go ?

But what is it with me that looks at a custom built bike and says "yeah I could probably get close to that" (minus crazy metal fabrication like on that orange bike above) but when i look at a car like Surly's (fucking horny blown 32 coupe) , I think "yeah, fuck that" ?
Maybe I don't really know what goes into a ground up bike build and it could be as challenging and difficult as putting together a car the quality of that 32.
Maybe it's because with building a rod, I already know there is a lot of mixing and matching when it comes to building a chassis, finding steering steering boxes, brakes that fit, finding spots to hide brake boosters and air con units etc etc, whereas with a bike, I could concievably just order all the bits and go.

I think there's a big difference.

Maybe I have no idea what really goes into putting a full custom bike together.

But fuck, it doesnt look that hard when everything is available out of a book. 

There is a place for the mega buck chops but not for this chap. I think the best bikes are in the car parks.

Yeah,I could never see the sense in building something that you can only ride to the corner shop,particularly when it's costing a small fortune ????

With $100k I would sue the so called CHOPPER makers,as what they make is actually custom motorcycles and not a CHOPPER at all.That might get their attention and get rid of a few of these guys that are in it in the short term for a quick buck$.A CHOPPER by definition is a standard motorcycle that has been stripped back to its basic essentials and maybe had some frame and fork modifications,not all this fancy shit they try and pass off nowdays.If they are going to make something and sell it,at least market it for what it is.Wonder what ever happened to false advertising laws?

P.S. Give me Capt.America or the Billy bike from Easy Rider.Now they are what I call CHOPPERS

nobody

If I had a 100k to spend on a bike, I would keep my Fatboy, buy a R6 for the track and Husky supermotard for a Hooligan city bike

 

Those show bike are just for show and pain in the ass to ride.

But yoy got to hand it to the guys who build them

gsh,

You can't take it with you , so spend it the shit that you enjoy