True East M/C

My mind....it is a-blown!!!!

You can check out some of Fritz's work here

This "Ace Maker" t-shirt features an artistic skull and cards graphic and contrast stitching in bright blue on the shoulders and around the back neckline.

The shirt is also great for absorbing blood as it hemorrhages out of the wearer's body. Makes a perfect gift for troublesome neighbors, pesky enemies or the smug living off their parent's trust fund.

I wonder what the hell the "designers" over at Lucky Brand were thinking when they introduced this not so hot new t-shirt design. I can only imagine they were hoping to thin out the herds of clueless hipsters.

Head in hands....

Chipotle...

Like Chico D, just another sad attempt by white people to act Mexican.

Francis: Today's my birthday and my father says I can have anything I want.
Pee-wee: Good for you and your father.
Francis: So guess what I want.
Pee-wee: A new brain?
Francis: No. Your bike!

I turned 36 today (YIKES!) and I'm truly fortunate to be surrounded by people who care about me. Clearly, they also know I have a one track mind.



My girlfriend, with the help of the Scottish master of subterfuge Hugh, located and picked up this rarest of the rare Tachometer for my pre-unit Triumph project. There's a great little page of info on The Velobanjogent



If the tach wasn't enough she also dropped this Morgo gear drive oil pump in my lap. I'm pretty sure she's gunning for a ring. Either way, its working. I've been dying to get one of these bad boys for the pre-unit as I've bumped the motor up to a short rod 750 and it will be needing all the oil it can get.



Peter whipped up this cnc machined cover for the ARD magneto on my race bike. I needed to take photos of it before the bike went around the track a few times.



Fumi welded up these super strong exhaust brackets for my champion Triumph 500 flat tracker. The original brackets were total crap and I've broken a few pairs. Notice the tags are in Japanese. Left in Japanese is "Hi da ri" and right is "Mi gi".

The link below waslifted right from KingDeadBeats blog and this man just layed the smack down on the whole scene and the scenesters that go with it. Why do I dig this so much you may ask? Well because this motorcycle/chopper/bobber/period correct/cafe hoopla bro down has gotten way out of control...Just like in the late 90's when all the out of state hipsters started invading Brooklyn with their trust fund money, and forcing the "culture" out of the neighborhoods...Thus resulting in a Nike Dunk fashion show up and down the avenue. "Yeah man come to my loft party"..."Your cool...no your cool....no your the coolest"... "wear one of my hand made vintage tshirts, lets be friends"
No mother fucker! 5 years ago you woulda got tsuck for ya Nike Dunks and Duct Taped naked to an El Poll on Broadway and Myrtle ave... Shit aint sweet and one day it'll all come back full circle and all the dress the part wanna be club members are gonna get stripped of there 300.oo ebay found Swazi sissy bar badge, and get sent home walkin...if their legs dont get broke first.
Read it here on King DeadBeats blog

Still got a few FTF shirts available in L-XXL. Get one while they last.
Buy one now at: http://lanesplittersinc.bigcartel.com/

In this Great, Big, Crazy, Pseudo Celebrity infested world of choppers....Sometimes you meet people that even if they had never seen a motorcycle, you'd still want to call them a friend.
Just so in the case of my friendship with Cully.
With a deep bloodline of legendary HotRod, Welding, Fabrication History, Its no wonder he's so humble...A far cry from most people you'll find with self touting internet fame these days...Can you imagine he doesnt even have a blog?!
But I digress... Cully has always been more then inviting whenever I needed help, and sometimes just when I think Im out staying my welcome, he's just starting to have fun.

Well so it goes, I missed calculated the fender clearance on my "Derringer" project and without hesitation Cully offered up his shop and skill to bail me out. Now we could have just gone the route of lets just make a bracket and raise the fender, but "wheres the fun in that"...."Lets make an entire tail section from scratch"....And so on one rain saturated weekend in Huntington NY...a man of Metal Greatness gave 2 days, to a wet behind the ears fabricator and showed him how to use a ruler, and a wooden hammer....Thanks Cully. Heres to You.

It's getting up to 70 degrees today and we're hittin' the road! My manager Janni and I both refuse to take the train all the way out to Bumblefuck, NJ for our quarterly meetings.

I scored this suh-weeet cover for my pre-unit project. Who says Mondays suck? (and after the news I received on Friday I needed something good)

Spent the last 2 days over Cully's shoulder while hammer forming a new seat and tail for the Secret Sporty Project named "Derringer"....Stay tuned for the good stuff, but for now enjoy a few artsy pics of the Cully at work.

Coulda lost a finger today...but just missing a button

There were few things I was looking forward to while attending American Supercamp's advanced racer course at the end of April as much as getting to hang out with instructor, Scott Larm. It's an understatement to say the news of his death is truly devastating.

Whether tearing it up on the track or in NYC dive bars, Scooter always made it an event. He was a fierce racer and instructor who always had a positive attitude, incredible sense of humor and magnetic personality. I can't remember a moment when he wasn't surrounded by the junior racers who looked up to him so much.

Scooter had a huge impact on my racing and my life. Without a doubt, the world has lost one of it's greatest. I'm so honored to be able to call him my friend. My thoughts and prayers are with Scott's family.

Rest in peace #387

Scott's obituary

Scooter and the American Supercamp crew - April 2009:

clear-backed FIM stickies in black and grey will instantly make anything you attach 'em to worth waaay more than it should. well, how do I get some? glad you asked. send an email for details: flatironmike@gmail.com

"Tron" (1982) was one of the first films from a major studio to use computer graphics extensively and spawned an entire franchise of video games, action figures and comics. When I was 8 years old I really couldn't comprehend just how revolutionary the film was but, like most kids my age, but watching the light cycle scene served as one of those pinnacle moments in my life that led to a life long obsession with motorcycles.



Disney finally released the official trailer for the long rumored "Tron Legacy," which has a release date of December 2010. With a Ducati SportClassic racing around the real world and new and improved light cycles in the virtual world, I can't help but wonder how many 8 year old kids sitting in the audience will be infected with the same passion for bikes as I was 28 years ago.



Official site here

As it turns out the receptionist, at work is an OG Queens biker chic that kicks ass and takes names, with a shit load of "HD Collectibles" ...Shes been offing her collection and dropping it in my much apprecitive good hands.
Today I got this and an OG Fulmer lid...Score! Thanks Liz

After a season of racing my Champion framed Triumph 500 flat tracker with a rattle can paint job, my friend Fritz Schenck took my tank & tail (almost by force) to give it a proper paint job. To be honest, the bike didn't quite look right next to the metal flake cobalt and silver of my Trackmaster framed Triumph 750.

Fritz is most famous for his restorations of several of Ed Roth's cars such as the Megacycle, The Druid Princess as well as clones of the Mysterion and The Outlaw. If that wasn't impressive enough, Fritz has reiceved high acclaim for his own creation, The Roswell Rod, and served as the go to guy for incredible paint jobs for some of Indian Larry's most famous bikes as well as the Indian Larry Legacy Biker Build-Off Bikes.

I told Fritz he was crazy to want to paint a race bike, considering how much abuse they take. I should note calling Fritz crazy is pretty much stating the obvious. Fritz's response was "So? I'll just repaint it! Besides, there's going to be a million coats of clear on it."





I told Fritz I wanted to keep the look of the bike somewhat traditional to how Champion framers looked back in the 70's.







I knew Fritz would add his own style to the paint job but I was amazed when I saw the following photos. A heavily flaked crimson paint that fades from dark on the bottom to brighter red on top. If that wasn't enough it's covered in tons of variegated gold leaf!





He still needs to do the pinstriping and even more clear, but I'm already blown away.

You can check out some of Fritz's work here but stay tuned...I'm building him a new website. (I figure if he can make my work look incredible, I can do the same for him)

it's time to check out the local ride-in spots around Southwestern CT. Located in the center of this sleepy bedroom town and across from the train station, the Horseshoe Cafe in Southport has been serving thirsty NYC commuters for decades. a cozy bar with a gaggle of tvs showing sports, a couple of dart boards and a pool table, the 'Shoe also boasts a decent menu of pub food. On Tuesday nights, the 'Shoe hosts a relatively mild ride-in. on a typical Tuesday night, you'll see between 10-25 bikes or more - mostly late-model, shiny, Japanese, Italian, German and British marques with an occasional vintage or antique group in attendance. an 'older' demographic as well. For this past Spring-like Tuesday night, I was the only two-wheeler. good, more room at the bar.

and no, i didn't stick around for the Karaoke competition.

the Horseshoe Cafe is located at 355 Pequot Avenue in Southport, CT

The man in black in his acting debut, the 1961 film noir Five Minutes To Live.

In the film, Johnny plays a cold hearted, guitar playing killer tasked with holding a bank manager's wife hostage while his partner holds up the bank. The plan, of course, runs into a few hiccups. One of which being the bank manager's affair with another woman. This makes it pretty hard to get the manager to comply as allowing his wife's death gives him an obvious out in his marriage so he can be with his mistress.

Johnny Cash is surprisingly good in the role. However, it should be noted that the role he is playing is pretty much Johnny Cash with a mean streak and a gun. His character is sadistic and disgusted with suburbia and his sole redeeming quality is his care for children. But this is more so brought on buy guilt for causing the death of another child than actual love.

Look for a very young Ron Howard as Robbie, the bank manager's son.

The stock clutch pushrod found in most 650/750 Triumphs is made out of 1010 case hardened mild steel. Case hardening is only a few thousandths thick and can easily wear away. The result is a pushrod with a mushroomed out end which throws alignment off as well as deflecting and causing drag in the main shaft.

Nick over at Trumpnut Cycle Parts solved this by manufacturing a clutch pushrod out of much harder tool steel which he then ground and polished. He added a ball bearing which runs inline to prevent mushrooming of the rod against the adjuster which he also improved by replacing the slotted adjuster with an allen.



A comparison of the two clutch pushrods. The top is stock while the bottom is Nick's new and improved setup.




The business end of Nick's Pushrod. Shown here are the ball bearing as well as the new adjuster. The ball bearing is inline rather than at the end to prevent it from falling out when the clutch is disengaged.

I felt my pre-spring tune up would be the perfect opportunity to try out Nick's clutch pushrod. The conversion is extremely simple and took only a few minutes followed by a clutch adjustment.

First I disconnected the clutch cable from the clutch lever on the handlebar. You can just slacken the cable up rather than disconnect it but I like to run some 3-in-ONE oil down the cable to lubricate it. I then loosened up the cable at the gearbox by loosening the 9/16" Nut and 3/8" adjuster. After removing the inspection plug on the primary cover, I backed off the lock nut with a 9/16" socket and then removed the stock adjuster. You might need to use a magnet to pull out the stock clutch pushrod.

The pushrod was then replaced with the new one included in the kit followed by the ball bearing and adjuster. I should note that on early pressure plates you will have to tap the adjuster hole to 3/8"-24 from the 3/8"-26 that they used from the factor in the early years. Use a liberal amount of grease on the parts before putting them into the bike. This will not only keep things well lubricated in the gearbox, but also help keep the ball bearing on the adjuster during assembly. Using an allen wrench, the adjuster is tightened up until tension is felt, then backed off half a turn. The lock nut is then shocked back on (exactly as you would adjust using the stock parts). With the inspection plugs replaced, the clutch cable is then hooked up to the clutch lever and adjusted.

The end result was immediately noticeable. The clutch felt much smoother and easier to pull. I've put over a hundred miles on the bike since installation and so far I couldn't be happier.

The kit is produced by Nick over at Trumpnut Cycle Parts and also available at Lowbrow Customs.

Matt and his '67 650. off to Hugh at 6th Street Cycles for a 'rebirth'. see you soon, Pal. lotsa rides 'on tap' for this month.

classy tee, indeed