Choppers – The ExhaustNotes Blog

The Quail motorcycle show Facebook page posted up photos of the bike that won Best In Show. The bike was a Vincent V-twin engine slung into a banana style frame. The front wheel was almost all brake drum with the levers and pivots inside the polished backing plate/dust cover. The foot pegs were forward mounted and the handlebars were very low attached near the top triple clamp, the control levers were internal cable type to leave a clean tube.

To ride the bike, if it was even rideable, your body would be bent into a severe “C” shape. For me, the bike would be unusable and I don’t think anyone ever really planned on riding it more than a mile or two. I don’t want to pick on this particular machine. There is no denying the skill that went into the build, but the bike reminded me why I’ve gone sour on custom, show bike stuff. Here’s my list of 5 reasons I don’t like custom bikes.

Reason Number One: Professional Builders

I understand that people have to make a living. If you are good at building custom bikes you should get paid for it. However, from the customer standpoint hiring others to build a custom bike for you ultimately means nothing. Well, not nothing…I guess it means you have the money to hire a builder. Yea you.

Motorcycles are tools to build your personal experience. They are the means, not the end. The rides you take in the stinging rain, switching to reserve on a lonely highway or cold ice cream from a glass-top freezer are the true artistry of the motorcycle. Making the mundane exceptional is the reason motorcycles exist. Having a custom bike won’t make that experience better any more than a gold-plated paintbrush will make you a better artist. Throwing tons of money at a professional builder to win a bike show hollows out the win. What was it for? You didn’t paint that picture.

Reason Number Two: Regressive Engineering

I’ve built custom bikes in the past. They would be considered Tracker-Style today but back when I built them the goal was lighter weight, improved handling, better braking and more speed. I wasn’t averse to making the bikes look cool as long as it didn’t get in the way of a better motorcycle. The modern custom bike scene sees master engineers and amazing craftsmen devoted to making fantastically intricate clockwork movements that cannot tell the time of day. Look Ma, no hands! Useless quality, while nice to look at, is still useless. The custom-built bike turns out to be a worse motorcycle for all the effort. The handling is worse, the practicality is much worse, the braking is worse.

We see beautifully designed, narrow tube chrome forks that work as if they have no suspension. We see swoopy frames connected with buttery welds but poor in every factual way. They scrape the ground rounding a mild corner and flex under the slightest load. Think of the misallocation of skills: we have our best and brightest motorcycle engineers and craftsmen wasting their time building non-functional wall hangings. We are squandering talent and treasure and there isn’t that much around here to squander.

Reason Number Three: Art for Art’s Sake

I hear you. These are rolling art projects. Custom bikes aren’t supposed to be sensible. I learned a long time ago that art is defined by the artist: If you say it’s art then it’s art, dammit. My problem is that there’s nothing particularly new or innovative going on in the custom bike scene…oops… I mean art world. The motorcycles are all derivatives of each other with the few new-ish ideas getting beat to death over and over. Is it really art if we are just coloring between the same lines? Is bolting on a tiny fireman’s ladder art? How low can we set the bar?

I’m going to cause hurt feelings here but the custom bike scene is no more artistic than making a different length lanyard in your grade school arts and crafts class. In fact, it is craft, something that can be taught and through repetition honed to perfection.

Reason Number Four: Stupidity is the New Cool

Up until the 1980s most custom bikes were rideable. A little rake, a bit of extension to get the stance right, funky pipes, and maybe a cool seat, but the bike could still get around without causing too much pain. Those days are gone, replaced by the excess, the decorative, and the soulless. Now custom bikes must tick all the stupid boxes. Hubless wheels? Check. Horribly ugly bagger with giant front tire? Check. Cookie cutter, store-bought choppers that look exactly the same as every other cookie-cutter chopper? Check. If you’re going to remove the burden of function and place a motorcycle in the art world then that world demands better than what we see now. How many Mona Lisa copies does it take before someone builds a melting landscape? The custom scene is boring crap and deep in your heart you know it.

Reason Number Five: I’m Getting Too Old For This

When we were kids we used to cut up good running motorcycles thinking we were doing something worthwhile. My dad would tell us to leave it alone, that we were just going to make it worse and he was right. We did make the bikes worse. There are a million Harleys out there so go ahead and butcher them if you must, but when I see a nice classic bike tore up to make look it look like a child’s toy I say, “I’m getting too old for this.” I realize that everything I cherish will disappear eventually. I know that it’s your bike and you can do what you want to it. I know it’s none of my business, but if destroying nice bikes to make boring customs is your thing I don’t have to like it. Skill and craftsmanship do not absolve you from responsibility and I will not go quietly into the night.

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Any story about Bill’s Old Bike Barn has to feature Bill Morris, the man who created it all. The museum and its contents are amazing. The man is even more so.

Bill grew up right where I met him: Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, the site of Bill’s Old Bike Barn. Bill started working at age 11 on the farm, and he never stopped. Bill is 83 now, something I found hard to believe (he doesn’t look or act like it), and his energy level tops most young folks I know. Let’s start with a Reader’s Digest biosketch. Bill joined the US Army (Corps of Engineers) from 1957 to 1960, and then went to work for Chrysler building Plymouths and Dodges in Newark, Delaware. After two years with Chrysler it was back to Bloomsburg and a job with the local Harley-Davidson dealer.

Parts is parts. Keep what you like, sell the rest. That’s a gold-plated Knucklehead engine on the right. As in real gold. “Never could sell it,” Bill said. There was no regret in that observation.

Harley and Bloomsburg Harley were a good deal; Bill went to Harley-Davidson’s motorcycle technician school in 1966. Yep, he’s a factory-certified motorcycle tech. He worked for Bloomsburg Harley from 1966 to 1969.

Ah, 1969. Let’s see…Hollywood was going ga ga over The Wild Angels, Easy Riders, and other miscellaneous motorcycle movie mayhem. The chopper craze was sweeping through America and the rest of the developed world. Bill wanted a chopper, and a builder in Westminster, California advertised that if you had five old hogs to trade, they would build a California custom for you at no charge. Bill asked if he sent 18 old hogs, would they build him a California chopper and return some cash? The answer, of course, was yes, so Bill shipped 18 old Harleys to California and waited. And waited. And waited. He finally went to California to see what was happening and found a rundown chopper shop big on dreams but short on ability.

Bill hung around California for 60 days, bought a pickup truck, and took a partially crafted California chopper back to Pennsylvania. “I figured if those clowns could make custom motorcycles, I could, too,” Bill explained. And he did. The bike Bill hauled back to Bloomsburg needed wiring, wheels, and more, but that was simple stuff. Bill was, after all, a factory-trained motorcycle tech.

Indeed, a Silent Gray Fellow. It’s one of many Holy Grail bikes in Bill’s Old Bike Barn.

Bill’s Custom Cycles emerged, and Bill’s talent (as a custom motorcycle builder, a collector, and a businessman) took center stage. Bill purchased his first collectible motorcycle for $20, a 1928 single-cylinder Harley-Davidson, but he quickly realized the best way to acquire collectibles and saleable parts was to buy out other motorcycle businesses and that’s what he did. When Harley Davidson entered troubled times in the early 1970s, Bill purchased the assets of 28 Harley dealerships in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and in an international reach, the Netherlands, Belgium, and South Africa. Bill tells of a recurring theme: A dealer would ask $600,000 for their inventory, Bill would offer a quarter of that amount, the dealer would decline the offer, and then came the call a few months later asking if Bill’s $150,000 offer was still good. It was, of course. Bill knew his business.

Bill loves sidecars. At one point, he bought a European dealer’s entire stock of 60 sidecars and brought them back to Pennsylvania. He sold them all quickly.

Wow. Just wow. Get used to that word. You’ll use it a lot at Bill’s Old Bike Barn.

Would you pay $200 for a used Panhead back in the day? Bill did. I was going to offer him what he paid, but thought better of it.

Bill’s business model was to sell the parts and complete motorcycles from his constantly growing and profitable inventory. He sold via mail order and became one of the largest sources of Harley parts and Harleyana in the world. All the while, he kept the collectible motorcycles and parts that caught his interest, and he built custom bikes.

Bill has a way with the ladies. On this road trip, we hit Gettysburg, Hershey, the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, the Jersey shore, and more. But all the girls wanted to talk about was Bill.

While acquiring the inventories of motorcycle shops and dealers going under, Bill built a massive collection of Harley signs. That lead to a lawsuit with Harley as the plaintiff and Bill in their crosshairs…Harley didn’t want anyone displaying “authorized Harley-Davidson dealer” signs if they weren’t, you know, an authorized Harley dealer. Bill eventually settled the suit by opening a second building (the origin of Bill’s Old Bike Barn) where he could display the signs but not sell Harley products. “That made the lawyers happy,” Bill explained. It was only a short walk up the hill behind Bill’s Custom Cycles, but it satisfied Harley’s legal beagles.

Bill loves motorcycle signs, so much so that Harley sued him for displaying them a few decades ago. The lawsuit was a good thing: It was the catalyst for Bill’s Old Bike Barn.

Around the same time, Bill became a Moto Guzzi dealer (one of the very first in the United States) and he still has a love for the Italian motorcycles. Moto Guzzi was just entering the United States and they approached Bill. He rented a gas station and just like that, voilà, Bill was a Moto Guzzi dealer (he held the franchise from 1970 to 1975). As Bill explains it, it was a match made in Heaven: He had no money and Moto Guzzi had almost no bikes. The bikes would come in via air one at a time to Teterboro, New Jersey (a two and a half hour road trip from Bloomsburg).

A beautiful Guzzi Ambassador. These things sound more like a Harley than a Harley did. They are beautiful motorcycles. I always wanted one.

Like many people, Bill loved the look and the sound of those early 1970s Guzzis (they sounded a lot like Harley-Davidsons, with a wonderful lopey potato potato exhaust note).

California chopper chic meets Mandello del Laurio.

Paint themes that were all the rage back in the day. Think Dennis Hopper Does Italy.

As a custom bike builder Bill knew a blank palette when he saw one, and he rebuilt an early Guzzi police bike as a 1970s chopper. It’s on display in Bill’s Old Bike Barn. In fact, Bill has an entire room he calls Guzziland, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Guzziland will be the focus of a near-term future ExNotes blog.

Stay tuned, my friends. Bill’s Old Bike Barn is a fun story. I’m having a lot of fun writing it.

Miss our first installment on Bill’s Old Bike Barn? Hey, here it is: