Ah, Bullshit, Sturgis 2000 was Packed With Deadlines, no Money, Rip Offs And Liars, But We Gave It Our Best Shot.... 

By Bandit
Photos by Markus Cuff and Bandit

Renegade came to the garage daily to criticize everything from finish choices to components. That bastard would make a kid cry about going to Disneyland. He hasn't had a good word to say since I met him in 1972, but he's my brother. Whatta ya gonna do?

Our challenge was to build two bikes and ride to Sturgis for the first Sturgis Bikernet Chop-Off, a bike-building competition between Bikernet East and Bikernet West. Great plans don't always pan out, yet become blessings in disguise. We finally turned one world-class custom, which was not the road bike we needed, into two distinctly different asphalt gobblers. Were we up for the task? Did we have the skills and tools to build the bikes? Would they run once they were completed? Had I lost my eye for solid choppers or my mechanical touch?

Keep in mind as this saga unfolds that this (Bikernet) is a start-up business, competition and life change. I've been helping people get their businesses, projects and products off the launching pad for almost 30 years. Now, faced with no paycheck and no expense account we attempted to build two bikes from the ground up just months before Sturgis 2000. In addition, we would be judged on who had the coolest chop and whipped the other son of a bitch from its designated homeland, namely Miami and San Pedro in Los Angeles, to South Dakota.

With the Bandit II dismantled, we stood back and evaluated the situation. We had another set of wheels hanging around in the garage and miscellaneous other parts. Agent Zebra is a short, wiry asshole, so the Paughco frame went to him, along with a set of H-D custom wheels and rotors. We split the P.M. brakes between the two bikes. We checked our leaking bank accounts and began ordering parts. Since the frame for my ride had to be ordered from Daytec, we started on the Agent's bike first. The original Bandit II narrow glide went back on the stretched Paughco Softail along with P.M. brakes and Harley Thunderstar wheels and rotors. The 88-inch CCI engine slipped into place along with the Baker five-speed transmission. As the days rolled along, we plucked more parts from my pile just to keep the starving Agent's project rolling. The frame was still painted with the Bandit II theme, along with the tank, so we stuck with it. A Fatboy rear fender was fitted over the 160 Avon Tyre and sent to Phil Stadden for paint along with the West Coast Choppers front fender. The completeness of the 88-inch Rev Tech engines made the project much smoother. The Baker Transmission was a jewel to deal with and improved the ride immensely. With a few odds and ends from the extensive, "if you need it - they have it," Custom Chrome catalog, the Zebra special was coming together.

We had a minor clearance problem with the frame and engine. Fitting the 160 tire under the fender was tight and making the brakes work was a bit of a challenge. In no time, the bike was running and on a custom-painted Gold Rush Semi heading to Miami for the Agent. We shipped it to Eddie Trotta at Thunder Designs in Fort Lauderdale for break-in, a seat from the infamous Keith and tweaking.

Of course the Agent couldn't leave well enough alone and he decided to have special panels painted on the sides of the tank and fender announcing his arrival. The paint work was handled by Eddie Meeks in record time, but it still sliced away at Zebra's time for break-in. The crew at Thunder Cycle, with less than a week before kick-off, pulled burn-outs up and down the tourist-packed streets of Fort Lauderdale in an effort to spin the miles onto his new odometer.

All right, you're beginning to get the picture, but there are more obstacles to come. The young muscular Zebra had this Germanic girlfriend. She was tall and thin, with super-model looks, natural blond hair and blue eyes like you only see in Scandinavia. She had a whisper of a voice and could speak very little English. Unbeknownst to the Agent, he was in love. He bought her furniture, a car, took care of her expenses, etc. while he was working. Suddenly his Los Angeles highlife went into the shitter and he was forced to move quickly to Miami and set up a crack house in the middle of Cuban controlled South Beach. The competition didn't take to the blond boy from Kansas, and they dropped a pill in lovely Nicole's soup. She immediately fell out of love with Zebra and the world stopped. Not only did he lose his girl, but his access to a car and all the furniture in his pad. His massive, attack-trained Malinwa dog, Apache, went homeless on the streets of Miami while Zebra panhandled for coins along the route to the Badlands.

On the other hand, my life was a circus of broken promises. Calling in a favor, I contacted Milwaukee Iron for fenders. I had helped Randy build his business from the beginning, yet when the fenders arrived, the UPS dude stood there with a unexpected C.O.D. request, and there I was, in the middle of a financial no man's land. That scenario happened more than once. We even had a Bikernet sponsor sign our contract then go back on their signature. But "give up" is not written in the Bikernet mantra, so we rolled up our sleeves and kept wrenching. For every time I felt screwed, there was a bright star, a blessing in disguise, a pearl in our soup. The Weerd Bros. from Phoenix not only were helpful beyond our wildest dreams, but their product turned out to be a superb ride and a life saver.

Harold Pontarelli, owner of H-D Performance, called me one day about a year and a half ago, while I was still at Easyriders, and said that for running some of his bikes in the mag and for being a friend, he wanted to comp me a paint job. I thanked him profusely, but never expected to take him up on the offer because I knew my days at the page factory were numbered. A couple of months after I left, Harold called me to say his promise was good whether I ever did a thing for him again or not. I was blissfully floored.

Custom Cycle Engineering, which you can see featured on the site in our Panhead project section, has always been a good friend. I run their rubbermounted dogbone risers on all my bikes.

Finally, Ron at Paughco never hesitates to assist in any way he can. So for every screwing, there was a blessing. Finally, a company I had never had a chance to work with came to my rescue in the final hour. It's odd that some of the companies I had assisted for years couldn't step up. Yet the folks at Joker Machine, whom I hadn't worked with, went out of their way to assist. Geoff and Diane were there when I needed them and I will be forever grateful. Their machine shop is impeccable, the product precise and well thought through, and examples showed up on the road to Sturgis from time to time. They take particular care with polish and chrome.

Being flexible is a necessary evil to building a custom. When the bell tolled and the slick-as-a-perfectly-curved-tit Daytec frame arrived, we had five weeks to build the Blue Flame from the ground up. The custom Daytec rigid was ideal for the 14-over Weerd Bros. front end. Tony Day said of the specifications, "An Eddie Trotta formula frame." Eddie from Thunder Designs in Fort Lauderdale builds a hard-riding stretched Softail chopper that makes riding like first-time sex. The question at that point was whether to send the frame with the sheet metal to Harold in Vacaville, Calif., or to powdercoat in three days and have the chassis building underway while the sheet metal was under the spray gun. Powder has its color limitations. It's tremendously durable and strong, but comes in few colors. We found a company in Orange County, Primo Powder Coating (Huntington Beach, that has an unheard-of two-stage powder, so I was relieved not to build another fucking black bike. I love black scoots, but I've built one too many, including the Excelsior-Henderson last year and the '97 Street Stalker from the prior year. It was time for a change.

While waiting for the welds to cool, we debated whether to powder coat. While wondering, we narrowed a '50s cop-bike solo seat one inch and Nuutboy fabricated a steel frame and pivot point. A bracket on the frame was modified to allow the seat to glide up and down with rear spring action. Two studs were welded in the center of the frame rails to correspond with the studs on the underside of the seat, but what about springs? The old Bates springs were never strong enough to carry the weight of a man. I had to find a set of 4-inch tapered coil springs that would handle my ass to the Bad Lands.

It was June and the sun was as hot as my love life. Something sparked and a dark-haired bundle of intrigue entered my lonely existence in the middle of a bar fight. Although the pressure was on, she remained a soft-spoken Valium in tight pants. She was like finding a jewel in a trash bag full of crushed beer cans. Initially I was concerned, curious and watchful as she roamed in and out of my days, bringing coffee cake in the morning and sex at night. Her schedule fit well with work on the Web site, books and bikes. She showed up on my doorstep at 10 p.m. and slipped out at midnight. She had an 11-year-old daughter whose school was up the street from the Bikernet headquarters. She'd swing by in the morning on her way to work with packs of oatmeal and creamers, stay a few minutes and disappear out the door. She didn't ask questions, didn't seem bothered by anything and loved sex -- my kind of woman. But I was focused on the goal to build the bikes and driven to ride to Sturgis.

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