You've been there. You handed the Makita cordless drill to you're drunken buddy, and he drilled a hole in your big screen television. You tried to wrap the extension cord around his neck and finish him off. We came close to blows in the garage a couple of months back. I spent days carefully welding chunks of Samson exhaust pipes together to form a one-of-a-kind exhaust system.

All the welds were performed with gas and hanger rod. The pipes weren't perfect, but they fit the bill. They were actually intended to be prototypes, to be duplicated by a paid professional. After the first pass was completed the pipes fit like a glove, although they were artistically rough around the edges. Nuttboy came by on his Wednesday afternoon escape, and I handed him a highspeed grinder and instructed him to round off the welds. I worked on another project and paid no attention while sparks flew. When he was finished he tapped me on the shoulder and said humbly, "Not sure this is what you had in mind."

He had ground right through the pipes and left gaping holes alongside most of the welds. In addition, I discovered to my teeth-grinding dismay, that there were still large sections of the pipe ground so thin, that as soon as the torch tip came within 6 inches of the surface the pipe melted away. I spent another whole day filling the gaps. Who knows what will happen when the struggling bike fires to life. We'll have the only exhaust system on earth with baffles throughout.

That's not all. The grief continued. I hand made a muffler using a portion of a Samson baffle. We purchased a chromed, truck fender tip from San Pedro Muffler and went to work, but after hours of screwing with the shiny metal we almost shitcanned the unit. The fender tip was made out of a strange metal, almost pot metal, that didn't seem to take to the gas welding and wouldn't respond to brazing. For every hole I filled, another crack lurked. I welded, then smoothed on a bench grinder only to find cracks and holes to fill again. The shorty muffler probably weighs 50 pounds due to the vast layers of welding rod. As it stands, this is a pure prototype exhaust system. We should use it for testing then shitcan the rank piece of shit and start over.

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Frustrated, but pleased with the overall look we were ready for final metal work. This bike is being built by inexperienced hands, not professionals, in our backyard garage. Sure, I've built some bikes, but I wouldn't consider myself a metal fabricator. I came up with the initial design and we roughed out elements, but we needed a master metal worker to finish what we started. There are precious few, true metal craftsman, who I know. One is Billy Westbrook, another is Jesse James and recently, in the news, we displayed metal work by Roger at Goldammer (Goldammer Cycle Works Ltd., www.goldammercycle.com , 1-250-764-8002). High quality workmanship.

They're out there but not on every corner. I stumbled onto another super-slag artist under my nose. James and Larry Famighetti are Hamsters and own a corrugated steel metal shop in Harbor City, California, called Fam-Art. You'd be tweaked to rumble down Narbonne Street and stumble across this rusting corner building that's got to be the oldest swaying dump on the block. They specialize in structural steel (you could never tell it from their creaking tin shed) for homes and buildings. Large chunks of steel, massive shredders, presses and welders are scattered around the funky location that's reminiscent of the first shack Harleys were built in.

Nuttboy and I darkened their doors a couple of times to ask them to flame-cut a couple of chunks of steel for our fender brackets. The more I hung around the more quiet-James began to show me steel components he had fashioned for some of the local riders. He rebuilt and reformed Harley taillights to eliminate all the edges and grooves, then welded them to fenders so that ultimately there were no seams. The more I gawked at the sculptured parts, that demonstrated his ability, the more I knew we had discovered a man capable of Billy Westbrook fabrication qualities. We hauled the entire FXR to James the next week.

James relocated the straps in such a way to narrow the shock placement keeping that shrunken look in mind.

This is a close-up of the right fender strap. It's been corrected, reformed and readied for final welds.

We cut and fitted the tank and made the mounts, but James filled the underside, rear section for a perfect fit.

We jacked up the front of the tank and mounted it, but James filled it and formed the front of the tank to match the custom ridge along the top. He even made paint work suggestions that I found interesting. "If you paint a ridge like this with a light color," James said, "The ridge will disappear."

We decided to paint the bike a light House of Kolors pearl and create a dark teardrop panel on the top of the tank. He also created and welded fork stops to the neck.

As we rolled out of the shop that day James still had final welds to complete. He straightened out our seat pan, but needed to figure out a mounting arrangement. Finally we needed the Cyril Huze front fender brackets checked and welded into place.

We should have the Shrunken FXR back in our clutches in the next couple of weeks. We need to finish our rear brake and shifting mechanisms with Giggie from Compu-Fire, fire it up for a test ride and tear it down for paint.

Oh, I need to untie Nuttboy. I need that extension cord.

--Bandit

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