Brembo has a solid worldwide reputation, and I ran into a
hot looking Brembo representative at an illustrious bike function
and decide I’d give them a try. They’re hot and ready to rock.
The only items I needed were the locking nuts for the back of
the rotors bolts and the springer axle spacer. This set-up was
designed for a stock springer replacement.
Because of the wild, light, taper-legged Paughco Springer
my hiem joint link wasn’t long enough and I bastardized two
fine bolts together temporarily. At that point I wasn’t
considering a front fender. There are two aspects of
chopperdom that I have a tough time working around. Bikes
need front fenders and brakes. Can’t ride ‘em much without
those two bastards. Even in the old days I ran front fenders,
Avon Tyres and front brakes.
Chris Kallas came over at just the right moment. He’s as old
at riding as I am and an artist. We’ve featured his work in special
reports. He knows his bike shit and I’ve been trying to convince
him to see Jim Murillo about a job. Jim has a paint shop in
Torrance, but he’s not the graphics guy, Chris is.
As usual, about the time I think it’s going to be easy, the
devil pops up on my shoulder. Kent, from Lucky Devil Metal
Works in Houston called, “What are you going to do about a
front fender,” he said? “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’ll send you
some shots of my springer front fenders.” He hung up and Chris
looked at me sorta strange.
”Who the hell was that,” he said?
”Never mind,” I said flipping my computer on. Kent
developed a system of mounting springer front fenders that’s
clean as a whistle and odd as only the devil would make it. An
engineer wrote Bikernet when I first featured his wild notion and
chewed us out. “That idea’s not worth the powder the blow it to
hell,” he shouted.
At first I thought he was correct, but the more I considered
it, the more I determined that he was wrong. The caliper follows
the line of the rotor, so the fender will follow the circumference
of the Avon tire. Of course when I stepped into the ring to create
a similar configuration I couldn’t do it like the Devil does. The
Brembo caliper runs too far ahead of the rotor to mount the
fender so we ran carefully designed struts off the brake linkage.
Chris drew up the plan, then bent struts out of coat hanger for a
guide.
We constantly tried fitment again and again before tacking
them into place. I wouldn’t recommend this configuration to
anyone. If you run struts off the caliper they’re solid. The heim
joints allow the fender to fluctuate, especially side to side. I had
to find a concave washer that would allow the heim joints to
work up and down but not side to side.
Chris bent each rail to match in pure artistic form. Then I
tacked them.
Kent built the front fender with threaded aluminum bungs
underneath. I figured out some slender spacers to fit on top of
the fender and tacked the rails to them. I must have welded
them a dozen times trying to grab just enough rail, weld and
spacer to prevent cracks.
There you have it. It’s wild, but will it last to the Badlands?
--Bandit
