It's been a while since the last installment of our Back to the Sixties project bike, but we haven't given up, nor have the guys from Top Shelf Customs. For those of you just tuning in, the goal of our Back to the Sixties project was to build a sixties-style chopper using as many new products as possible, which meant improving the performance without losing the style.
In our last article, Top Shelf had all but the fine details of the mock-up finished when we asked the readers for a little help with the paint scheme. Barry LaCour, the owner of Top Shelf Customs and designer of the bike, said that "Between our fax and my email we received paint schemes from over 300 readers. It was insane, like sitting down at a restaurant with too many choices on the menu." After weeks of going over all of the paint ideas he still couldn't decide which one idea would really capture the era we were after. Then he realized the problem: he was trying to choose just one. So he asked himself, could we mix and match some of the ideas to create the final paint scheme? After all, two heads are better than one, right?
Once we had the paint design finished we took a trip to see Matt Polasky at Color Zone Designs. Matt's known to be one of the best color mixers on the West Coast and for what they had in mind nothing less would do. You see, like the rest of the bike, they wanted the paint job like it was done back in the '60s: Hard-lined candies faded on top of heavy silver metal flake with a dozen or so coats of tarnished clear.
Well, when we laid the idea out for Matt, his first question was, "What the hell is 'tarnished clear?'" We answered, "Just make it look like it was painted some 30-odd years ago."
Just about three weeks after Matt kicked us out of his shop, he walked into Top Shelf with one of the coolest paint jobs we'd ever seen. Using all-modern House Of Kolor paint products, Color Zone created a true vintage paint finish. We were blown away-it looks like it was painted back in the day.
While the sheetmetal was at the painter's, Barry and Al Raposo of Top Shelf still had a few minor details to work out on the bike. One of the most important details was the exhaust system. Barry wanted to use the upswept style system with two trumpet mufflers that were popular in the early days. But most of what was available ran the rear cylinder pipe up high, which tends to burn your leg. This was no problem; we used a Paughco front squish pipe and made the rear the way we wanted to. Once that was squared away, Barry called Jeff at Hell On Wheels for our set of NOS trumpet upswept mufflers to complete the exhaust system.
Next on the list was finding a place for the battery. Since this is a kick-start only bike, we were able to use a much smaller battery than required for an electric start bike. Most of the time the battery would go under the seat, but since the bike used the air ride seat by Rigid Aire, there just wasn't room for it there. Eventually, the shop decided to put the battery under the transmission. Because we weren't using a motor plate to connect the motor to the trans, we were able to raise the transmission up an inch, just enough to fit our 4x3x5-inch battery above the frame rail.
With the battery in place, the next item on the list was mounting the compressor that operates the Rigid Aire seat. Since the compressor is not very big, we were able to mount it under the transmission as well. The airline runs from the compressor up the seat post, and over the oil bag to the air bags.
The oil lines were next on the list. We really didn't give much thought to them until it was time to find something appropriate. Our choices were rubber lines with some sort of hose clamp or steel lines with some sort of fitting. We went for the stainless steel lines from Matt Hotch Designs. With the help of Steve McCann, Al and Barry were able to bend and connect the lines without a hiccup.
With everything mechanical finished we had a few styling issues to take care of. The seat pan and its white with silver metalflake diamond tuck came from Bossley Cycles, and Azteca Custom Cars in Long Beach rolled the purple piping.
Another item we had to have was the cast aluminum valve covers by Custom Cycle Engineering. Randy Smith, the founder of Custom Cycle Engineering, originally designed these back in the late '60s.
Some of you may have noticed that we changed the handlebars from what you saw in the previous issue. After the bike got further along, we noticed something was not quite fitting in with the rest of the concept-the bars. So Barry decided to go with a set of Flanders dog bones with some Top Shelf flat 3-inch Z-bars.
Oh yeah, and the air cleaner is a bit of a mystery to us. We don't know how old it is. We don't know who designed it. And we don't know where to buy one like it. These questions may be answered by motorcycle historian Dave Freston of Chopper Dave's Casting Co. He donated it for this project.
The taillight and license plate mount were no-brainers. The taillight is Top Shelf Customs' own "Bombshell" light housing bolted to their "Agitator" weld-on plate mount.
Last but not least is the jockey shift and clutch pedal setup. Since this was kind of a last minute decision they opted to use what they had. Barry and Al designed front and rear clutch cable guides that allowed them to use the Performance Machine Contour shift pedal assembly as the clutch pedal. Top Shelf also made the chrome shift lever. The shifter knob is another one of Barry's swap meet finds. It's a traditional lowrider piece, purple and clear urethane with an inlaid Virgin Mary. It lights up when you turn the bike's lights on.
And there you have it. "El Presidente" by Top Shelf Customs, our Back to the Sixties project bike. What do you think?
The guys at Top Shelf Customs would like to thank the following companies that participated in this project:
Custom Chrome
Performance Machine
Paughco
Barnett Tool and Engineering
Paul Cox
Rigid Aire
DNA Specialties
Color Zone Designs
Matt Hotch Designs