CUSTOM BIKE INDUSTRY AND INTEGRITY

Today I'm going to post some information about the latest news in the custom motorcycle industry and the integrity of our peers.

BIG BEAR CHOPPERS
Last month it became public knowledge that Big Bear Choppers (BBC) was going to have to issue a safety recall for a number of their models with regards to bad frame welds. This is obviously a huge issue since the frame is the foundation for the entire motorcycle. The internet has been buzzing about this issue with posts on numerous forums about how they planned to fix this problem for their customers that have motorcycles on the road and could be in danger of serious injury or even death. Their proposed solution and repair has now been published by NHTSA. At this moment I am unclear if it has been approved but I'm assuming it has been. In my opinion it's not an ideal solution from the customer's standpoint. It leaves their frame with a patch job done, the work is done without using a frame jig and the customer is supposed to be okay with their frame being painted as a "patch" job to their finish. Most people I know use powdercoating for their frame finishes and this can't be patched the way BBC is describing. I even know of a few people that have gone to the expense of chroming or nickel plating their frame. What's that customer supposed to do with a frame with the plating ground off for the repair?
From BBC's standpoint I can see how this is viable. It's tons of money cheaper than replacing all of these frames so I'm sure they feel they're fulfilling their obligations to their customers that have supported their company with their hard earned dollars. Personally I couldn't do this.
BBC marketed themselves as being a top notch custom motorcycle manufacturer using high quality parts and their prices reflected this. Somewhere along the line they decided to start making their frames inhouse. I'm sure in the long run it makes sense financially to do so. So they lowered their cost per bike by doing this but it also looks like they lowered the quality of the parts by doing the work inhouse. Did they lower their pricing when they started using lower quality parts? Nope. Personally I use a frame made by only the best frame makers I know of. Sure, I could hire a local welding shop to make my frames and lower my cost per bike by a lot but I also know the people I buy frames from have done a lot of research and only offer the best parts possible. To date we have had no frame problems.
I guess to me this sort of smacks of doing the bare minimum to pull your ass out of the fire. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a fan of BBC and I'll be honest when I say I wasn't shocked to hear they're having a safety recall. Hopefully BBC feels they're doing the right thing with their fix, from what I've seen most of their customers don't.
To see the entire filing for the recall go here: http://nhthqnwws111.odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/docservlet/Artemis/Public/Recalls/2008/V/RCDNN-08V129-1984.pdf

MORE ON INTEGRITY
Recently I posted a page on my web site about integrity and how I feel it has been thrown under the bus in our industry. When I started in this business I was impressed by how many people worked with a handshake as a contract and most people lived up to their word. I've always tried to do this and at the time felt our industry was one of the few that seemed to have high amounts of personal integrity involved. Some of the people I found with these same traits were Mike Corbin of Corbin seat fame, Duncan Keller of Yankee Engineuity, Mike Chase of Mike Chase photography, Keith R. Ball and Scott McCool both with Easyriders magazine at the time, Harold Pontarelli of HD Performance and Arlen Ness.
Over the past several years I've noticed the level of integrity seems to have dropped as the desire to make more money seems to have risen accordingly. I've been an eye witness to this with people like Big Mike of BMC basically ripping off a company he was partners in, American Eagle and starting BMC. Along the way he also copied frames by Daytec and went so far as to rip off the ideas of my personal friend Duncan Keller and copied his proprietary motor mounts, gauge mounts, coil mounts and coil covers. I had already seen other larger companies doing this with his parts, Pro-One was the first I believe and now Midwest Motorcycle parts has done the same thing. While I always thought those people were pretty low minded by doing this they didn't take the actual part made by someone else and put their name to it. Until recently I hadn't seen that done, remember I said until recently.
In October 2007 we were at the Grand National Motorcycle show at the Cow Palace. I happened to notice a bike entered in the show that looked amazingly like a bike I had built for a client a few months earlier. As I looked closer I realized it was indeed the same bike. It had a different set of handlebars, a front fender mounted to it and a new seat but other than those parts it was basically the same bike. The thing that really caught my eye was another shop had it posted that they had built the bike. Funny but I don't remember them being there when I designed the bike and did all the work to create the motorcycle. I wasn't happy about this but I wasn't going to really make anything more out of it unless I happened to see the owner of the bike. Had that happened I would have had something to say to him. A few months later my painter calls me and tells me to look at the current issue of Easyriders magazine. I was really shocked to see this other shop had the balls to get the bike featured in a national magazine with their name as the builders and creators. This is the epitome of plagiarism. The shop's name is U.S. Kustoms from Concord California. These jerk offs swapped a few parts and are calling it their creation. They even had the balls to steal the name we gave the bike, Rootbeer Float. I guess I'm from the Old School of Bikers because to me this offense would warrant some serious retribution. I think they're just about as low as a shop can be. It's one thing to "borrow" other people's ideas but to actually put your name on another person's work is just fucking scum bag material to me. Since posting my web page we have also sent out press releases to all of our media contacts informing them of how this low life shop operates. Not too much later I received an e-mail from U.S. Kustoms. They were apologetic and mentioned they thought it was more of a collaboration. Bullshit, it was nothing of the sort, it was plagiarism and they know it. Looking at their web site it looks like that's about all they do anyway. I'm not apologizing for calling them as I see them and it wasn't a collaboration. People like these jerk offs need to be run out of our industry. We have enough to deal with having to compete against cyber only "shops" selling parts at cut rate prices because they don't have a brick and mortar shop to support without having to worry about other shops ripping off our work and calling it theirs. I give U.S. Kustoms the big middle finger salute.

Unfortunately this type of behavior seems to be more prevalent lately, I think a lot of it has to do with people getting into this business that really don't belong. They've watched TV and figure they can do what they see these other guys doing and making money doing it. In most cases these people fail for various reasons and with a vastly shifting motorcycle market we're seeing more and more of these people disappearing. Maybe someday our industry will be back to where it once was. I hope so.