CHOPPER CHALLENGE

So CMT has their new show, Chopper Challlenge where builders get a crate load of parts and are assigned a client to build a custom bike for. Not sure how many have seen this new show but I've seen a couple of episodes. I kind of like the format of 30 days to build the bike and they're told who their client is. Not sure about the parts being semi mandated although I understand them wanting to use parts from sponsors. I'd say if they want this to happen then it needs to be mandatory they use all of the parts supplied since the people sending their parts are sponsors of the show and should get their name mentioned and parts shown.
I saw the first episode where Kirk Taylor built a bike for Geico. Nice enough bike and it seemed to fit the theme. I was a little disappointed that Kirk seemed to think he needed to dress a certain way and portray some sort of a personna for the cameras.
I missed the second episode where Scott Long built the Incredible Hulk bike. I did however see the bike in person in Santa Maria a couple of weeks ago and I have to say I was very impressed. While it may not fit the whole Hulk theme with huge parts and beefy chunks of metal I did like the paint they did. The paint is really done nicely and the bike tends to fit Scott's building personality. I didn't see the show but I somehow doubt Scott did anything to play up to the cameras, just doesn't seem like that kind of guy to me.
The latest episode was Cole Foster building a bike for the Roadrunner internet services from Time Warner. I've always like Cole's style, understated and very clean. He, like myself likes to see the mechanics of the motorcycle. He's not one for massive body panels and tedious superfluous crap on a bike. He builds clean hot rod bikes and I've always liked that style, probably why I tend to build my bikes that way most of the time. The bike was done nicely although there were a couple of things that disappointed me.
First was that somehow Mike Rouse from BMC seemed to think he needed to be in the epsiode even though he didn't do a damn thing except take up oxygen but then again that's pretty much his specialty. I wonder if he's figured out what kind of oil goes in his bikes yet. I love the story I tell anyone that knows Big Mike about how he didn't know what kind of oil went in his bikes he was building when he was the "Master Builder and Designer" at American Eagle. I think most Master Builders would know what oil goes in the bikes they're building. Sorry Mike, you're not really a builder in my book, master or otherwise.
Second was the lack of color used on the bike. The Roadrunner's colors would be purple and grey and could have been done in a really clean paint scheme to add something to the bike. Instead they went with what looked like a black frame and oil tank while the sheetmetal was done in silver. It just didn't do much for me. The rest of the bike was really pretty cool, well the pipes could have been something a little better but the bike was more than decent. I'd have really liked to see something done in the color area though. A little color would have gone a long ways to add a little snap to the custom work Cole did.
That's enough for now.
FTF

MOTORCYCLE MADNESS

I know this is technically out order chronologically speaking but I wanted to post something about Motorcycle Madness. This is an event we just did a couple of weeks ago in Santa Maria. It's promoted by HP Productions, they do Hollister now as well as several other events on the west coast. I've done their Grand National Show in October a few times and always liked that event. We had been told how huge this event was and how we just had to do it. It's not a huge deal to pull our trailer down there so we decided to give it a try.
Well huge it ain't. It's maybe average to me but then again I like to see crowds like you see at Sturgis and Daytona. There were only 4 builders in the builder's plaza. There was Todd's Cycles from Huntington Beach. Santa Clarita Choppers, a fairly new operation from what we could tell was next to us. There was us and then Scott Long, our friend from Central Coast Cycles in Santa Cruz. There was a lot of indoor smaller vendors, some food people, Hoppe was there with their really cool bagger fairings and some exhaust guys I'd never heard of. That was really about it. Oh yeah, Meguiars had a huge ass trailer there for their products.
Apparently we were also at the same hotel with most of the builders as well as a bunch of others from the event. The weather was beautiful, we can't complain about that but the crowds really weren't there.
I'm still on the fence whether or not I'd do this event again. In a few months I may decide it wasn't too bad but then again I may decide with the ridiculous price of diesel fuel, high hotel and food bills that this event just wasn't worth it. Right now the jury is still out on this event.
We'll be at Corbin's place for the Hollitser Rally July 11-13 so stop on by and say howdy, aloha, hola or whatever you wanna say as long as it's civil.

FTF
Ride free

MEMORIAL DAY AND MORE.....

I'll probably do more than one update tonight but I'll start with Memorial Day. To me it's a day to honor those vets that gave the ultimate sacrifice like my Unlce Ross. He fought with his three brothers in WW II and then re-enlisted for the Korean War. He was a flyer. He flew The P-51 Mustangs in both wars as a bomber escort. He managed to make it all the way through the first war and was shot down over Korea. He's techincally an MIA to this day. All of his brothers managed to come home safe from WW II. My grandfather was one of them, he was at the Battle of the Bulge. So with all four of the brothers being in service during WW II my family has a history of serving in the military. On Memorial Day we always fly the flag and try to remember those that have given their lives so that we can enjoy the American way of life and be safe at home.
During this latest war I have been a huge supporter of our men and women in service. We offer discounts to the military as well as police and fire personnel because we feel we should give back to those that protect our families at home and abroad. We're also big supporters of Red Fridays.
Just before Memorial Day weekend I got an e-mail from a person that had ordered a wheel from us for his Harley. He had an APO address so we knew he was in the military in some way. I now know he's in the Air Force stationed in Germany. Anyway, this gibblet head ordered the wrong wheel from us and didn't know any better that he needed to give us more information for us to get him the right part. He informed me of the wrong part and I researched what happened. As I suspected it was his fault. We sell a lot of wheels and this is the first problem we've run into because most customers give us all the info we need. I explained that even though it was way beyond our usual time of accepting a return I'd let him send it back so we could get him the right wheel. Well that wasn't good enough. He wanted a refund, something we never, ever do. He also wanted to be paid for shipping the wheel back as well as be paid for the original shipping to send him the wheel. We do not do that. If a return is needed we authorize a return to the customer but the shipping back to us is on them. That's how it is with every company I've ever ordered anything from on the net or otherwise. So even though I was willing to bend our return policy and get him the right wheel he wasn't happy with that. He started m-fing me about how I was ripping him off and saying how he would bad mouth our shop to everyone he's stationed with. He even went so far as to mock the Red Fridays we support and push on my site and everywhere we go. Gee whiz what will I do now? I'll lose all those sales that I've never gotten from his buddies. Sorry to bash a man in uniform but this guy is a jackass in the first degree. I don't take shit from people like this pencil neck was trying to throw and I let him know it. The customer is always right until he's fucking wrong and then he needs to know he's fucking wrong and in this case he was. I flunked customer ass kissing in business school.
I'm still a huge supporter of the military and what they're doing because I've been around enough to know you get assholes and jerk offs in any group when you get the group to be large enough.
I'll still wear my red shirt on Fridays but it won't be for Andres Koplaine or whatever his name is. He can kiss my ass.
Happy Memorial Day everyone.

FTF AND MORE

I was talking to Sam from Rolling Thunder frames the other day and he mentioned how it seems like I don't really call it as I see it. It was sarcasm as anyone can plainly tell by reading my blog. I think it came about when the subject of the BBC recall came up and how I've seen some real nightmares. Their recall fix isn't going to fix their frame issue because their frames have inherent issues in their design. I won't bother to mention what those issues are, I know what they are so let's see if BBC can figure it out although I seriously doubt they will. They're too busy building what has to be the world's ugliest "bagger" or suing people that dare have some pointed parts on their bikes like BBC invented that whole gothic pointed swingarm look. Get a life guys, nobody is trying to copy your look, it's not that flattering to start with.

Mentioning suing people brings me to an old t-shirt I found in the back of my closet the other day. It has the letters FTF on the front. Those shirts were very popular back in the day, it means F**k The Factory. It's funny how some things never change. Back then The Factory, by the way it's the Harley factory we're talking about here kids, was running bike prices up, screwing retail customers by forcing them to buy extended warranties, keeping the production numbers low to intentionally manipulate the price of their products all the while threatening pretty much everyone with a lawsuit over trademark infringement. I got a letter from their lawyers way back when we used the word Harleez in our shop name. I thought it was funny at the time, we were a minuscule shop but somehow they felt threatened. We were in the process of changing the company name anyway but it was still funny.
So today Harley is still manipulating their production numbers to keep their pricing up. They've gone to pushing legislation that would kill off as many independent shops and small custom builders as possible. They feel threatened by custom builders because we can do what they never will be able to do, build really cool bikes to suit the riding public. They're just another cookie cutter production bike, actually the King of the cookie cutters to me. Others like Big Dog, the now defunct AIH, APC, the soon to be open new Indian, BMC, BBC et al are also cookie cutter "customs", just on a smaller scale. So even today, years later I find myself still having those old sentiments, F**k The Factory. I've got no respect for them anymore.
Lately we had a potential customer asking us to use Harley parts on a build for him. Sorry but we won't do that, mostly based on my principles. I refuse to support a huge ass company that's constantly trying to put me out of business, FTF. The other reason is because we can find parts that are made a lot better and in the U.S. so why would we use parts from an inferior manufacturer?
I remember talking to some jerk off at the local Harley stealership back in the mid 90's and he told me it was impossible to build a custom bike without using some Harley parts. I called that as I saw it and told him he was full of shit because he was. I had been building bikes for awhile and not using any of their shitty parts so here we are about 15 years later and I'm still building bikes without using their shitty parts. FTF.

This week we're headed to Santa Maria for the Motorcycle Madness event. If you're in the area stop by and have a bottled water on us.

I think that about does it for this installment. I hope I called them as I saw them this time around, was it good enough Sam? I wanna make sure I'm not holding back, you gotta say it the way it is. FTF.

NEW STUFF

We here at California Customs have a few new things going on. First is the introduction of two new models. The new Nomad II and the Bagfather 250 are two new bagger models from our design shop. We are losing the venerable old Nomad Convertible RS model but we now have some new designs for the next generation of custom baggers.

We've also brought back a couple of past programs. The Buy & Fly program allows our customers to fly to San Jose, get picked up at the airport and be put up for a night in a local hotel so they can visit our shop in person and have their new bike or custom kit designed for them while they're here. They then get credits for the airfare and hotel when they place their order for their new bike.

Our new dealership programs also are new. We're accepting applications for a very limited number of dealerships throughout the country. We're looking for independent motorcycle dealerships that are pasionate about custom bikes. They can sell the complete bikes or our custom designed kits. When they get our kits we allow them to either assemble the kit and sell as a built bike or sell it to their customer as an unassembled kit. We allow the dealer to make the decision that makes sense to their business. We have some of the easiest terms for new dealerships in the industry but we will only allow a small number of shops to become dealers in order to assure the new dealers are what we want as representatives of our brand and we can keep our high level of quality that we're known for.

I'd like to thank Cyril Huze for posting our news in his blog at www.cyrilhuzeblog.com .

We're getting ready for our next event, Motorcycle Madness at the Santa Maria Fairplex so come on out and say hi if you're at the event.