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.