Holt Renfrew X Doublenaut. SICK COLLABO ALERT!!! {0}
Nice work, buds!
Sep 14, 2012
Sep 14, 2012
Shirts & Destroy {0}
Snelgrove has two new shirts for sale at Shirts & Destroy.
Go, buy, wear, enjoy, destroy.
Sep 14, 2012
Sep 14, 2012
Our Work Is Never Over {2}
A while ago my friend Ryan sent me these replica emblems that Harley originally used from 1947-1950. I’d planned to use them on my sportster when I painted the tank over the winter but given that I don’t have that bike any more (or won’t, soon) I thought they’d look good on the Dyna.
I ordered a set of mounting brackets online which came in last week.
I’m not really one for chrome so my first order of business was to use a scotchbrite pad and remove some of the bling from these. Eventually I may strip them completely, nickel-plate them and paint the red black orrrrr leave them raw but for now this is good enough! You can’t really tell from the shitty iPhone photo but it made a huge difference. The top is un-sanded, bottom sanded.
Next step was to remove the nu-metal emblems from the tank which was a breeze. I’d read a bunch online about hairdryers and dental floss as removal tools but with these I was pretty much able to just pull them off.
I used a plastic razor-blade to remove the remnants of the double sided tape but mostly I just rubbed it with my thumb until it came off…
Clean – not bad as it…
–
Next, I took a little time to swap out the big, chrome H-D air cleaner for the Joker Machine Big Twin Air Cleaner which uses a 4″ lifetime K&N filter, just like the one I had on the Sportster.
Unlike the Spotster air cleaner which is available in more of a raw finish, the Big Twin filter is only available in either chrome or black so I bought the chrome one and busted out the scotchbrite pad, yet again. I have a feeling I’m going to use a lot of these.
You can see here that the new filter is approximately the same size as the trim ring on the old one… much nicer!
I used a little gasket remover and a plastic razor-blade to get rid of the remnants of the gasket.
Unfortunately a little made it’s way down to the engine case… A word to the wise, don’t let this stuff touch any painted surfaces!
This is perhaps a better illustration than the one I was talking about above of the differences between chrome and a surface that has had a little bit of TLC with a scotchbrite pad.
I opted to sand down some parts while leaving others chrome for a little bit of contrast and I think it worked out well.
–
Soon after, I set to task with placing my new emblems and trying to find a spot that would require the least amount of bending to get them to fit. I opted to pretty much center the text over the air cleaner and mark it using a wax pencil.
Bending the mounting plate to fit the profile of the tank was easy but I was worried that once I attached the emblems themselves that they’d pull the mounting brackets off.
I was going to heat them at low temp in the oven and then bend them over the mounts but I found that giving them a light bend by hand and then fitting them over the mounts worked well enough.
The hardest part was trying to ensure that I’d set them at the same place on the left side of the tank. With literally almost no hard edges from which to measure it was tough but I think I got it.
Now she’s really starting to look like something!
By spring, this is more or less how she should look…
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Next up, I swapped out the Screamin’ Eagle slip-ons / stock headers for a set of Vance & Hines Short Shots. The ones that were on there actually had an amazing tone but I just couldn’t get into the look of them so they had to go!
Having done this once before, the basic set up was a lot easier. Most of the guess work had been taken out of it and I was able to do things in an order that made more sense for me.
In an effort to be 3-4db less of a son of a bitch, I installed the “Quiet Baffles” which do help some but these things are still pretty obnoxious.
Getting the old pipes off was relatively easy, save for trying to gain access to some electrical connections that had to be undone.
The new ones went on pretty painlessly as well but those same electrical connections were a total ball-ache to re-attach… I had to remove the whole battery box just to get to them. Thanks again, Jamie, for your help with that.
Much better already! Beyond programming the FuelPak and maybe dulling some chrome I probably won’t do much more until the cold weather hits because it’ll involve breaking things down for paint and right now I just want to squeeze the last few rays of sunshine out on this beast.
Sep 14, 2012
RIP King Lou {0}
Lou Magoo has been a part of my extended family for a very long time and it was with great sadness that I learned of his passing yesterday morning.
My deepest condolences to Chris and Danielle. Hopefully there is some solace in knowing that Lou had the best life he could have and gave back all the love he was given tenfold.
He will be sorely, sorely missed by everyone that had the pleasure of spending time with him…
…and smelling his farts.
Sep 12, 2012
Pet Fooled {0}
My good buddy Yan’s brother has been working for some time on a documentary, entitled Pet Fooled, focusing on some of the shadier sides of the pet food industry and is currently raising funds
to help finish the project.
About Pet Fooled
Pet Fooled is a documentary exploring the underbelly of the pet food industry. As a business that appears to be largely unregulated and controlled by a conglomerate of companies, this film will take an inside look at whether the nutrition we feed our pets is actually good for them. After the dramatic 2007 pet food recall that left thousands of pets dead- a news event that most likely didnt make your headline news- a time has come when this industry needs investigated; held accountable for the injustice that is packaged and sold on a daily basis. The film will examine the history of the pet food industry, highlighting the way these 5 corporations own and manufacture over 90% of commercial pet food. In doing so, the film will unearth the marketing manipulation which convinces society of information situated far from the truth. With 7 out of 10 individuals owning or having owned pets, this documentary will unveil the myths on a topic that touches close to heart, and hopefully in doing it will educate society of the misnomers regarding safety, regulation, and nutritional legitimacy of this industry.
Click here to donate if you’ve got a couple bucks to share.
Sep 11, 2012
Sep 11, 2012
Ch Ch Ch Changes {4}
I know that I don’t talk too, too much about what I do for a living on here but for the last 8 years I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working as a Designer and eventually Art Director with the fine folks at InViVo Communications, a health-care targeted communications studio.
I’ve had the opportunity to both watch and contribute as the company grew from 6 people when I started to more than 60 when I left. We’d moved through at least 3 offices and marveled as we became the biggest company of it’s kind in Canada and one of the best in the world in our given field. I know you can’t tell much from looking at the site because so much of what we did was private, but we did some seriously stellar work there. I’m proud of what the company was able to achieve and the contributions I was able to make but like all good things, my time there had to come to an end.
There are a great many people I will miss seeing on a daily bases dearly and I will always be deeply thankful for the opportunities Andrea, Yan & Reg have given me and the ways in which they’ve enriched my life and shown me possibilities for myself I’d never dreamed of. Thank you, always, InViVo.
All that said, a short while ago my old friend Lyndsey approached me about joining the team at SapientNitro where my main focus would be on… amongst other things, of course… Harley-Davidson Motorcycles!
After meeting Michael Shostak, a VP at SapientNitro, at the Town Moto opening party I knew that it was something I wanted to seriously pursue and the door opened for me to come in see if I’d be a good fit for the company. Elliott, Phil, Kim, Arjun and everyone I met through the interview process were all so awesome that I knew that I wanted to be here and at that point just hoped that they wanted me too! I guess they did.
I just went through my first week with the company as an Art Director and have been honored by the extremely warm welcome they’ve given me and humbled by the talent I’m surrounded by. I think I needed the change of scenery to re-ignite my passion for design and let’s face it, there is no better way to kick off the next stage of my career than working on Harley! I feel honored and priveledged to get to spend my days working on something that I relate to and love so dearly and am seriously so excited about the road that lays ahead.
Sep 3, 2012
Our Work Is Never Over {2}
Ole’ Jankie Jamie has been putting in some hours at the garage building a new loft/work area so I figured I would as well, except working purely in my own self interests. This new bike is pretty rad, and comfortable, but my last bike looked awesome and I want this one to look awesome as well.
Hopefully it won’t take much, mostly just a few part swaps and some carefully placed splashes of black paint but I’m seriously considering a different front end so I can put a big fat front tire on ‘er just like my last bike… But I digress…
I decided to start testing paints using the battery box trim piece that I really think shoulda been black from the factory, but then again if you asked me a lot of stuff on this bike shoulda been black from the factory – I’m not a big chrome guy.
I scuffed it up using a scotchbrite pad and then hit it with a few coats of VHT Roll Bar & Chassis paint because it is self-priming.
Then I went over it with a couple of light coats of VHT Wrinkle Black…
Much better, in my opinion, which just happens to be right.
Then I picked up a new set of Posh grips from Flying Squirrel Motorcycles, removed the old ones and painted the bars ends because these grips are semi-translucent.
Removing the right grip was a ball-ache because I didn’t have a new throttle tube and the old grip was heavily glued on so it had to be meticulously scraped off…
But it was worth it because these are so much radder than the stock grips!
I’ve got a bunch of other stuff on order now to continue making this bike my own until the cold weather hits when the real work begins!
Riveting stuff, I know…
Sep 3, 2012
A New York Minute {3}
One of my dearest buds, Sparkles, decided to up and get hitched this fall so a couple of us decided to spend a weekend together in NYC, just the boys, before he descends into married life. No strippers of donkey shows (well, not many anyway) but just a solid weekend away with the buds!
Between scoring cheap flights with Porter, scoring a cheap 4 penthouse suite in Brooklyn, Quicksand deciding to do reunion shows on the very weekend we were going to be there any way, the crew we’d assembled (Spark, Rob, Neil, Matias, Killer) and the buds we were able to hang with while we were there (Brother Lemoine, Gordie & Ziz, etc., etc.,) this was such an amazing weekend we won’t soon forget.
Aug 23, 2012
Dear John {1}
Let me tell you about my Aunt Marylyn’s best friend, John McBride. John is a real character; kind of a odd duck (which I like) but good hearted, funny, adventurous and full of good stories. Even at 75, John spends time scuba diving off the coast of New Zealand, motorcycling across the country and riding his bicycle all over the place. The unfortunate thing is that now, John is dead.
John was killed last Sunday night while riding his bike (my Aunt thinks probably home from church, but I haven’t gotten any more details than that) by a man, if we can call him that, who was driving with a suspended license.
Not only was this piece of shit driving illegally, once he hit John, he got out of the car and saw what he’d done, got back in and peaced the fuck out! I can think of almost nothing worse than hitting someone, accidental as it may have been, and leaving them alone in the street to die. Fortunately for John, it happened so close to home that some of his neighbors rushed to be with him while his life slipped away.
The driver was found and arrested a short while later but I haven’t yet heard what is going to happen to him. I hope that he is punished to the FULLEST extent of the law and if he isn’t, I hope that karma (or whatever cosmic force you believe in) climbs into a truck and runs him the fuck over.
RIP John, you will be missed.
Aug 23, 2012
Our Work Is, Literally, Never Over {1}
I posted a couple of weeks ago about my beautiful little Sporty that was unceremoniously knocked / run over and left for dead by someone who thought that hitting a bike, picking it back up, and driving away was somehow “ok”. Well, it’s not. Ever since then, and not to be too dramatic because I recognize how much of a first world problem this really is, my life has been a bit of a whirlwind of cops, insurance companies, dealerships and craigslisters…
Basically, it was going to take 4-6 weeks to fix and this is summer and I wasn’t going to miss out on the end of riding season so I demanded a rental. Unfortunately, the repairs were around $3,000.00 and a rental is $1,300.00 per week so the insurance company decided that it made more sense to declare the bike a “constructive write-off” and pay me out for it, also giving me the opportunity to buy it back at a discount. So, I’d fix it and sell it once she’s back in fighting shape! More on that later…
While I thought about the offer, I started looking around at bikes on the used market because when insurance companies give you an offer, it’s not the cost to replace the bike, it’s what it would have been worth if I sold it the day it was damaged. Problem with that is that I wouldn’t have sold it, I loved that bike. I’d just dumped a fuckload of money and time into it and ALMOST had it looking the way I wanted and then poof! Gone! Just because someone doesn’t know how to drive like a normal human being. Bitter much? Yup.
In my search, I decided that I’d consider getting a bike that fit me a little better and I wanted to stay with Harley (more on that later) so moving out of the Sportster range and into the Dyna range started to make more sense. I found myself a 2009 Street Bob with around 6200 kms on it and it was just a few blocks away so I went and checked it out.
The previous owner had already dropped the bars (which was one of the first things I’d do) and it came with a pretty nice passenger set up, upgraded pipes/AC/FuelPak, a easily detachable windscreen, etc., etc. To be honest, I think it needs a little work before I’ll really fall in love with it but it’s a good base for me and it fits well. This quick little photoshop rendering shows what just a little bit of black paint or powdercoat, some new grips and different tank badges would do…
…then swap out the pipes for some Short Shots, the AC for the Joker, and the tail light for a Black Beauty and bingo, bango! I’ll have a bike that fits well, rolls like hell and will look 300% radder. Obviously, I’ll be updating as she gets updated. Riveting stuff, I know…
Aug 23, 2012
No Need For Lies If The News Ain’t Breakin’ {0}
Tonight I leave for NYC and with any luck I’ll get into one of the two sold-out Quicksand shows this weekend. If I don’t, no big, I’m one of the lucky ones who got to see them a couple of times the first time around.
More here.
Aug 16, 2012
#1 Good Boy X The Pearl. Sick Collabo! {2}
#1 Good Boy – #1 in the park and #1 in my heart. Seeing as I wear my heart on my sleeve, I figured it made sense to give lil Walty his rightful place, front and center.
Daniel Innes at the wonderful Pearl Harbor Gift Shop met the mandate perfectly; match his likeness without being too photorealistic and make it illustrative (mostly so that it’ll fit with the rest of the stuff I have & will have on my arm) without it being cartoonish.
I’ll post better pictures once it’s healed (ok, probably not) but here it is. We’ll likely go back in and darken some stuff up later if need be but it’s better to start light and darken later than go too dark and not be able to pull back. Totes obvi.
Sorry momma.
Aug 14, 2012
Town Moto Tech Night {0}
After a very successful Oil Change Night the ladyboys at Town Moto have decided to hold another tech night this Thursday (August 16th) to go over brake bleeding, chain cleaning and some smaller stuff like cable lubing if they have time.
Aug 10, 2012
Our Work Is Never Over: Hit & Run Edition {6}
Oh brother. Some guys just can’t get a break!
First. I finally get my bike back from 3 weeks away and then put in as much time on ‘er as I can. I rode out to Niagara for a wedding two weekends ago…
Then my points cover rattles off.
Then I ride out to Port Elgin to surprise my mom on her 65th birthday.
Then my exhaust flange bolts rattle off.
Pops and I (and Big A) drove around Port Elgin trying to find the 5/16″ 24 (fine thread) bolts I needed and had a hell of a time finding them on a civic holiday. All of the garages and auto parts stores in the region were closed, not to mention the HD dealer in Owen Sound, but we eventually tracked some down at a hardware store and set to task of re-installation… We didn’t reaaaaaally have the right tools so we only got 3/4 on, enough to get me home for sure.
Then my bike gets run over by a car.
So I’m at work and my bike is parked out front, like always, when some of the guys from the 4th floor come down to tell me that some woman knocked my bike over, drove over the front wheel, got out and recruited a passer-by to stand it back up, got back in her car and drove away. Fortunately, those guys are always out there smoking and they caught the license plate number and told me what happened.
Despite my “not always favorable” opinion of the Police, I called the fuzz and they told me that I had to lug the bike up to the collision reporting center which is on the other end of the city… I asked of they could send someone down and she said she could send someone down but they were just going to tell me that I’m going to have to take it up there. I said send ‘em anyway. The cop got here and was a super sweet dude, surveyed the damage, took witnesses statements and said that I don’t, in fact, have to lug the bike up to the collision reporting center and that he was going to charge whoever it was with a hit & run collision. Awesome.
Then, while the officer was still across the street, they tracked down the driver’s husband who (along with his wife) happens to run the spin studio a couple doors down from my office. The cop came back to give me the good news and while we were talking this guy comes in and tries to talk to me, presumably to try to smooth things over, but does a horrible job.
First, the guy tells me that his wife is in tears and is really sorry. Ok, I can appreciate that… Then he tells me that “she wasn’t trying to sneak away or anything.” Except, that’s what she did. He said “how is she supposed to know who’s bike it is?” Um, leave a note? Ask the guys standing there? Call the Police? I dunno… Either way, I can appreciate that she panicked and didn’t know what to do so whatever… Shit happens.
The next thing the guy says, though, made my blood boil. He said “no disrespect, but the way you have it parked there… I mean… I’ve almost hit it a couple of times before too…” so I said “parked like what? legally in a legal spot? If you can’t drive that’s not my fault.” to which he says “just saying” to which I say “don’t say” and asked him why he’s still talking… The cop had seen enough and took the guy away before it escalated any further. What a dong.
I spoke with the woman, herself, last night and while I don’t doubt that she feels badly, the unfortunate reality is that no one really understands that when you make a stupid mistake like that, nothing can make it better. Let’s say, for a second, that insurance covers the full cost of the repairs, who is going to pay for my time to deal with this? Is anyone going to rent me a bike to ride while mine is in the shop? Is anyone going to pay me for my monthly bike/insurance payments on a bike I can’t ride?
Without having taken it to a mechanic I can tell that the signals, brake lever, brake pedal & exhaust heat shields are all damaged but the biggest problem is that the front brake rotor is horribly warped so the bike really can’t be ridden. I can only hope that the wheel hasn’t been ruined and that there aren’t any more serious fork, alignment or frame problems… I’ll find out once I take it in, I guess.
Imagine I hadn’t noticed all the smaller things and gotten on it and rode away like I normally would have? I could have been seriously hurt and this is the over-arching issue with her making NO effort to tell me about the damage she’d caused. Not to mention the fact that I’ll again be without bike for, at best, a couple of weeks and at worst the rest of the summer. Not that I’m expecting to be out that long but seriously, summer will be over before we know it and I want to enjoy this machine that I put so much time, money and energy into.
Then I get home and my new points cover is in from Old Gold Garage… Looks like I’ll have to wait a while to install that beaut.
