RIP Keith Moore

We just found out that our good friend Keith Moore passed away last week. Keith was one of the great ones. He was always willing to share his vast knowledge to help us youngsters out. We're going to miss you Keith!

1973 T140GT

We have started working on a custom project for a customer of ours. We've dubbed the bike the T140GT because we're planning on using a lot of vintage road racing concepts in the design of the bike. So far we've powdered the frame platinum silver and built a couple wheels for the bike, polished the forks (plus other bits) and started rebuilding/refinishing the motor.

1969 Triumph Bonneville Restoration

This is the first of what will be a ton post posts covering the restoration of Jeff's 1969 Bonnie. Jeff is the 6th friend or employee of the shop that has owned this bike, and he plans on being the last. Much of the work was done at Crossroads, with the remainder of the process at Jeff's house.

Here is what we started with, a dissasembled Triumph. Been here before. This was a mostly complete, and numbers matching bike, so well worth the effort. As everyone knows, the 1968-1970 650 bikes are some of the nicest offerings to come from Triumph.

More soon!

OK, OK, here is JaPanhead finished!

OK, I get it, we suck! After several people have asked me for them, and only 6 weeks since we last posted any updates...

here are pics of JaPanhead finished.

The bike has long been a daily rider, and has a pile of miles on it. Starts easy, runs great, and Dennis says it's a blast to ride. Come by the shop and check it out, or look for it at several local Arlington and Falls Church watering holes.

Triumph Come Home

Recently we've started attending some rallies and shows to showcase what we do. In June we went to Triumph Come Home held at the White Rose MC just outside of York PA who is famous for their hill climbing events and hill (it's a lot steeper in person than in the photos). The event was a three day ordeal of selling T-shirts riding Triumphs (some Panhead use too) on and off road and having a blast.

We were going to build a wheel while at the show, but someone forgot the hub hardware...

All of the bikes lined up, we made up signage describing the history and what we are doing to each bike.

The second row of bikes, talk about quality parking

We rode the TR6C, the '50 TR5 and my chopper to the top of the hill climb... via the access road which wasn't exactly paved.

Thanks to a late night and last minute reassembly, we had to re-time Shaggy's '58 Trophy Bird using only what we had available to us at the time so a ruler and cigarette cellophane had to do. Started right up once re-timed and the mag nut tightened down.

JaPanhead's Tank - Finally!!!

Back to our schedule of posting about once a month....

Here is the final piece to the entire JaPanhead project - the tank.

Dennis decided he liked the look of this Cole Foster tank at the beginning, but if you look at the early posts on the bike you can see that we modified it quite a bit. The petcocks were removed, the mounting was converted to jap style, and we welded a panel in the front to narrow the opening of the tunnel.

We decided to go a bit overboard with the finishing, so we ground down and reshaped the tank a bit with a combination of body solder and metal fillers, powder coated it, and then painted it. The top of the tank got a coat of Dupont chromabase in black, then cleared and sanded. Next, Dennis spent a good deal of time laying out the striping. Afterwards we shot the white, then more clear - followed by a several stage hand sand and polish.

The last bit was the hand pinstriping done by Pinstripe Chris is blue.

It really turned out great! If you have a chance to swing by the shop, come and take a look!

Everything but the tank....

So it's been another month since we updated the blog....

Here is JaPanhead done and ready for a tank. More on the tank soon!