It’s a Panhead man!

It’s amazing to me when someone will call with a bike for sale but they are not ready to show it. When you want to sell something shouldn’t you be ready to show it? Especially when you call a buyer out to take a look at it? I got a call like that over a year ago, the man said he had a panhead he wanted to sell but he had to get it up to his house from the shed, I told him no problem I’ll wait for your call. Now you can be polite and say you will wait but you can never really wait, something like that will get sold from out underneath you. I called the man back a few days later and asked if he was ready, a big fat no was his reply. A few more days and still no, I asked if he needed some help; saying how Josh and I would be happy to come down to lend a hand. But he didn’t want any help. I can dig that, but this went on for months eventually I gave up on the guy and thought “I most of lost that one.” It was one year later on my first bike night at my Bar, which if you read the article for awhile, you know it’s a big party! Josh and I were getting everything together for the big night, when I got a message on my phone from a guy about a panhead for sale. Wasting no time I called the man back I didn’t want to lose out on another panhead! To my surprise it was the same guy from last year! He told me he finally got that panhead up to the garage. I looked at Josh and said “I got to go!” I grabbed a kid that works for me named Kyle and we jumped in the van to head for Taylor Michigan. The panhead was in his garage, it was crusty but it was a panhead! You could tell it had sat on a dirt floor for years the rim was so rusted you could see the inner tube! It had an old narrow jammer springer front end on it with a spool type hub and the smallest brakes rotors I’ve ever seen. It had an old Hurst air hart master cylinder. The seat was a small custom seat that almost looks like a camel back seat. The whole frame and tins were all rusty but you could see the cool old paint on it with moons and stars. The man said I have the original tank, he ran back inside the house and pulled out this beautiful painted tank that looked like an old Procter & Gamble logo that was drop from the brand back in the 1980’s because people started saying the company was in Satan worship and there logo had “signs of the Devil in it”. Before I could even get the question out he said “yeah I got the idea form Procter and Gamble, I thought the logo was cool and I design the whole bike around it!” I thought that was pretty cool! Now looking at this bike it was ruff, but it’s still a panhead, the man was stuck on his price for the bike; no matter how many problems I pointed out he would not budge on the price. He just said “look the motor was rebuild it doesn’t even have 50 miles on it!” looking though the paper work, we found the receipt for the rebuild at a Harley dealer…..in 73’. Well, I thought what the heck it’s still a cool old Chopper, Josh can get it running! Once we got it back to the shop, I couldn’t wait to show Josh the new bike. Funny he just walked out back and started cursing. A few days later he had that old bike turning over freely. It had a stuck valve and the trans had a bunch of water in it, at the fear of finding much more wrong with it we just parted it out. I think Shovelhead Joe already sold the trans! As for the roller I’m going to keep it around I have an old generator shovelhead I’ve been saving to build something cool, and I think this would be the perfect chassis for it! Although that old devil logo does give me the creeps! It’s cool how times less this chopper this bike, it’s been 45 years since it was built and it’s still cool, This is another bike I picked up this week, and I wonder if something like this is going to look cool in 45 years? It’s a Fatboy twin cam motorcycle with a ton of motor work done to it, ported Screaming eagle heads, cams, and a Thunderheader. But I can’t understand all the speakers you can’t hear them at sixty over that exhaust pipe. And why the apes; the bike was built to go fast but I’ve never seen a drag bike with apes. Will the matching flames bags be cool to? Time will tell.