Custom
I punched my alarm clock in its Mickey Mouse face, sure that would silence its rude ringing. Then I realized it was not my now-dead clock, but the phone.
"Josh, Josh, you there...hello...hello...is anyone there...hellooooo," boomed the voice on the other side of the line. "What the hell...who the hell...why the %$#@*& are you calling me at this unnatural hour of...what...9 o'clock in the damn morning?"
"How would you like a new Honda?!" said the voice. Had to be some damn telemarketer. "Do I get a set of steak knives with that, a#%hole?"
"Josh, wake up, you drunken sot. This is Jon Seidel from Honda. This is not a dream or timeshare offer and you don't get any steak knives."
"Jon? Jon is that really you? Let me top 'er off with caffeine and call you back in a few..."
And so began a great adventure, a grand bike building of epic aggravation and loathing. The plot would twist and travel from southern California to northern California to Arizona and some parts unknown. It would involve a fabricator, painter, seat maker, several transporters and no less than three builders. Murder and mayhem would accompany every turn, at least in my bent mind's quest for revenge.
But I'm getting a little ahead of the story. Honda wanted to show to the cruiser world that its bikes could indeed be polished and personalized and built into a ride any bad boy would be proud of. The Japanese have traditionally not been the quickest to catch on to the inscrutable American passion to bend steel and add cool shiny parts to make our motorcycles unique, if not so practical. It's a biker thing.
What Honda also wanted us to know was the buy-in to the cool custom world doesn't have to be something equal to the price our parents paid for their homes. It could start at under $7,000 for, in this case a brand new Honda Shadow Aero VT750, and even you doubled the investment on factory and aftermarket parts and labor, you could still get a badass bike for a fraction of the industry average for badass.
It all seemed so simple, yet kind of exciting; what could go wrong? The deal was to buy the Aero for a buck, which I did before my third cup of coffee, and then remake it into a glorious image of cool. I was asked to use a few Hondaline parts, but mostly would turn concept to reality using some up and coming bright young artsy studs looking to prove their chops on a national scale, and the growing number of metric aftermarketers.
The project was set for a couple of features in Cruising Rider magazine, which fell out of publication before we could finish the paint, much less the bike. I am the erstwhile editor of said defunct magazine, now self-unemployed, and this is my true story.
The Aero is a liquid-cooled, 745cc (45.5 cubic-inches) V-Twin. A smooth shifting five-speed tranny delivers power to the rear wheel via shaft final drive. Nice bit of low-maintenance there, as are the self-adjusting hydraulic valves.
The mid-size beastie is hauled in using a 296mm disc and twin-piston caliper up front, and an old school 180mm drum set in the rear.
The 3.7-gallon tank gives the bike a range of about 130 miles before you're jonesing for gasoline. Fuel is fed to the burn chamber by a refreshingly old-fashioned carburetor, a dying mechanical species.
With an eye toward pimping the Aero, first glance followed the bike's lines into expanding it into a full-blown bagger, which is exactly what a couple of other cruiser mags did given the same project challenge. But there was something about the VT750 that spoke to me differently, kind of like in the old-timey bike whisperer way.