Jun 12, 2011
This is the 2nd installment in a series following Harold Grissom and his journey to prepare and participate in this years Stampede with his BMW R/90.Once I had all the pieces under roof, the build began. I started with the design of the frame. When you are dealing with a 10 gallon gas tank, it’s just so much you can do to make the bike look good. I spent about a week drawing and scheming on the design. I finally came to the design I wanted, extending the bike to a little over 8 foot in length, providing me a low center of gravity and extending the drive shaft to accommodate the extended frame. Then I turned Charlie Richard and Ric Gatti loose. As you can see in the pictures, they knocked the frame out of the park. I initially thought about getting Charlie to just build me the frame and I would take it from there. After seeing their work on the frame and realizing the time crunch I was drifting into I knew they were the guys to finish the bike. The last thing I wanted to do was another retake of the 2009 Stampede where I literally pulled the bike off the rack and headed west to start the race. While the guys worked on the frame, I started with the tank. I figured the bike was so dang ugly that I might as well paint the bike myself. So what if I screw up, right? For me there was only one way to go with the paint. I wanted the faded out distressed rebel flag down the side of this humongous steel tank. So I picked up tips from my painter buddies and I went to spraying. I stayed red, white and blue for a week. I got so carried away I even “rebelized” my helmet in the same rebel flag scheme. In the meantime, Charlie and Ric are humping on completing this bike. They finished the bike in about 3 months which gave me about 2 1/2 months to work out the kinks. Attached are some pictures of the progression from donor bike to Stampede competitor. Now that the bike is done, it definitely gets a mixed bag of nutty reactions. Regardless of the opinions (which I could give two hoots about), I didn’t build it for beauty contests nor bike shows. It’s built for function and hopefully that’s what it will do.
I named the bike “Rebel Son” not far into the build. The name is one I picked up from one of my favorite songs. Any self respecting southern boy is going to know the words of most every David Allan Coe song and the lyrics to, “If That Ain’t Country” is no exception. Thanks for the name David. Interestingly, I just recently learned that the band, Rebel Son will be playing at the Smokeout East. How odd is that? Karma???? Then, I pull my fortune from the half tattered fortune cookie and it says, “Appearance can be deceiving, Remember endurance makes gold.” I’m feeling it!
The break in of the bike begins….stay tuned……
