THE DEATH MACHINE
Featured in The horse back street Choppers magazine


This bike is not and probably never will be for sale,but it’s a great representation of one of our most popular styles of bikes.1960’s Chopper meets modern (and extremely fast) drive- train.

This bike was a best friend of mine Jerry Temple’s old bike.A few years ago he was shot and killed.The bike got swapped and passed around for a while,unknown to me,before I got a phone call about it.I immediately went and got the bike and decided I’d restore it in some form or another someday,but someday came sooner than later.
When Jerry owned it it was the epitome of the David Mann Chopper.Wide Glide front end,Ape hangers to the sky,21” front wheel and drag pipes!!The louder the better!!!

Unfortunately,most of the old parts I ended up with that weren’t to rusty to run were toast,so I came up with a new plan.The motor was still good,so we gave that a once over and the frame was a old Santee that was perfect for a skinny rear wheel set up.

Now began the build.The Dave Mann Style was to stay the predominant theme ,so we fabbed up a super tall sissy bar with a skinny set of ape style bars to match.I found a harley five speed to back up the 96 s&s motor and merged a 3 inch belt drive to it.A 4 over springer replaced the locked up wide glide,new rear wheel and a firestone bias ply to wrap it and we were all set.


I painted the tank and fender  metal flake black in the back alley of my family’s property in jax beach that the company took its name from.The paint was OK, but my wife and I decided that since the bike turned out so good, it really needed an over the top paint job to do it justice.We enlisted the fancy paint skills of my friend Josh at Fat American Choppers to handle the paintwork.Everybody at every bike shop Jerry ever had his bike at used to call it his “Death Machine” so we decided it was only appropriate for it to go on the tank.
 
It’s funny how things work out sometimes.Upon shopping around for a leather seat and bag that was just as over the top as we would soon find the paint to be,I decided to take another shot at doing some leather work.Mike Wilson and I did a seat for a bike I built a long time ago called “the Cyclops”. So I gave it another shot and never looked back.The rest as they say is history and as you may have already seen we have a whole Leather page on the site to showcase it.


A ton of fun miles,a Honeymoon on Deal’s Gap in North Carolina,and a few magazines later, the bike is the calling card of our company and has a comfortable home in our garage at the house.