2009 Year 1 for 7 Ages

I started this Blog in January 2009 - I remember I had a number of aims for the year - to have some great motorcycle rides and to get 7Ages started as a genuine custom motorcycle brand.

Highpoints for the year:

• A fantastic ride to the Harley Euro Festival in St Tropez on Macbeth.
• A tour of the Blue Ridge and Smokey Mountains with friends on a Streetglide.
• A trip to Helsinki and back to see friends on my Streetglide.
• Getting Macbeth on the cover of BSH and displayed at the NEC Bike Show.
• Building Hamlet and getting it featured on Bike EXIF and Cyril Huze Blog.
• Getting the 7Ages brand created and the website up.

For 2010 - my ambitions are to finish, Bikes 5 (Othello) and 6 (un-named cafe racer) - exhibit at some shows and maybe sell 2 bikes! Rides well St Tropez is booked for May and New England for June, and maybe a trip to the southern states for September / October.

Progress on Bike No. 5 (Othello Tracker)

Engine is now in the frame and the tank mounted - give it a few weeks and the bulk of the wrenching will be done - then its just the wiring!

Ace Custom Show

In an attempt to step up 7Ages a gear - I have decided to enter bikes 4 and 5 in the Ace Cafe Custom Show at the Ally pally in February 26-28 2010. The winner gets €5000 and an entry to the World Championships at Sturgis - which is way way above my ambitions but just showing the bikes will be interesting. And Fun!

"Chaos is come again" - Bike No.5

The paint is now back from Image Design and looking fantastic - it will go brilliantly with the blacked out look of the rest of the bike.

The National Motorcycle Museum (UK)

With a bit of time left over from my trip to the NEC I went a mile up the road to the National Motorcycle Museum - a wonderful place full of British Iron - maybe packed a little too closely together but well worth a visit for some inspiration.

NEC Motorcycle Show 2009

Back Street Heroes had a Custom Extreme bike display at this years bike show and Stu the Editor was kind enough to take my Macbeth bike up for display, with some of the other cover bikes of 2009 from the mag and their sister publication Streetfighters. I had a nice look around and particularly liked the new concept bikes from Victory and BMW. I do like BMW's and could easily become a convert of their superb technology and styling......but custom bikes.....custom bikes.
I also met up with a few old friends including Gary our tour guide from Route 66 in 2008 who is convincing me to come on his Cowboys and Indians tour in Oct 2010 into Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas -sounds great.

Harley Davidson FXD Cafe Racer - Bike 6

With the three new bikes, I always planned to build a Cafe Racer, and so Bike No. 6 is going to be it. As you know I bought three brand new 2009 FXD Streetbob's for this, but recently I had a change of plan and swapped my last unused FXD for Buell Ulysses and a nice cheque with my friends at Shaw Harley Davidson - I had always wanted a Ulysses and it was a great deal.

So instead I am going to re-incarnate my old 99Dyna (again) into the new cafe racer.

So far the design process is very basic and the two attached pictures show how I sketch over the rolling chassis of the last bike to get a feel for a cafe racer look. The next sketch then shows how it could look. Design is often about constraints - the main one is the 23" wheel - the only drive belt I could get on BIkes 4&5 was a V-Rod one and so that pushed the wheel back for the long look. On this new bike I am going for a chain drive so I can bring the wheelbase right in.

Finally to keep me focused I bought this advert on EBay (£3.45) from 1977, for a XCLR1000 for some styling cues.

Expect completion during Spring 2010 - its going to be white and have Harley Racing stripes and of course an appropriate Shakespeare quote.

Cyril Huze Blog - Hamlet not Othello

Its been a good week for PR as I have now bee featured in Cyril Huze's excellent Blog - I think its ranked No 1 in the world for custom motorcycles. A great post, but we mixed our Shakespeare up and ended up calling the bike Othello not Hamlet, but there you go - Bike No. 5 The real Othello one will be ready in a month or so, and we can get that addressed then - I should have stuck to just using numbers!

Bike EXIF

Really pleased to have made it into Chris Hunter's excellent BIKE EXIF website yesterday, it's a top site and I thoroughly recommend subscribing to his daily emails.

"Chaos is come again"

Just pulling Bike No.5 apart to send it to paint and powder - I have decided to go black on this for all the powder - frame, forks, bars, rocker covers etc. As for the wet paint well I am going to leave that up to Image Design the only brief I have given is that I want it bright red, with Chaos is come again (from Othello) in fancy script, and touches of red brass in the colour to pick up on the tail light.

Brightona 2009

Not such a bright day in Brighton today - but still an excellent turn out for this great event.