This bike started with a dream and $25. I’ve wanted to build a panhead since I first learned about them over 15 years ago. I’ve always thought they were the prettiest motors Harley ever made. Sure, a knuckle is older and rarer and cooler, and a shovel makes more power and is tougher, but there is just something about a pan. Unfortunately, due to life responsibilities (house, wife, kid, dogs, etc), a pan was financially always just out of reach.
The story of this bike really got started in February 2022 when my friend Jasmin (aka Skulltits) put up the gas tank for a $25 raffle. I love a cheap raffle and this tank was so damn pretty that I bought two tickets and couldn’t believe my luck when I won. (I still play raffles all the time, but this is the only thing I’ve ever won and I’m totally ok with that.) When the tank showed up, I was blown away. It was even more impressive in person. I knew I couldn’t just put this tank on any random bike and that I was going to have to build a bike to try to do the tank justice. My mind immediately went to my longtime dream of building a panhead. I knew right then i was going to build my dream bike. What I didn’t know was that it was going to take me three years.
I started looking for a panhead motor and putting the word out to all my friends. My friend Zach had a panhead long bike mocked up in his living room and so I hit him up to see if he’d be interested in selling it. It had OEM polished cases, OEM heads, a crazy raked out frame, a super long springer he built that used full length Ford radius rods that was taller then me, a panhead transmission, freshly built starhub wheels, a magneto, 4.5” stroker flywheels, and a bunch of other goodies including a title. He gave me a killer deal on the whole package. I quickly sold off all the parts I knew I wasn’t going to use and was left with the empty motor, magneto, and title.
The next part I needed to really set the direction for the build was the frame. I love the look of a motorshop frame; it’s so curvy and I think it’s so cool the way it’s basically only four pieces of tubing and I thought it would really fit the vibe of the bike. I knew Ben Jeff had made some replicas in the past so I asked him to make me one. He wasn’t hot on the idea at first as he had moved on to making his intruder frames and didn’t want to retread old ideas. I bugged him for a couple months and just when I had worn him down and he agreed to make me one, one of the motorshop style frames he had built popped up for sale online and he sent the link to me and facilitated the sale for me.
Around the same time I was getting the frame, Curty B from Fourth Floor Choppers posted the engraved and modified sportster drum. He had just made it for fun, but the look and the vibe of it was perfect for the vision I had. I snagged it immediately and then sent him a bunch of other parts to engrave for me: wheels, trees and fork lowers, kicker cover, cam chest cover, etc. I didn’t really give him much direction; I just let him do his thing and it came out so much better than I expected.
It was now the end of 2022 and I was financially kinda tapped out and still needed to spend some serious cash to build the motor while trying to get my business Unity Manufacturing off the ground, so the bike was put on the back burner. Fast forward a year and half to 2024 and my business is doing well, I had traded up to a 93” stroked and bored pan, and I was getting serious about starting up on the bike again. While on the Apocalypse Run, I got a chance to meet Otto from Biltwell and picked his brain about the People’s Champ competition. I had been a fan of the competition since its inception, and had actually submitted an evo sportster a couple years prior. (Evo sportsters get a lot of shit and I wasn’t surprised when I wasn’t accepted, but they are the best motor Harley ever made and I’m willing to die on that hill.) With the encouragement of pretty much all my friends, a talk with my friend Craig who had made the final six that year, and a serious conversation with my wife about the money and time I’d be spending in the garage, I submitted the pan on the last day of eligibility.
To pass the time waiting to find out if I made the cut, I started making shopping lists of everything I knew I needed so if I was selected I could hit the ground running. The day the announcement was made, I hit purchase on about $2k worth of tires and tubes and bearings and fork rebuild kits and fenders and bungs and all the odds and ends to be able to get the bike into a full roller status. I had been warned by Craig how quickly the time goes by and I wanted to have as much done as possible when it came time for the voting to make the final six.
I busted my ass for 9 months from the end of September to the beginning of June to build my dream bike. Everything on the bike is custom. I made and/or modified every single part. I wanted a bike that looked good from twenty feet and from two feet. Classic but modern. Panhead but fast. Tough but soft. Simple but detailed. Show and go. I’m so stoked on how it came out. I decided to call it “Turbo Lover” because I’m a lover not a fighter, it’s covered in hearts, there’s two drag queens kissing on the tank, and I fucking love Judas Priest.
Finally, it was time for Born Free. I took two weeks off work, loaded up the bike and my vending set up and drove out solo from Ohio. During the mandatory People Champ 50 mile ride on Friday, unfortunately my sprocket came loose and locked up my transmission, so I didn’t finish the ride and was not eligible to win the competition. That was a bummer but when I entered, my goal for myself was to make it to the final six and get to California, so it was all smiles. I had a vending spot at Born Free and sold a bunch of stuff. People were really stoked on the bike. I got compliments from builders I have admired for years.
Doing Biltwell People’s Champ was such a great experience. It really pushed me to not only get the bike done, but to build it to a higher level than I thought I was capable of. Everyone was so helpful and supportive, even the guys I was supposed to be competing against. There were so many trials and tribulations during the process, too many to go into detail here, but some of the highlights were:
-Having Skulltits paint the rest of the bike and finally getting to meet her and her partner in person after being internet friends for years. The molding and details she added to the bike were just incredible.
-Struggling to get the bike started and my fellow final six competitor Zack offering to pull the magneto off his personal bike and send it to me.
-Having all the homies over the weekend of final assembly and having to take an angle grinder to the motor get the bigass Delkron cases to fit.
-My friend Chris who machines my rotors surprising me with a custom rotor and sprocket with hearts to match the front drum.
-Jacob Conard taking the time to walk me through how to build an oil tank with a built in filter.
The thank you list for this bike would be longer than the one in 90’s hardcore album, so let me simplify it by saying if you had any part in helping with this bike, no matter how small, I sincerely appreciate it. I don’t think anyone has had more fun with a $25 gas tank spiraling wildly out of control into the show bike of their dreams.