It’s funny how some projects seem to come about. Sometimes, you might get a glimpse of someone else’s work that inspires you to do your own thing. Other times, creativity hits and you get a clear cut vision of what a project can look like from start to finish. In this particular project, though, I had no idea what I wanted or where I was going with the work. I know I wanted a cool looking softail bike, but that was about it. The rigid frames of my usual bikes had begun to take a toll on my body and I wanted to build a more “user friendly” riding bike. In the past, I had the good fortune of having one bike that worked well in town’s paved congested roads. And, on the flip side, had a bike that worked well on the freeway for those longer rides with a frame geometrically made for high-speed unpredictable roads.
I wanted a new bike that would work well in both conditions. I knew one thing was for sure; the bike was going to have shocks somewhere. So, I collaborated again with my bud in Boston, “Tigman.” After throwing around some ideas, we settled on this design. Once that was done, everything seemed to come into focus. There were definitely some things I wanted to try on this new project. So after a few “pupu parties” with my good friend Roger Kuwahara (aka Mr. Gadget), we came up with some pretty sick innovations. I think one of the sickest things we came up with is the seat mechanism. Not only was it functional, but also it was also purely simplistic.
One thing about working around a custom bike shop is that there is never a limited amount of innovative contributions from the crew. But the hardest thing about living on an island, is how to make all of them work. It would be nice to have the luxury of machine shops and other skilled tradesman to go to for help. Even though we are faced with some rather primitive conditions, we are able to make “Kustom.”
As for the name of the bike, it’s sort of an oxymoron. I could have named the bike “Penny Pincha” or “Broke Ass,” since the motor and tranny was found in previous customer’s dump. But I figured what we lacked in high-end parts, we would make up for in the “Fab” side of the build. Thus came the name, “Cha Ching,” because no matter what, the bike turned out to be MONEY!
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