Bike Features

  If there was an award for the most Amazing bike builder on the planet Dar would be a major contender. He wouldn’t win it for building some spindly, art object, board track racer and winning the AMD World Championship, although he has already won several AMD awards. Don’t get me wrong, art objects are […]

    Norio, a key player at Kustom Fab, actually relocated here from Japan. From the first day that I met him, much has changed. When Norio first arrived here in the islands, he opened a shop in Oahu called Phoenix Cycles.    It was during a time that the whole “Chopper” craze was nearing

Akrapovic just unveiled its Full Moon concept motorcycle at the Bad Salzuflen Custombike Show in Germany.   Developed with the assistance of Slovenian Dreamachine Motorcycles—the same partnership that produced the legendary Morsus in 2011, the Full Moon concept bike is an extravagant, technically exceptional, promotional bike for the manufacturer.       This concept machine

These limited production motorcycles are designed at the Ronin Motor Works factory in Denver, Colorado. Each production Ronin features 11 cast aluminum parts that are hand-sanded and painted. Other components including the seat, carbon fiber air box cover and fenders, sheet metal parts, and wiring harness are all designed in-house and then sourced locally. The

    I have a high school partner who sweeps in and out of my life, like every couple of years. I get a phone call; we hook up for 15 minutes, share a few stories, and then he disappears. This time he showed up at the Bikernet.com Headquarters with some shots of a chopped

  This bike was built by Hal’s Harley-Davidson in New Berlin, to pay homage to the dealership’s racing history. Avid Dirt Track enthusiasts, Hal and Kirk traveled the Midwest watching races since the mid ’70s. Like many dealers they turned a hobby into their livelihood when they acquired J&S Cycles in 1978.      Huge

    Gaylord Street rests on the west side of Long Beach, California, a bunched industrial community of little stucco shops, cinder-block buildings, even a small home or two, and oil refineries next to the Port of Long Beach. It’s the low rent district. There’s an unmarked shop next to a blacked-out iron gate very

Editor’s note: I’ve been chasing Yaniv Evan for several months to write a feature about the P-16. He’s like trying to interview a starving field mouse, darting from one empty container to another one in search for food. No time to talk. I finally ran into him at the shop opening. He had a shop

I’ve been interviewing feature builders and owners for 40 years. You can imagine, I’ve conversed with every personality under the stars, including a prick or two. Sometimes we start to talk and suddenly it’s like shooting the shit with a brother of 20 years. And often this one conversation will lead to a decades-long relationship.

Our features have become a Bikernet collection of favorite motorcycles for various reasons. Sometimes the owner or the motorcycle contains an amazing story. In this case, this bike represents so much, and it’s a classic build with historic significance and absolutely vintage lines. Matt Hotch stayed true to the Vincent code, including the all-black paint.

    On the list of most bike happy U.S. states, Florida comes up second only to California for the number of registered motorcycles. A bunch of them flock around the West Palm Beach area. There’s massive interest in custom machines with a distinctive Sunshine State flavor. It’s expanding thanks in part to the activities

  Everything began in the spring of 2011. I had just finished my Harley –Davidson Panshovel, and taken it to Tampere Hot Rod & Rock Show. I had been working on the bike very actively the whole winter, and the thought of taking a break from building bikes was starting to sound like a good

    For many years the Harley-Davidson Motor Company was seen as a slumbering giant that stirred only occasionally and then released a slightly modified bike (or bikes) as new models. Innovation and Harley-Davidson did not work very well in the same sentence. Well the giant has leaped into action – in fact almost frenetic

  “Here is our latest Brawler GT. We finished it this week,” said Dar Holdsworth the boss of Brass Balls Cycles. FXRs are coming back under the signage of the only two custom bike manufacturers left standing in the United States, Brass Balls Cycles and Big Bear Choppers.       What an interesting run

    The reactions to the Harley-Davidson 500cc/750cc Street have been all over the chart. Like it, love it or hate it, I think this was the right move. The foreign bike sweat shops had been filling the demand for smaller bikes for years while Harley sat like an old hound dog on the porch

      This month I take a tour of my good friend Dominick’s FXR collection. Dom has one of the nicest and most coveted collections around.  So here we go, I’ll start with his 1987 FLXR. This bike is a one-off custom, built by Billy Westbrook, as you can see, it’s exquisite!     

  Like so many other motorcyclists, my Dad was directly responsible for getting me involved in motorcycling. But the sport gave us much more than just the fun of sharing a hobby…it gave us the opportunity to become “best friends.”   My father, Donald W. Barnes, was born in 1920 and grew up during the

    In the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago there is train on display that was built in 1934 called the Pioneer Zephyr. It has been nicknamed “The Silver Streak.” It is beautiful and streamlined, and was capable of high speeds at a time when almost no one travelled at over 50 mph.

  This is a good one, and I’ll do my best to tell an accurate tale. Richard Kranzler, our esteemed Bikernet Baggers, all-powerful editor in chief, sent me a couple of shots of this bike with a note. “The HORSE turned it down,” he said. “Can we help a brother out?”   Of course, my

This is an interesting feature bike built by Hiroyuki Hirata from Japan. I see it as another unrideable board track styled bike, and he sees it as a skeleton with wheels. Interesting. Let me know your thoughts on board track styled bikes. I love them from a purely artistic side. They are the coolest custom

Indian Motorcycle just revealed a fully customized, Indian Chief Classic during a Press Presentation at the Indian Motorcycle exhibit of the International Motorcycle Show in New York City. Conceptualized and designed by Indian Motorcycle’s Industrial Design team, the “Big Chief Custom” is the first custom Indian Chief created around the 2014 models introduced with great

This is an interesting one. It’s like a test. Last week, a full moon rocked the earth, like an evil spell. Girlfriends ran off, businesses folded, evil transactions unfolded, and there was general mayhem on the planet for a few days. That’s when Angie Dixon reached out to me. “Are you going to feature our