Time away

Progress on Felony Maker has been temporally postponed. With the 2009 Easyriders Show Tour in full swing and Gangster headed to Louisville, KY. for the 4th stop on the show schedule.

Its been annouced

Gangster Choppers took the Editors Choice award in Charlotte with Preacher's Daughter, last weekend. Today Head Gangster and Johnny A. List is leaving for the 4th stop on the Easyriders Tour, Louisville, KY.

The new Gangster Van is loaded with official gear, tee's, caps, parts and swag. If you're around Louisville go and check the Easyriders Show Tour out! 2009 is a blistering hot year so far and the show bikes are top notch.

Dude, that was a good WIN

I see that you won editors choice in charlotte with Preacher's Daughter where is the next show?

Plasma Cutter Saves The Day ......

We've had a Plasma cutter for atleast 10 years, Plasma cutters used to be an exotic tool in shops now its pretty much run of the mill stuff. For motorycle fabrication I rarely use it, but when you do need one nothing will take its place. Cuts like a knife through steel, ours can handle up to 3/4" thick material.

Custom Fabrication

Custom spring/axle perches to fit the odd 2" wide rear springs had to be made.

California...........

These pictures were sent to me thanks to an 'ol friend Joe Coghlin. Joe and Lynn used to live in RICHMOND and we would up and ride with nowhere to go. Stopping in at new places just to see what was up was a pretty regular thing. We ran thru toll booths, running up the interstate at 110 mph with no good reason other than we could. Joe commonly refers to those rides as the "white knuckle" rides, and I rekon they where. Seems not so long ago people had a whole lot less things to do and Midnight was the right time for a ride.

PROOF

Pictures are proof, so here are a couple. I continued on the '59's suspension modifications today, workng on the small detail stuff. The rear "c" notch was cut and fully welded, pinion angle set, rear shock mounts fabricated, fender/tire clearence varified and a bunch more on other stuff. Total hours in job so far is 28hrs.

Continued

Continued the lowering process today, made the axle/leaf spring perches, bent new "u" bolts, cut and ground the O.E.M. mounts off the rear axle, set the rear axle back under the truck. So far total man hours is 7 hours.

If there is still doubt.......

If there is still doubt that I will cut anything up ... today I put Felony Maker on the lift to investigate a transmission leak. The leak was a simple fix turns out it was just the pan gasket and changing the filter and fluid was past due anyway.

While it was in the air I got to looking around at the suspension and wishing I had the time to go ahead with my plans to lower the ride height. Thinking and thinking, I finally convinced myself to just do it, I have waited long enough and if I didn't rip into it who knows maybe the winter would slide past and spring roll around and the '59 would still be sitting up at factory ride height.

So here's the picture proof. Its all apart, cut up, whatever you want to call it. We'll see how long it takes to put it all back together. I am not buying anything, instead I am making all the brackets, pins, bolts, cutting the factory pitman arm and dropping it. Basically its a low budget done "in house" type of job.

Next bike?

I'm having a tough time trying to decide the next bike to build for "myself". Its a toss up between an old basket case '49 Pan or do up another '87 FXR. I have pretty much equal pieces for each project, I am short a frame for the '49...basically 'cause I want a Harley Davidson frame and not one of mine or a reproduction. The FXR is pretty much all there except it just costs more to build with the primary and electric starter and brakes and stuff that the old '49 just won't hit you up for.

The 1st Serious Modification...

The first modification I made to the '59 was the dash treatment. Somwhere along the way the center of the dash got hacked up for a 2"x7" radio. I think there is two ways to build an old car, either keep it original or somewhat period perfect with the modern adminities kept out of sight. For Felony Maker's dash I wanted the later "period perfect" approch. I have always liked anything frenched, like headlights, taillights, antenas and gauges. My search for Stewart Warner gauges began, I found an entire kit from a "street rodder" that had decided to sell them for a fraction of the original price. Armed now with gauges in hand, the cutting and design work started. All the fabrication was performed with metal and continuos welding tied my new pieces with the '59 dash. All of the work was done in my spare time and outside too! My shop was completely full of bikes and projects at the time and it was cold outside.

Shot In Sturgis

Sara Liberte shot this in Sturgis.

Felony Maker - ripping and roaring

Anybody thats been around Felony Maker knows its got Quad Fish Lips protruding from underneath the rear bumper. But, unless you've heard it run or had an oppertunity to ride in it, you never realize that there are no mufflers disturbing the exhaust flow. Yep, just like my choppers Felony Maker runs straight pipes! Cruising on the interstates revving about 3 grand or so gets pretty loud.

Loud pipes saves Lives!

Sneek Peek

With only three days before the 2009 Easyriders Centerfold Tour kicks off, I thought a sneek peek at the Autograph Card would interesting for the Blog. As always enjoy.

Slow progress is still progress!!

Earl, Scotty and John did all the bodywork to Felony Maker. Custom touches are pretty simple but executed accurately. First the bed was completely removed from the frame and every panel was stripped to bare metal. Each body panel was straightened with old school hammer / dolly techniques. Removing the hood and fender emblems, side rear view mirrors, the gas filler cap and properly filling all the holes with metal and weld was a must. The old '59 was is unbelivable condition, rust was non-existant, even the floor pans have never been patched and are still solid just like Chevrolet sent it out of the factory. The worst part of the truck was actually door hinge wear! Pretty typical stuff for a then 46 year old automobile. By simply machining new bronze bushings and steel pins fixed it. Good thing we know somebody with access to a machine shop, huh?

Whats a Chopper?

It all started here...

One for HiTop

Does this look like an idea we have been bouncing around?

Kool Pickups & Kool Bikes

So your Chopper project is down, what are you going to haul your heep "o" parts in? Your kool pickup of course! The snapshot pictured is late '50's / early '60's and features a way kool '41 Ford pickup. The '40 & '41 Ford pickups shared the '39 "Deluxe" passenger car front end. Rarely did Ford or Chevy (are there others?) feature front clips directly from their passenger car line up. Some other manufacturers that did this treatment from time to time was Studebaker, Willys, Hudson, Nash and even Packard did a few. Modern pickups evolved into nothing but dreadfully boring offerings from companies that have production runs lasting a decade or more with no differences other then a "special" decal package.

Twisted Metal Art

Twisting steel isn't easy to do and get it right. Back a few years ago at the Gangster Hide-a-way, me and Jerry twisted a piece of 3/8" x 3/8" square stock. I then welded it, filed it, sanded and polished it, sent it to the chrome shop for a little dip in the shiny shiny. The picture shows the finished product, a cool little lever to dress up a standard Chevrolet tilt steering column. Like they say, the devil is in the details.

Introduce this... punk!!

Johnny A. List is on the scene, lets have it with some '59 action.

The Felony Maker Blog is live.

Hope you all enjoy this blog. This '59 Cheverolet is a product of multiple friends efforts and time. A bunch of guys deserve a big round of applause for their efforts. During this "blog venture" hopefuly most will be joining in to share the stories of late nights and bloody knuckles this pickup claimed.