in the meantime... a picture of a girl

photograph by Joe Hill


most everybody likes pictures of girls, so here's another one. secret stuff in the works that may prove to provide more of the like... stay tuned.

Model A - Headlight Brackets

We promised we were going to stay on it... Obviously, the top end's been pulled off the motor... such is life... But check out these sweet headlight mounting brackets...



So we cut the existing shock mount headlamp brackets when we were c-notching the frame to clearance the leafs... After lowering the car we had to raise the mounts to give the shocks enough travel. We found a way to re-use what we had and spice them up a little while we were at it...


drilled some holes


i like holes


welded em back on...

you can see that leaf going through the notch with no bracket interference


did I say I like holes?


sweet.

Also, not to worry - the engine should be back in action right after the weekend...

Swap Find

Long Beach Swap...

Scored this dope old full-face Bell from Rene of Primo's Helmet Design. Still working out the interior, but Sonny Boy from Road Dog Customs has been given free reign on the paint, design & stripes. Can't wait till it's done....


already a little broken in...


Johnny rocking the gladiator visor...

Sonny Boy's Budweiser Build... love it.
That's our oilbag right there. They'll be out and up for sale pretty soon.
Sonny Boy got an advance one...

gonna break this rusty cage...

and run... shhhhhhhh.....

Chopaquila

In going through the archives and trying to update our GALLERY, it has been realized that we never uploaded pics of the finished "Chopaquila"...

This bike was built for Keith Nelson and it is what it is... it just kind of does it's own thing... "Chopaquila" aka "The Chopper Killer"...

Keith ended up selling it soon after the build to John Edwards, whilst trying to get together a down payment for a house... John's main ride is usually a Ducati 1098, but he's taken to kicking the living shit out of this thing in the turns and barrels... He's always happy to show me how much more of the pegs he's ground off with every visit...

This bike was built to be aggressive as fuck, but if we knew it was going to end up with a knee-dragging pilot like John, we'd of stepped up the game even harder...

It was featured this last Summer in "The Horse"

Fuck Patience, I'm gonna go kill something...

Fished uploading PICS of this bike to the GALLERY... It's called "Patience"...


Fuck Patience... I'm going to go kill something...

There's a piece about it in a recent copy of cycle source.

Todd's NEPTUNE

This is "Neptune".
It belongs to our friend Todd.
Todd is as eccentric as this bike is long...
He brought a bunch of really interesting ideas when he came to Evilspirit Engineering to have this bike built...


40 over 51 degrees of rake (but it's been a while - don't quote me on that...)



That's Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols & House of Pain's Danny Boy having a smile with her up in the Malibu canyons...

Now an immediate response to this photo may be a bit sideways, but there is more between the lines than meets the eye. Danny & Steve ride with a bunch of café guys called the HFCC every weekend up in the canyons... There's lots of modern Ducati's, Triumph's and the like... you get the idea...

Todd went along on this particular day... Not only can Todd ride his ass off, but he rode Neptune and fought heartily right along side bikes half its length through a lot of very technical terrain...

This day ALSO happened to be the day that shop-mate Edon was on the very same ride and laid it down on Decker Canyon. Todd was the first on the scene and picked Edon's café'd CB up off the road with one hand in service & gentle style... They'd never met before... coincidence is as coincidence does...

BTW: Edon is fine and yes, he was wearing a helmet (a black & white polka-dotted Ruby to be exact...)

There are a few more detailed pictures of "Neptune" up in our GALLERY if you'd like to check them out...

Brian's Evil Sporty

I met Brian in 1987, whilst working part time in a Houston head shop. He was a punk, I was a rocker... We had one thing in common, which obviously wasn't music - but going to the local 24-hour shit restaurant to fuck with the strippers who were just getting off work at three in the morning... Our friendship didn't truly start until reconnecting in a Los Angeles bar about 4-years later... We became room mates & very close friends...

Brian now lives in Austin and recently decided he needed to have me involved in helping him to convert his girly "niiiiiiiightsterrrrrr" into something a little more acceptable...


a before shot of the 07 "nightster" after Brian made some mods back home in Austin... I'm not much of a Sporty guy, but apparently Brian likes em... so...


Rear section from Kansas Customs... oil bag from Chassis Design...


The bike stripped, rear section welded in, the old wheels up there just to get a vibe... bunch of extra shit ground of frame that we don't need... tank stripped and split to pinch...

Things moved quick with Brian helping...


bead rolled the tank...


serious progress at this point. pipes, fender, seat, air ride, oil bag, bars kinda, struts on the way...


the list...


The tank turned out great. We were both happy...


I've never been much of a sporty guy but that thing looks kinda cool...



Most people pull the fuel injection off. i decided to figure it out & had to fab a fitting to accept the AN line so i could get the fuel in there...



Okay so, this bike might seem simple - but it wasn't... I about had a fucking melt down trying to figure out what to do with all this crap! ECM, power commanders, compressor for seat, bank angle sensor (WTF?) - not to mention the battery. I'm used to carburetors and kick-starts... but this thing is coming together nicely....


the wiring! probably lost about 2-pounds of shit we didn't need starting with turn signals, alarm, sensors, hazards (again... WTF?)


key switch air ride control...



It was all pretty exciting! I took the pump out of the tank, so i could make the tank smaller... bought a car fuel pump and this fuel pressure regulator.. plus the an lines to get the stuff around with one back to the tank as a relief for too much pressure... I love this shit... it looks menacing...


Mr. Rich! (aka the performance king)


and so, it runs... Here we are taking it to my buddy's shop for use of his DYNO to run it in and tune it...



Okay, here's the deal.... this bike has a fucking computer and is fuel injected.. you can map it... which means you tune it for all different loads at the real wheel and rpms on the motor. it was quick and easy for Rick from RNEAL RACING to tune & we picked up 10 to 12 horse power with the pipe mod and the power-comander. He pushed the sporty to 140 mph and it was still strong... We also picked up a few RPM in each gear which means power... at 6200 we still had a little room to go... After that kind of test and with that kind of manpower on that kind of machine... we took it outside and ran the fuck out of it down the street... running it up to 6200 confidently... I'm coming around to starting to get the sporty bug now...


Brian back in Austin with his bros on a run. nice patch...


Brian was amazing in researching to help figure out the identity for his bike... He not only came with his own taste but with examples, pictures, stories and research to help achieve something he could really be proud of...

All in all - one of my closest friends bought his first Harley and called me up and said hey man, I wanna modify this thing... He'd obviously already started and not done too bad a job... He really had no idea what he was getting into by calling me... We took two weeks and tore the shit out of it together... He helped immensly... grinding, stripping, shining, coffee runs... maning up and not being afraid...

I pushed to make it a full-blown custom... budget was tight...

Look, the bottom line is that we worked from 5am-10pm every day for 2-weeks to get this thing together...

By the end - he got a lot more than he thought he would ever get out of it... so did i - by having to suss through the fuel injection, wiring...

We also - fought, cried, i threw him out of the shop... then told him to come back cause i knew he had no where to sleep... we got closer than ever through this bike and it was an honor to fucking build something for him that I know he is riding with his bro's in Austin...

A RE-INSPIRING 1931 FORD MODEL A

I've had this idea rolling around since 2001 when I first purchased this 1931 Model A body. I'd already had a motor leftover from another project (a D-stroked 350 with a 400 crank - which made it a 377). It had Carrillo rods, Aluminum Chevy heads, a roller cam and tunnel ram 2-quads... Shortly thereafter I got around to getting a frame.

I could never seem to find the time to finish this build. Funds were always tight at the wrong time, I'd started my company soon thereafter - and I needed some more confidence in tackling a project that meant a lot to me only piecemeal & on a part time basis. Besides, when ESE got started we were bombarded with other projects, client builds and our focus was really on bikes...

On 9/19/09 I was out test riding a client bike and got t-boned. I don't want to bore anyone too much with the details, but the major gist of it was the bike was destroyed & I ended up in the hospital for a couple weeks in a coma with a broken leg (bad - ouch)... blah, blah, blah... yes, i was wearing a helmet...

By the time 10/6/09 came around I wheeled my chair into the shop for the first time since my accident to take a peek around and see where we were with things... As I was completely uninspired with motorcycles for the time being, I had the guys jump hard into this Model A whilst trying not to be too bummed with myself from a wheel chair...


This is what I saw when I rolled into the shop...


Started machining the front end parts...


After having drilled the frame inserting different sized tubes, reassembling the front end (which we had c-notched so it would go lower) it all started to make sense and really resemble something ESE...


Scored some kick ass Haibrand's from Mr. Rich (aka the "performance king")


Mr. Rich


Modded the visor to carry the theme plus a new firewall...


gas tank, tranny & cooler done - starting to get a boner...


There's my 377 forcing those frame rails down...

Not bad for 10-years worth of work in 2-weeks, in a wheelchair - with my leg swollen up like a fucking sausage....

My accident on 9/19 seemed at the time to take everything away from me, all of my outlets were stripped away. As of right now, I can't ride... I can't surf...

Over the course of this build and the last few months I've again been super psyched as a builder and really gotten back to my original inspirations for why I started doing stuff like this in the first place... I've also gotten to involve myself with something that I've never had time to spend on before...

Obviously much is left to do, but we're not getting off it... it's going to be hauling my broken ass around very soon...

PHOTO GALLERY

Just finished uploading the first batch of photos to our PHOTO GALLERY. There's pictures of completed bikes, builds in progress, broads & miscellaneous crap around the shop... more will get uploaded as things carry on around here... stay tuned...

Barong - The God of Fun & Mischief

This bike was build for Oliver Leiber, who came to us through Keith Nelson - with a failed project from "another builder"... The only salvageable piece was the 1974 Shovelhead motor (which ended up being junk anyways...)

Musicians often work well together on projects outside of music. An artist can more easily let another artist just do their own thing and let creativity take 'em where it leads...

As things were progressing during the build, Ollie tasked Michael to do more and more of his own thing in getting his personal style, taste & vision into the final product.

As it was realized that the engine was going to need a complete rebuild, the pause in momentum made it possible to spend some time and money on getting the engine engraved by Tay Herrera...



Michael had a general idea as to the direction to give Tay for the project. Topics that were covered were those such as how much coverage he wanted, the use of negative space and an agreed upon theme of images indicative of Balinesian art...

Again as an artist to another artist, Tay really took to the project and put a lot of his own style and energy into the final product.

Moving on to paint, Richie Valens at Unique Twist was the obvious choice for this project. His unique style and nod to classic techniques took this thing to a whole other level...



Michael took Ollie to meet Richie armed with two original 50's Gold Top Les Paul guitars for inspiration... Richie studied the guitars, whereupon Ollie just told him "gold" and split to let him do his thing...

Additional photos of the completed bike can be found here:
Barong Gallery
Addition photos documenting the progress of the build can also be found here:
Barong Build Gallery

(photos by edonphotography )