Rare Harley-Davidson Shovelhead Import
It is rare that such a bike could survive in this condition for so long, and owning a bike with so many original, established bike builders names to it, is pretty cool. You can’t buy that sort of experience in any catalogue!
I LIKE RIDES that are not common. I always have something different from the normal. Something I can roll up somewhere and hear comments about “not seeing one of those for years” or “I remember owning one of those before I got married and had kids.”
After owning a variety of bikes over the last 20 years—Harley-Davidson, Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, etc—American ingenuity always seemed to resurface in different forms. “I like old Yank tanks from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s too. I have owned a nice ’67 Impala and have had a couple of Caddies. I currently drive a neat ’61 Cadillac 75-series Fleetwood which I have owned for around 17 years. Old Yankee iron is cool!
I wanted a bike that suited my style and not a replica bike-in-a-box or a catalogue kit. I wanted something old with a bit of attitude. I wanted a Shovel!
I made contact with the guys at Jalopy Cycles, a Sydney based importer who has an office in the Mid-West USA. They specialise in older, traditional bikes and located exactly what I was looking for on Long Island, New York.
The bike was owned by an older gent who had a number of bikes and rarely rode her. He did take her on a few poker runs and showed her a few times, with the most recent winning Best Bike of Show at the Annual Hells Angels MC Long Island Chapter Poker Run.
This bike was originally built in the late 1980s and owned by Knuckle/Pan and Shovel specialist, Bob Maganza of Bob’s Cycle Customizing, one of the premier bike builders in New York.
This bike style was something I hadn’t seen before locally and boasted a host of big name components. It was also painted by one of the most talented airbrush artists on the East Coast of the United States, John Cassatto of Cassatto Airbrushing. John is no newby to the world of custom painting. He has painted custom bikes for the late Indian Larry, Psycho Frank of Psycho Cycles, and the Teutuls of OCC fame. He is also responsible for throwing his creative colour onto these tins.
The paint is quality House of Kolor, multi-layer candy apple with a blue base. Harley-Davidson is airbrushed over the graphics with a drop shadow giving the paint work a lot of dimension, and finished off in many layers of glossy clear coat adding to the overall depth of the shine. It is testament to using premium materials as this paint job was sprayed more than two decades ago and it has weathered the sands of time and still looks unbelievable!
Behind all the polished alloy and exceptional detail, Bob has built a reliably strong Shovelhead engine using a combination of 4.25 inch flywheels with OE rods with an over-bore taking the donk out to 86 cubic inches. An S&S cam with a .495 inch lift, a mild port job with a set of Rowe USA performance valves, guides and springs keeps the old girl humming like a sewing machine.
The Shovel is finished with a pair of polished rocker boxes; braided lines; a splash of chrome; and a custom-made, chromed, CCI oil tank; the engine is easy to maintain and keep clean!
The oil flow is handled by an S&S oil pump and is cooled by a Lockhart oil cooler up front.
An S&S Super E carb feeds the engine and it breaths through a Kuryakyn Hypercharger.
“I don’t mind the Hypercharger but I like the original S&S style cleaner which was fitted in the original build. It kept it more it line with the style of the late ’80s I think.
The Cycle Shack drag pipes are ‘cracking’ loud! “I love that old Shovel tone!”
The original 1980 H-D FXS frame was cleaned down, smoothed and detailed. The neck received a 35-degree rake. The frame was also finished in House of Kolor candy apple blue.
The polished, billet, Wide Glide front-end is six-inches-over. The tubes were supplied by Forking by Frank, an engineering company who have been supplying quality old school fork tubes and front-ends since the mid ’60s and are located in Evanstown, Illinois.
The front rim is a 21-inch laced unit with a Softail front fender and the lower trees carry a Pauchco headlight.
The arse-end has been taken out to a 150 tyre and has been dropped considerably with the Drag Specialties seat sitting much closer to Ol’ Mother Nature.
The early braking system was improved via a set of polished billet Performance Machine four-spot calipers on both front and rear, functioning through polished billet Jay Brake forward controls and polished billet Performance Machine hand controls.
This bike has exceeded my expectations. Despite the long and low stance, it steers and rides exceptionally well. It is not over-the-top and you can still ride it! The photos do not justify the paintwork and I was more than impressed when it arrived Down Under, shitting bricks hoping it wasn’t going to be damaged in transit.
I would like to thank Bob Maganza of Bob’s Cycle Customizing for building a great bike and taking the time to confirm the build for me; John Cassatto of Cassatto Airbrushing for filling me in on the paint work (and the decade it was done)—nice job mate; and Mark and the guys at Jalopy Cycles for all of their help and delivering a hassle-free service and getting me that bike I wanted.
pics by George; words by Mark
