Sol Invictus Harley-Davidson Shovelhead

I’VE been riding motorbikes since I was 18 years old. Old Harley-Davidsons are the only motorbikes I’m interested in. If I could only work on two strokes and sports bikes, I wouldn’t; the industry wouldn’t interest me at all. My old man, when I was young, if there was ever an old Harley-Davidson on the street, he’d say, “Look at that!” And for a man of so little words, it was a lot.

I started with a Yamaha XS650, an 80’s model, and I did the full rigid chop on it. During this time I met James Sinclair, a fabricator specialising in custom motorcycle modifications, and I still remember walking into his workshop. I was like, “Wow, this is living; this is the real deal”. From then on I was obsessed. So I sold the Yamaha — I made a profit — and then I bought a Harley-Davidson Dyna Twin Cam — then I sold that for a little bit more and bought this 1981 Harley-Davidson Shovelhead.

I couldn’t believe how expensive it was. It was 15 or 16 grand and it had the swingarm on backwards. There was no primary, no history of it ever running; it had this really cheap springer front-end on it. 

The first thing I did was return it back to stock — I was buying the original motor mounts that people had cut off their frames — and I loved it. Even though it was still a jockey shift and it didn’t have a front brake, I commuted on it every single day. 

Then I got an invite to do the Machine Show Comp and I was like, “I can’t enter a stock bike in the show”. So I bought a rigid frame from Melbourne and it was so bad; all the welds were the worst I’ve ever seen. So I cut them all off and started again.

I got the Wide Glide front end from a friend of mine. It has a 25 mm axle which is not common so I had to make that work. Luckily, I work at Sol Invictus Motorcycles where I have access to a lathe and a mill which a normal guy wouldn’t have, so I was able to redo all the holes and make spacers to make the wheels and calipers fit.

Dave at Bad Arse Seats upholstered the seat. He’s super friendly and he did it super quick and he dropped it back to me at my shop.

The petrol tank I got in Australia. I made the fuel cap with this massive vent because when you turn the Pingel fuel tap on, it flows big time, and I was like, “Well, it’s got to have a big vent then”.

I had a single Mukuni carby on it and it ran perfectly. Then I saw this advert from a guy who had a twin carb setup, who said he didn’t want to bother tuning it, and wanted to swap for something that’s easy to run. I immediately messaged the guy and did the swap… and it has been the biggest headache! Weirdly enough, it started second kick straight up, but it was just fouling plugs; I couldn’t go anywhere; as soon as it warmed up it would cough and splutter. I live about an hour away so I stuck a handful of jets in my bag and I just rode it and figured it out on my way to and from work. And now it runs pretty good.

I based the entire bike off the oil cooler and the oil tank. When I originally got the swingarm bike, it had no oil tank, so I was like, “I’ll trade; does anyone have one?” And the same guy who sold me the bike says, “I’ve got one but I won’t sell it alone. It’s a matching set with an oil cooler and tank bib; same design”. It was only like $600 which wasn’t bad considering what I got. And then when I built the new bike, I was like, “I’ll base the whole bike off this oil tank”, so I milled everything, including the heads, to match; it was a lot of effort but it was worth it. 

And then I went with a flame paint job which made no sense at all. I should have gotten something to match, still, I like how it turned out.

I enjoy riding it with the suicide clutch and hand-shift now that I’ve got the front brake. 80 percent of the riding I do between here and home is city traffic, and before I fitted the front brake… let’s just say you get a bit anxious every single time you have to stop.

I stopped wearing shoe laces with the open primary; it has claimed a few. I’ve also gone for high mid-controls because I’m a little guy. I made the floorboard on the left to make the clutch a bit easier to use; so I could slide my foot up and down on it.

I work at Sol Invictus Motorcycles as a mechanic. You’ll notice there are a lot of old Harley-Davidsons in the workshop that I’m working on. You work on one and then word travels and you work on another; it started a small community. When it comes to old Harleys, there’s only maybe a handful of people in Sydney who will work on them.

Sol Invictus sells LAMS motorcycles in period designs — scramblers, cafe racers, etc — in various sizes. One thing we realised about selling these bikes is that everyone wants to customise them, so instead of farming out the customisation, we formed our own crew to work on them in-house. Craig, the General Manager, is very supportive of developing a fully-equiped workshop at Sol Invictus. You can expect to see great things in the future

Sol Invictus Motorcycles: 693B Botany Road Rosebury NSW 2018; 02-9699-1196.