Garage-Built Custom, Lowbrow Style, Part1
A renaissance in motorcycle customizing is happening before our eyes, but if you’re among the gawkers who flock to full dressers like moths to a skull headlight, you may not have noticed. Garage-built choppers are as common as flannel shirts at underground events like SoCal’s Slab City Riot and the East Coast Gypsy Run, but seldom do we get a glimpse at the build-up process on the pages of respected slicks such as HOT BIKE. That is, until now.
Tyler Malinky is the founding grease monkey at Lowbrow Customs in Medina, Ohio. In less than a decade this Buckeye-based wholesaler and online retailer has built a dedicated following among bootstrap builders worldwide. Given Tyler’s personal affinity for British iron, Lowbrow has always catered to the Triumph crowd. In 2010 Tyler stumbled upon a Panhead project that was too good to pass up. In a go-getter style typical of Rust Belt entrepreneurs, Tyler jumped into that project with both feet, documenting many DIY fab steps along the way to broaden his company’s appeal and to grow his personal quiver of bikes and shop skills.
This three-part feature doesn’t delve into the nuts and bolts of kit bike assembly in gory detail—plenty of TV shows have already done that. Instead, we chose to highlight some of Tyler’s most creative tips to spin them into building blocks for motivated home fabricators. Part one shows how Tyler grafted a Triumph fork onto his customized repop rigid frame, plus some other tips shade-tree mechanics may find helpful along the way. HB
Source:
biltwellInc.com | mcmastercarr.com
**Low Brow Customs **
(855) 4lowbrow | lowbrowcustoms.com