The Fixer Upper – Backstory

I guess the best place to start is at the beginning…

Back in 2011 after I got retrenched, I decided to freelance, and to get around I wanted something with a little more grunt. So the search began and it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with a 2005 Harley Sportster XL1200 C. A beautiful beast in black, orange and chrome, lots of chrome! Unfortunately to get this I had to sacrifice my little Suzuki GS400E, but it seemed worth it at the time. I sure do miss that little 400 with today’s petrol prices.

She purred like a dragon, much to my neighbours dismay. Riding her through the streets of Joburg and the open roads further north she ran true and smooth. My biggest adventure was the ride from Joburg to Margate for Africa Bike Week 2012. What a ride! Over 700 kilometers of highway filled with mist, rain, bikers, cars and weekend bikers. It was tough holding on to those mini apes, but I managed, I wasn’t quite as broken back then.

After that adventure she started to not run as smooth as usual. After a lot of poking and prodding we decided it was the intake manifold seals that were leaking. Easy job, right? Wrong!

Some brilliant mechanic in the past had decided that it was a great idea to use all the available Loctite in his drawer to ensure that the steel bolts never came out of the aluminium heads. They were stuck, like really stuck. We heated them. We broke Allen keys on them. We tried everything. In the end it took me leaving her in a friends hands, telling him to do what ever he needs to do and get them out. I went for a walk, hearing the blow torch and the pounding of hammers against steel. After a while I heard a joyous cry. I beetled back to see that 1 bolt had been removed, only 3 to go, but at there was a plan of action now.

While she stood during those long months waiting for a plan to remove the bolts, my mind began to wander. Harleys are custom bikes right? Why should mine look like all the others on the showroom floor? So the ideas whizzed around and I soon decided what I wanted to do. Cut the rear fender. Yeah! That was going to make it so much better.

The only problem with this was the fact that I destroyed the paint while cutting, obviously. So I got to work with stripping the paint off to be ready for a respray. But this is where things went really wonky, I liked the look of the bare steel. Don’t get me wrong, the black and orange were great, but how awesome would the bike look with chrome and bare steel. Amazing, that’s how! And then, after more ideas, highlight certain parts with copper.

So here I was, a stripped bike, sandblasted (big mistake) tins and copper pieces. This was going to be an amazing project and so much fun to build. Before any of the final sanding and clear coating I did a little mock up. She was perfect, exactly what I wanted.

Unfortunately, this is where life and the fragility of my body started to kick in super hard. I had multiple surgeries and work was insane. She got buried under a cover and forgotten about. I was still riding, my wife bought a Sportster 883 in 2012, so I nicked that and carried on with my rides.

At the beginning of 2015 we made the big decision to move to Cape Town. So my baby got squirreled away at a friends house until I could somehow get her down. And in 2017 that happened, my buddy who was storing her slung her onto a trailer and took her to his brother factory in Hermanus, close enough. All I had to do now was get her the last 120km home. Thankfully I have a little tow hitch that works great with bikes.

And then she was home, where she sat again. More surgeries, more busy work, more chaos. But, I am finally at a place where I can start again. The plan has changed slightly, but mostly stays the same. There are places here in the Cape that require a slightly more rugged bike, so keeping the same look, she is getting adjusted to handle the gravel mountain passes. Not the really hectic ones, I am still fragile myself.

But the build continues…