October 6, 2011 11:19 AM PDT
Oh, something else, sure, at some point in time everyone evolves to the bike building stage, however, how original can it be when all the parts are someone elses creation? I have in the past, continue to do and intend to do in the future, build my own parts, tools and shop equipment. Why can't you?
Hey, whats killing us all now is the high price of parts created by people, many of whom, don't even ride. They see $$$ signs when they see bikes, or for that matter, any thing they envision as profitable. Parts? Hey, I checked out an online parts house in Phoenix. I went to mapquest, I called a friend over there and asked her to go check it out even better in that I thought the address was to an office building and my friend confirmed it. They're no longer in business, and no, they were'nt bikers either. They were just a few unemployed low level corporate types lookin to get rich anyway the could.
I was in a shop where I too buy parts for my bike and one guy was bitchin about not being to get through to a company to buy a gasket for a "super cool custom air cleaner" they manufacture and sell. I still don't know if he was able to get through or not, but, perhaps that should awaken us. We need to know where their product and parts are made and where they stock their parts before we buy the complete assembly and put em on our bikes.
Let your imagination go free. What can be designed to serve a purpose? Do it for your bike and let the "hustling cool" try and copy it. We're suppose to be doing our own thing not simply doing what salesmen tell us to do with our bikes by buying their products. Hey, perhaps we should start a new thing going such as running them stock until something needs to be replaced and then replace the part with the least expensive part of quality and only if we can't manufacture our own.
Hey, we can operate our own forge, foundry, machine shop and focus on one bike type at a time. There's a shop in FT. Worth, TX that focuses on Harley and YAMAHA heads, etc. Why Yamaha? They outsell Harley. We aren't buying all American when we buy Harley since a lot of their parts are manufactured in other places. Lets open up another area of interest and go with the top end of biker interest, Yamaha, Honda, Harley and custom parts. Indeed, engines will be problematic since the EPA will be breathing down are backs, however, that doesn't mean we can't manufacture better replacement parts the EPA doesn't regulate and that'll last our lifetimes.
Sorry, greed has to be kept out of this or we end up defeating our purpose. We can do these things and need to discuss them. I mean, after all, what are we, Americans or eunochs? Ok, lets hear it from you.