Trial and Error and Bloody Hands – Don Weimer Jr.’s “Soul Shaker” Custom
Trial and Error and Bloody Hands – Don Weimer Jr.’s “Soul Shaker” Custom
Something unexpected happened when I made my dutiful pilgrimage to the International Motorcycle Show in Novi, Michigan this year– I had my socks knocked off by a motorcycle. It wasn’t one that would typically draw my interest, either, like the techno-marvelous Honda CBR1000RR, or the sensuous, pearl-white Ducati 848, or even Ben Spies’ immaculate Yosh Superbike. This soul-shaking came courtesy of a custom chopper.
Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either.
Whatever scant knowledge I've picked up regarding Orange County / West Coast / East Texas customs has been gleaned from the Discovery Channel. The few choppers I actually see on the street seldom arouse my interest, other than to produce a guilty fascination at watching mid-life-crisis-suffering yuppies wobble around the intersections. I’m generally mystified by big-name-big-buck-bikes boasting bulbous back tires and stretched, spindly frames onto which the ‘builder’ has bolted buckets of cartoon catalog-sourced individualism. The resulting 'artistic statement' invariably consists of commercially sourced tank, fenders, seat, bars, switchgear, pipes and forks, along with the obligatory $5,000 paint job depicting an inevitable convolution of skulls, flames, and eyeballs. ‘Big Dog?’ Big Deal…
This one isn’t like that. This one has me thinking seriously about lottery tickets.
As I stared at the jaw-dropping detail work on the appropriately named “Soul Shaker,” wondering who the hell had built it, a convenient moron (“always there when you need us!” tm) decided to reach deep into the roped-off display to see if the spokes were ‘real’. That’s how I got to meet a somewhat annoyed Don Weimer Jr.: designer, machinist, fabricator, former AMA #1 Plate Amateur World Champion Arenacross racer, and the man whose self-taught hands wrestled this bike from the recesses of his imagination.
Don is a bona fide motorcycle addict: “I just love Bikes, you know? I live and breathe motorcycles; I get up in the morning and think about them all day… I just can’t do enough with them.” His lifelong involvement with bikes sprang from his earliest memories watching his dad campaign Triumphs and BSAs in hillclimb races in the 60’s and 70’s.
After his father passed away when Don was a teen, he graduated from BMX bicycle racing to Motocross, Supercross, and Arenacross events. Over the course of an active 25 year career, he won “18 or 19” State and National championships in those disciplines riding on a privateer or pro-am basis for Kawasaki, with support by a local dealer. After that, he got a sponsored ride on Ferracci-developed Husquevarna 250s, which he describes as bulletproof and perfectly suspended. This ride propelled Don to the AMA World Title in the Amateur Vet Arenacross class in Las Vegas in 2003.
With that goal accomplished, Don began looking for another outlet in which to indulge his passion for bikes. Friends from work convinced him to get a Harley and accompany them to Bike Week in Daytona.[BREAK=The customizing begins]
He bought a pearl white Fat Boy in January, 2002, but his deep desire to ride something “different and hot rodded” meant that bike was destined to break free immediately from the pack of conformity. “I picked it up in Milwaukee,” Don remembers, “During the trip between Milwaukee and here was the only time it was stock! I bought a few custom factory parts for it right from the dealer, brought it home and worked on it. I put handlebars on and a fat tire kit and went straight down to Daytona in February; then that was it. I really got bit by the bug when I saw those custom bikes down there. I came home and went with an even fatter back tire!”
There was something about the rapport between the builders and the fans that attracted Don. “The thing that drives me is talking to people who really have an appreciation for the work and detail that go into the bikes – you can really tell how passionate they are about motorcycles by the way they ask questions and study it – and not just the paint job. They break down what you worked on and tell you their stories, I enjoy that. Anybody can go buy parts and bolt them on a bike, but if you can fabricate and make it your own, that’s what I love. You’re putting soul into that bike; you’re putting every bit of you into it.”
After the custom bug bit him in Daytona, Don and Chad Wolever, a close friend, got a set of Covell DVDs on metal working, marched out into the garage with a die cutter and sliced the frame of his new Harley in half! The friends were intent on learning how to hand-build a customized bike, including designing and building the gas tanks from scratch. They fabricated a tank out of 9 panels of steel to accommodate the newly stretched spine of the Fat Boy. The elaborate tank on his second, aluminum-framed chopper required 11 panels. Don began to recognize the key to bike building has to do with respecting the lines in all aspects of the design. He learned to fabricate parts that met his own artistic sense of symmetry and proportion.
As his building skill progressed, Don found himself at odds with painters who didn’t share his aesthetic vision, and insisted on applying car-derived methods of pin-striping and adding graphic elements, so he decided to learn to do his own painting as well. Besides the array of helpful DVDs on the subject, he carefully listened to the advice of older, experienced hands in the craft, identifying with their hands-on ethic of building everything possible on your bike. “I talked to a guy that has been painting for 50 years. Those are the guys you need to talk to – the old painters and the tin-knockers...those guys can save you a ton of time and money. Then you have to get out there and start banging stuff around. It’s trial and error and bloody hands– and a lot of work with the English wheel and plenishing hammer - that's how you learn.”
The first bike ended up being stretched 6” in the frame and extended upwards 2” at the headstock compared with a stock Harley, and sports an aggressive and unique ‘fang’ appendage. It won a number of awards on a regional level. The second bike is a more conventionally proportioned +6” up and +6” out, and features much more hand-work. It is a soft-tail style, lightweight aluminum frame with an extremely low seat, complex hand-formed sheet metal, 130 hp motor, and stunning paint. The frame takes 12 hours to prep and polish before each show, but the result is worth it. It has won several ‘Best in Show’ and ‘Peoples’ Choice’ awards on a state-wide level.
The red, rigid “Soul Shaker” bike came out of a deeper vision. Without the use of any sort of computer aided designing , Don put the basic idea on paper in a half hour; a long, aggressive, masculine machine with Schwinn-like exposed outer tubes that had been kicking around in his head “forever.” Three months later, the bike was finished.
[BREAK=Soul Shaker]Don hand- built the +9", -2"frame, bending and TIG welding the Cro-Moly tubes with such precision that there is little or no filler below the paint. The hand fabricated tank is nested within those frame tubes, which are coped nicely into the down tube. The seat tube doubles as the oil fill. He laced the spiral spokes into the DNA wheels himself, a skill left over from Motocross days. He built the exhaust and the 52” extended forks, featuring his ‘springster’ suspension. The “sprotor”, a combination sprocket and rotor, is frenched in to eliminate asymmetrical offset. The Harley Evo motor is augmented with a Wiseco 96-inch big bore kit, and the seat and battery box are covered with alligator hide.
The chain drive is located on the right side of the bike, and the left side features the hand shifter topped with a nasty looking Tiki head (One forward, 5 back, don't pull the hair) . Unlike a true “suicide shift” configuration, though, the hydraulic clutch resides on the left handlebar as usual, necessitating a cross-over shift with the right hand. The left foot pedal where the clutch would normally reside in a hand-shift arrangement is really an alternate shifter. This occasionally results in a startling moment for people who follow too closely, as the stern Tiki rises suddenly, unbidden, to give a disapproving glare at those who impolitely stare .
The bike is rigid in the back save for the overcoil mountain bike shock attached to the seat, hence the name “Soul Shaker.” How does it handle? “You’re not going to win any barrel races with it!” Don laughs. He has ridden about 200 miles on the bike, but recent show successes have curtailed these excursions.
This bike has won top awards in every show in which it has been entered, including the International Cycle World show in Novi, where I saw it, a Biker Build-off show in Birch Run, and the Davison Express Fall Custom Bike Show, where respected old-school builder Dave Perewitz and well-known motor sports photographer Michael Lichter judged it ‘Best in Show.’ Not bad for a builder of less than five years.
When asked about his accomplishments, Don Weimer Jr. is very quick to point out the motivating influence of his father. This was present in the strength Don drew from his memory while racing, and in the comfort he felt becoming a builder, given his dad’s own career as a machinist. That influence may be an integral part of the design of this motorcycle as well.
When I commented that I recognized the “Soul Shaker” as something very much like the machine I imagined I was riding when I had my first red 2-wheeler, it provoked a memory of his own. Don recalled when his dad extended the forks on his first bike, making him the envy of the neighborhood. “Maybe in the back of my mind, that came through… could be that’s where this came from, that first Stingray bike.” he said.
All of this is being accomplished in the hours after his work as a power lineman. He'd like to design, build, and customize motorcycles every waking minute, but is wary of the lack of artistic freedom that could result if this were his only job. Between his own projects, he is doing custom conversions and full custom builds for select customers.
Don’s next project bike as he moves toward his new goal of the World Championship in Sturgis is likely to be a custom in the cutting edge style of a vintage rat-bike in the board track tradition. He has a few ideas percolating about how he can incorporate some of the elements of his motocross bikes, possibly built around a vintage Triumph motor, in honor of his dad - who is undoubtedly smiling proudly somewhere.
If you hit the lottery or just can't live without this man's artistry in your garage, you can contact Weimer Original Designs in Battle Creek, MI at (269) 420-7693.
I'd never be able to do it, regardless of the time involved, but Weimer completed it in just three months after he drew it - and that's while he held down a full time job and did some custom work for other people's bikes.
Added pictures on page 2 of the earlier bikes. Now you can see why someone said the former Fat Boy can pick up road kill and cook it before it gets home!
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