Two decades later, falling in love all over again
Writer’s memories flood back after web classifieds lead him to bike he’d built years ago
I sometimes peruse classified ads. I have no intention to buy. I do this to kill time, to sample the comical, ridiculous claims some sellers make when trying to pawn their motorcycles.
I recently came across a picture in my browsing that froze me. Within the tiny thumbnail preview image, I recognized a motorcycle. It brought back a wave of memories.
Clicking on the image to view the ad, it stated (erroneously) that it had an aluminum frame, and that only 200 were built. I’m not sure where that last bit came from. And as the larger images confirmed, it was indeed a bike I had built more than 20 years ago. There is in fact only one such bike in existence.
Before I became an automotive freelancer, I was a motorcycle mechanic. I’d worked in a few dealerships before starting, in 1994, my own business with partner and longtime friend Denis Lavoie. We didn’t sell motorcycles. We used a modest machine shop to build custom bikes for our customers.
One of the first projects we took on was to build a Sportster-based flat track motorcycle for the street, a style now known as a street tracker. The client bought a crash-damaged 1986 Harley-Davidson Sportster 883, which would become the donor bike for the custom build. To make a lightweight, svelte street tracker with the appropriate dirt-track look, however, a proper frame from a flat track race bike had to be procured.
The connection for the frame came via Denis’s brother, Martin. (Martin Lavoie was an AMA-licensed Canadian flat track racer living in Florida. His race bike of choice was the legendary Harley-Davidson XR750, a bike on display at L’Épopée de la Moto, a motorcycle museum in StJean-Port-Joli, just east of Quebec City. But I digress.)
Martin provided a bent frame from a 1972 Harley XR750 race bike he’d taken out of service. Harley made only two, very limited production runs of the alloy-engine XR750 frame, in 1972, the year the alloy engine was introduced, and in 1978. That the frame was bent was of no concern because it had to be modified anyway, to provide clearance for the taller Sportster engine.
The frame work, as well as most of the hand-fabricated parts, were cut, machined and welded in my shop. To remain faithful to the XR750, an aluminum oil tank was hand-fabricated by Montreal-based custom bike builder Dave Cody, who had a genius eye for bike design and a surgical hand with a TIG welder. Cody also painted the bike, finishing it with hand-painted pinstripes and goldleaf lettering.
It took the better part of our first season in business to complete the bike, and it often drew the attention of our customers. It was informally christened as the signature bike of our business, Cosden Specialities, a moniker comprised of the first three letters of our first names. It also made it onto our business cards.
Six years after we opened, I moved onto other things. Denis can still be found machining and welding away at the shop. We eventually lost track of our beloved XR Sportster, as the original owner sold it to someone in Quebec’s Eastern Townships a couple of years after it was built. I had delivered the bike to its new home back then, and had never seen it again — until it popped up recently on my computer screen.
The day after I spotted the XR in the ad, I called the Sherbrooke Harley-Davidson dealer that had acquired it on trade, and made an appointment to see it. I made the 90-minute drive from Montreal, arriving before noon that day.
The sales rep told me the bike had been on display in the showroom for about a year. Many people had inquired about it during that time, but he filtered potential buyers, weeding out those asking if they could add a passenger seat or put on a set of drag handlebars — or worse yet, add chrome plating. He pointed them to other bikes. He understood this XR needed an owner who understood it should remain intact.
My eyes swept over the work I’d done 20 years ago. I was transported back to that summer of ’94, sawing, grinding and welding steel for a living, and loving it. The sales rep was dumbfounded when I described details unseen, especially since the bike sat on display in a private home for the last 15 or so years. “You seem to know a lot about this bike,” he said. “Have you seen it before?”
I’d neglected to mention that I had built the bike. When I did tell him the outcome was obvious. My hand-built XR Sportster has finally come home.