Sound of Music

Select your favorite Big Twin... (HD, S&S, Victory, Ducati, BMW, Guzzi, etc.) and find that curvaceous road ...

Rolling through the curves 'in that' rhythm, where lean angles make full use of tire and suspension technology, is a fine way to spend a day. Ride that flat torque curve and listen to the music....

The sound of the big twins ties the whole experience together like no other motor, especially emanating from a sport or cafe chassis.

"Ride the Torque Curve" is going to showcase our favorite music & artists to listen to while we're not listening to the Guzzi music at 4700 rpm.

You know the feeling of finding that new-to-you band that grabs you from the first song. Hopefully you'll find stuff in these pages that you can listen to while you're wrenching or bullshitting with a Belgian Ale, bourbon, or cabernet with friends in a garage.

Until we start posting, check out the links below or on the left in the meantime...

KEXP 90.3 - online, free streaming radio out of Seattle. They have various programs of music for just about anyone. Two of our favorite are "Swingin' Doors" on Thursdays from 6 - 9 pm PST & "Shake the Shack" on Fridays 6 - 9 pm PST. Once you're on their site, click on the media player of your choice on the left.

Pandora - radio from the Music Genome Project
- streaming music that gets tailored to your tastes the more "thumbs up" you give it. A win-win.

"Bang your head....Wake the Dead"

BMW HP2 Sport Video & Sound

This is a big twin of a different sort....and it is fun to watch and hear! As a Guzzi owner, I love to see the big air/oil-cooled twins still getting excellent engineering attention.

Raise a highball of Woodford Reserve to BMW for this awesome bike & their fantastic finish in the Daytona 200. race results

Now, it is Guzzi's turn to build the street legal MGS-02. (see here)

Check out the skilled rider getting the bike sideways a bit on the approach to a left-hand turn (towards the end of the clip)...

Gregg's Customs

Greg DesJardin is the owner of Gregg's Customs. He has built a big twin sportbike using the Yamaha 102 cubic inch engine.

HD, S&S, and all of the aftermarket Big Twin engine manufacturers take note of:

• Compact gear-driven drivetrain. See other: Yamaha Big Twin
• The motor is built as a unit-construction with the transmission.

Yamaha engineers prove that the torque of the big twins does not have to go through a gargantuan drivetrain.

As the custom chopper market rights itself (after the pop culture frenzy has lost its interest & moved onto something else), two new products the industry should pursue in order to grow sales are a more compact transmission and a unit-construction motor with the transmission.

This architecture would open up chassis options not only for performance bikes as depicted in this blog, but cruiser styles would be able to diversify as well.

Greg's ideas, craftmanship, & execution with this bike are excellent (the wide tire looks good, but does it handle?).

note the rear disc. The rear brake setup reminds me of Jesse James & Mike Cook's Big Torque Cafe's rear disc configuration.

clever reservoirs

Performance Bike (PB) magazine had a nice write-up on Greg recently. If you haven't checked PB out, they appreciate the BIY approach and spend a lot of their print space on very cool specials such as this...