Chris's Shadow Bobber. "El. Cerdo Volador."

This bike has been a way for me to get in to the "rat bike"/"old school" looking bikes. i have not been happy with anything i have done to it till now. i started this project with a not so plane jane Honda shadow VLX 600. the guy i got it from had done alot to make the bike look cool. 6* rake in the front, extended the trees to give it a stretch, bobbed the rear fender, custom seat, pipes, bars. and it looked cool like that for a weekend warrior bike. not for a guy who wanted to frighten kids and old people. so i started playing with the idea of "what could i do" and after seeing some bikes on Chop Cult and around the net i came up with a idea. i wanted a frisco style bike. that old school bike you would see a member of the hells angels on only a Honda. so this is what i started with.

not bad right? looked OK just not what i really wanted.

so last spring i started off small. a buddy of mine at my day job gave me a set of biltwell frisco bars, ordered some biltwell raisers and as soon as they came in i got the bars on.

as you can see i also striped the tank but a aftermarket breather on and cut the pipes back.
now i was starting to like my bike again. now i had already ordered some pipes for the bike only problem was they were Harley pipes not a big deal the damn near fit i just needed to cut and weld them to fit. at the time i was living in apartment and had no good place to work on my projects other than my buddy Jon's house.

so back in early Oct 11' i moved in to my first house and got shop set up as quickly as i could.

first thing was first. i wanted to take that fiberglass rear fender off and clean the bars up.
i ordered a Jesse James "WWC" rear fender and set off to make it fit. i also dove right in to taking all the useless wiring out of their. took all the controls off the bars and moved them under the seat. also got a solo seat to go with the old school look.

                                                    here is what i ended up with.

after some paint i got the itch to make a sissy bar

my first attempt didn't go as planned. but i very quickly got it right and worked this out.

i have just about hated this tank for day one. i wanted a frisco style tank but it is hard to do with the shadow due to a split back bone. we i got that problem salved as soon as i ran across this cat in CA who dose nothing but build bad ass shadows. TJ "http://tommyjeanbrutalcustoms.blogspot.com/" was a super cool dude and we quickly worked out a plan to make a tank for the shadow. and at the end of DEC i had my new bitchen tank in and on.

i was so sick of the way Honda had made the air system on this bike so i got some stacks and took care of that as soon as they came in. nice part is it really shows the motor off with out all the crap Honda stuck on their. i also felt the bike deserved a new bad ass seat. Rich Phillips make some bad ass low profile seats that i have always loved but couldn't afford but i had to get one so i bit the bullet and ordered it.

went with a sailor jerry tattoo print and it is so bad ass. so many people who see the bike love the seat.

i have some more work that needs to be done with the bike but i am happy with the progress that has been done. here is what she looks like as of now.

ill up date with new progress pics as it is made.

Jons Triumph Chop

So Jon is bat shit crazy and wanted to take this $200 dollar triumph frame and make a bad ass chopper. problem is this bike was made the old school way. a ton of bondo and brass brazing. the fame has seen better days but the BLM crew is working hard turning this chicken shit into chicken soup. we started by chiseling/ grinding all of the bondo off.

it was almost a shame to take this "work of art" apart but we didn't feel safe with it the way it sat. wanted to make sure the rust seen on the seat pan hadn't made its way up the fame and compromised the structure of the bike. well it hadn't done that but their was plenty of it under the tank and a few other places.

here's what we got done on it the first day.

we found lots of problem areas but were working them out. instead of a triumph motor Jon found a XS400 motor for $100 in BFE Texas so we set out to pick it up. the idea is to have a running bike for less then $1000. also ordered some goodies for the bike, since the old tank was hacked to bits we ordered a new tank from lowbrow and some other parts, i happened to have a spair solo seat sitting around so we ordered a biltwell seat hinge and some weld on seat mounts and now that's out of the way.

 ill post updates as they come.

Getting down to bussiness.

So for the longest time i thought a blog was a waist of space for the Internet but the older i get the more and more i like to read some of the funny shit people post up. well i don't know about funny shit here i know about what i like and if you find it funny more power to ya. mostly i want to use this to promote my bike building company i am starting. me and my buddy came up with the idea of black label motorcycles about a year ago when we got our first street bikes. i and him have never been big on stock. stock is boring, lame and stupid! why have something stock? why not have a bad ass ride you can be proud of? well i for one don't want my bike or car or what ever getting lost in a parking lots cause it looks just like everyone elses. Black Label Motorcycles gets it's name from  whats known as "black label" bikes, like Honda's, Yamaha's you get the idea. that's not to say we limit our self's to just jap bikes. we will chop/bob/ what ever you want to any kind of bike. between me and my partner in crime we have the tools and knowledge to turn your stock, slow, plane jane bike in to a head turning bad ass bike. and let me tell you it bad ass when your just riding down the road and people in cars and trying to catch up to you to take pics and give ya a big thumbs up. so keep a eye on us and let us know what ya think.