FREEDOM OR DEATH MACHINE
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Hey everybody, I’m Trent Reker, editor of bikerMetric!, and we just completed an XS650 chopper we lovingly call the FREEDOM OR DEATH MACHINE. It was built by Jeff, the brilliant mind behind Saint Motorbikes.
I wanted a crazy goose-neck frame with single down-tube that ends in what we call the “kitten catcher.” It had to have gas tanks with flat sides, a raw little headlamp cowl, 21-inch, 36-spoke wheels with Distanzias, a 2-into-1 exhaust, and it had to be painted black and gold. It was our goal to build something radical, that nobody had ever seen, and to do it on the cheap. It was then that I started emailing and calling parts manufacturers and re-sellers throughout the US to see who would donate parts for the machine.
From the day Jeff started to tear down the doner, a 1979 XS650 Special, until the day he hauled it to Austin, a mere 40 days passed, and Jeff works 50 hours a week at his paint and body shop, Hot Rod Refinishers. He slept a total of six hours the final week before his son and he loaded it into a truck just west of Baltimore, Maryland, and hauled ass to Austin, Texas, where I’d set up a huge party in a bar on 6th street during the huge Republic of Texas motorcycle rally. They started out six hours late and drove straight through in 26 hours.
He barely made it, still six hours late, but our photographer and models were waiting there, taking shots with other bikes I’d lined up, including Limey’s Hornet, which has been profiled here.
We had a blast at the bash and came home after midnight, where we had set up beds for the weary guys. Poor Jeff slept 12 hours straight.
These pix were taken the next day at Matt’s (Working Man’s Customs), who created the phenomenal seat, and who is going to make some final mods that Jeff was too pressed for time to finish. Then Chris at Limeybikes is going to mess with tuning the beast. He’s already rebuilt the carburetors.
I’d like to thank the following folks for donating parts and labor to make the FREEDOM OR DEATH MACHINE happen:
- Saint Motorbikes: Builder and mind reader
- Elswick Cycles: Hardtail weld-on, faux oil tank/real secondary gas tank
- Rock’s Chops: Footpegs, plate bracket/brake light
- 7 Metal West: Huge brass ribbed fender
- Working Man’s Customs: Leather solo seat, bitch pad, color tooling, final mod and fab
- Limeybikes: Mechanic extraordinaire
- After Hours Choppers: Brass risers
- Pinstripe Chris: Pinstriping & lettering
- Hot Rod Refinishers: Paint
- Draft Cycle Works: Wheel lacing, front drum brake, and last-minute fabrication
- Fabricator Kevin: Seat hinge
- Biltwell: Exhaust kit
- Lick’s: Leather solo bag
- Bikernet: Beer money for FREEDOM OR DEATH MACHINE supporters.
- Independence Brewing: Beer for the FREEDOM or DEATH Motorbike Bash.
- MizBhavin Photography: Photography and models for FREEDOM or DEATH Motorbike Bash.
We haven’t added everything up, but Jeff says that even had we paid for all these parts and labor, it was done for under 10k. We’ll have more photos and information in the coming days and weeks.
The front drum and hub are off an old honda cb360 and we had to fabricate a custom axle. actually, the guys at draft cycle works cracked open their lathe and made one an hour before the bike was loaded in the truck and hauled from maryland to me in austin.
It’s really getting finished here with matt and chris. It works and runs (that exhaust is an angry monster) but we’re changing the bars so it’s less squirrely, screwing with the seat and sprung passenger/luggage rack you see in some of the photos, fabricating mounts for the aluminum pegs, and hooking up the little vacuum pump and site gauge on the “oil tank,” which is really the third fuel tank. the bike will have over four gallons of fuel capacity. It’s all minor things we’re tightening up that jeff didn’t have time to do.
More > FREEDOM OR DEATH MACHINE build
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Trent RE-interview a number of guys building bikes featured on this very site over on bikerMetric! You can check them out below. Good luck with your re-launched of bikerMetric Trent ..
RE-interview with nick of metal head fabrication
More > xs650-boardtracker-Update
RE-interview with shaun of slingshot cycles
limeybikes! XS650 Cafe – ‘The Beast MK2′ from the Limey
Radical bike… But the lower forks need to be black IMO… Or even better a leaf sprung front end
Very original! I love how the lower front of the frame has that plow look.
Sweet scoot Trent! Can’t wait to see what you come up with next! -A
right on man cool chop.
sweet bike. love the exhaust. definitely original
Wild looking… I like the exhaust
ahhaa, kitten catcher? that made me laugh out loud. By far the BEST feature I have ever seen on a bike. Awesome. I almost want go out and buy a couple of cats, make them have kittens, bring the kittens down to where you live and wait at the end of your street so I can shoe the wee babies onto the road when I see you coming down the road.
Man I love this sight,
cheers,
chuck
Very interesting. Seen this over on xs650.com. I like the frame. Where’s the pics with the models!
i like the tail end of that exhaust…..the bike seems too clean to be a rat…..too ratty to be clean. cool bike……i’d like to see it when its finished.
some comments are just too stupid to argue about.
I like how a bunch of people have come together to collaborate on the project. Goes to show how oftentimes one bike showcases a lot of different craftsmen.
I would like to know where that throttle grip unit came from.
This is nice long & lean, Wicket ! ! !
I follow you on Bikernet and saw this up and coming. It is different in an awesome way! Probably a blast to ride!
hey guys, thanks for all the positive comments.
glad the kitten catcher has gotten some attention as it was an element i was adamant about and jeff really nailed it. chuck knows what’s what. very funny, dude. thanks!
as for the exhaust, i only asked jeff to do a nice and high 2-into-1. that killer exhaust setup with the brazed brass and the end with all the plumbing elbows were part of his madness. each elbow is shaved inside but still curves back. it all makes the bike sound incredibly angry. the guys say it sounds like a 1000cc two-stroke. i say it was a stroke of genius.
rusty, if you notice the controls on the handlebars are built-in. they’re cut off a pair of rare old tomaselli bars. i’m going to guess the handlebar throttle unit is from the same, or something jeff had lying around. i’ll find out for sure and if it isn’t from the tomaselli, i’ll let you know.
it was really great working with jeff and everybody, too. matt at working man’s, robert elswick, gabe at after hours, rock, and all those who gave parts and labor to the machine really made it happen. please be sure to visit the link ted put at the end of the post to see everybody who helped and visit their sites. everything we got was of the best quality and their info was always right.
we’ll have a babe pic or two coming up, reeb. as well as pix of the bike when the final mods are made. thanks again for digging the machine, guys. i’m trying to figure out what to do next, but first i’ve got to promote this build and everybody who made it happen.
thanks also to ted and xs650chopper for the love! smooches, motherfucker!
Thanks for the positive comments on the bike, it means a lot. This Bike has the heart & soul of many people that donated parts to it. & a couple people that donated time to it the last couple nites of the build.
I love the kitten catcher, hopefully he’ll never come up on a huge speed bump to fast
I to want to see a few details nailed out I didnt have time to do, mainly the 3erd gas tank plumbed & site guageg & the vacuum pump hooked to make it useable.
To answer the throttle control question…….Im no sure of exact bike it came from, the guys at Draft Cycle works gave me a Huge dirt bike front end, maybe a 80′s large thumper that the throttle was on I used.
Leafspring front end would have been cool, but low budget & 4 weeks to build bike at night….we wanted a very simply, afforable built bike as an example of what could be done with out breaking the bank.
I really like this site, Im slowly dscovering all the cool Metric site & am really glad Trent asked me to do this & opened my eyes to the xs650′s. It wont be the last.
Jeff Yarrington
I would like to hear that exhaust
very sick build and the bike is too sick……love the details and all the creative bits….love the ala frankinstein monster stylez..now lets see some footage of it being rode!! I want to hear it!
I really dig the front end on this bike. It has a really really aggressive look with the Gooseneck. You’d be able to ride a entire day with out stopping with the fuel capacity on this thing.
That exhaust is badass, it looks really good. I love the kitten catcher on the frame! good work!
thanks for the love, gentlemen. we’re playing with the bike in the garage at working man’s customs right now.
chris at limeybikes is going to get her soon; while my arm heals to the point where i can ride again. we’ll have new pix and a riding video in august. hopefully we’ll faithfully capture the exhaust note.
thanks for the love ted! the links to interviews and profiles i’ve done on bikerMetric from guys that have their bikes shown here are very cool of you to set up.
we’ve done a lot to the bike in the past three months. matt at working man’s customs spent too many hours to count making tons of stuff straight and tight and chris at limeybikes has recently finished mechanical work including brakes, hiding wires, re-jetting the carbs to work with the crazy exhaust, setting up the reserve fuel tank that looks like an oil tank to operate, and more. both matt and chris have spent so much effort to make this machine rideable that i cannot express enough gratitude to them except to ride it and brag about them to all i meet.
thanks to jeff at saint for starting the monster.
soon i’ll hit you up with a youtube film of me riding it and new pix of the complete FREEDOM OR DEATH MACHINE.
thanks for your support, man!
T
too coo for school.
Great bike.
It looks very similar to a shinya kimura bike. There must have been some influences?
Death’s about what you’d get if you tried riding it. 10k to build that? Obviously spent all the money on beer – and rose-tinted spectacles.
jesse;
10k included the wage hours spent in building the bike. i don’t pretend to be a builder, and the bike was a loose interpretation of a basic design i created on a computer, but it was estimated that after the donor bike, parts and labor. there was 10k into it.
since it was built, it’s been worked on for dozens of hours and has a hundred more left. the brakes didn’t work. the third gas tank where builder normally hide their electrics is a fuel tank with a vacuum pump snagged from a snowmobile and was inoperable. not a big deal.
the handlebars were less than 30″ wide but when placed on a flat surface wobbled in every direction, as if glued together by a blind monkey on crack. big deal.
16 months have passed since it was delivered and i’ve never ridden it. i hate it. i sent the builder over two grand plus the biltwell exhuast, 1″ brass risers, the lick’s bag, the custom seat by matt, TWO ribbed, brass fenders my 7 metal, the elswick hardtail and tank (mentioned above), one tire, the wheels, four footpegs by rock, and who knows how much more shit was donated by friends of the builder who had four months to build it, but did in in less than three weeks in the evenings, working 20 hours a day between the bike and his day job as part-owner of a paint and body shop for 15 years.
i’ve had a “bro” put it in his garage for a month. first thing he wanted to do was re-position the welded-on controls, placed too far down on the bars (7/8″ made to fit 1″ risers) and not find that the bars were crooked until he handed them to me in a huff after struggling with his welding for four hours, and i laid them on the ground where they wobbled, and i told him “this is why i wanted to start with the footpegs.” he never told me when i picked the bike up three weeks later that the footpeg mounts were crooked and off by inches. put rock’s pegs were on.
woo.
the paint was also done by the builder. right now, the paint is being stripped on the tanks because it started to bubble within three weeks. the bike needs the inside of the tanks lined as they soon began to rust. a third man with knowledge in these motorcycle things charged me only $420 – half his normal total – to make the third tank work with the pump, fix the brakes, clean up the wiring, and perform minor metal mods. even he didn’t notice the insides of the tank rusting.
also, the bike is being completely disassembled and measured in a frame jig, as the builder doesn’t know the rake or trail, even though i gave him specifics for both. turns out he didn’t build the bike with a jig. nice looking front end. i designed it. it’s probably crooked.
the bubbling tanks each have a ton of bondo because the builder was that kind of body man. the bondo will be taken off and we’ll see what we can do with them to properly carry through the black and gold steampunk vibe this bike should have.
for the time and money i’ve invested in this piece of shit, i could have fixed my wrecked vtx1800c, which i’d ridden 30,000 miles on in nine years, and enjoyed another 10,000 or more in the past year.
lastly, even as an infamous beer drinker, i spend lent sober and those 40 days were 40 days in a build that began the day the builder took possession of the bike in early february. those were 40 day where he didn’t do anything. i spent a lot on beer after that lent, though.
as for the rose-tinted spectacles, they were smashed a year ago.
thanks for giving me the opportunity get this off my chest, jesse.
to wrap this up in a pretty circle, i’d revise the work of this bike to be worth about 5k to some sucker.
i’ll make it right some day and i have to count my blessings. at least i didn’t purchase a $350,000 home in phoenix in 2006.
This bike looks like an attempt at a re-creation of the famous shinya kimura bike. I commend the time put into replicating.
What the fuck. You maniacs have created the scoot that the bad ass biker in the raising arizona movie should have been on. A real post-apacolyptic nitemare machine. You people are insane. Get Help.
p.s. A 20″ over girder front end might look nice.
p.p.s. Please don’t move in next door.
Great build, Question, why is the goose-neck frame with single down-tube is considered a kitten catcher, never heard that expression?
Chuck, I think the ‘kitten catcher’ is that pointy part in front of the engine. like the old locomotives had ‘cow catchers’.
From that Sept 6 report from Trent, maybe Death *would* have been preferable.