New Products:
One of the books responsible for making Wolfgang Publications a success is Ultimate V-Twin Motorcycle. Part catalog and part assembly manual, the book I published in 1995 is still selling in modest numbers more than ten years later--with three or four revisions along the way.
We are currently planning to bring out a totally overhauled version of the Ultimate V-Twin book titled: Advanced Custom Motorcycle ASSEMBLY & FABRICATION. Like the earlier book, this one is part catalog and part assembly manual; and like that earlier book this one is all about helping people build a bike of their own from scratch. Unlike that earlier book, which follows and explains the assembly of bikes that seem conservative today, the new ASSEMBLY & FABRICATION book documents the assembly of very modern bikes. Bikes like the long, hand-fabricated 300 tire custom from the Donnie Smith shop and the Bobber from the shop of Dave Perewitz. Not only does the bike document the assembly, in the case of the Donnie Smith bike the book also shows each step in the fabrication of the one-off gas tank created by master tin-man Rob-Roehl.
The early chapters of the new book discuss topics like Motorcycle Design, Frames, Suspension Components, Sheet Metal and Wiring. The front of the book is meant to help builders make good decisions from the vast array of parts available from the V-Twin aftermarket. The back of the book, containing the assembly chapters, is meant to help those same builders assemble that huge pile of parts into a very cool custom motorcycle.
Road Trip
As noted in an earlier blog, I attended the V-Twin Show in Cincinnati in early February. Though it doesn't make much sense to drive to Cincinnati, Ohio from Stillwater, Minnesota, I did it that way because of two planned stops in Iowa. On Monday preceding the show I stopped to see John Parham of J&P Cycles in Anamosa, Iowa, 
which is near Cedar Rapids. If you haven't seen the J&P retail store, and more important, the motorcycle museum housed in a building in downtown Anamosa, you need to stop by. Though most of us think of J&P as a mail order company, their retail store is big, well lit and stocked with an amazing variety of parts. Variety is likewise the best word I can use to describe the bikes in the museum. Other adjectives might include amazing, high quality and awesome. Occupying two floors, the bikes include Harleys from 1908 and board track racers by Indian, Harley and Merkel from the teens. The bikes range from very early Harleys, Indians and Hendersons to the board track racers already mentioned, to European bikes like Vincent (three examples when I was there), Brough Superior and Moto Guzzi. For those of us who grew up on Japanese bikes there's a full compliment of Hondas, Kawis and Yamahas starting in the 1960s.
In addition to the bikes there's a huge display of memorabilia, toys and artwork. Sculptures in Bronze put the board track racers in another perspective, while the toy collections makes me wish I'd kept some of those old tin toys from days gone by. Of course, the walls are filled with fine art paintings and a big collection of posters. There's a sign advertising a desert race on one wall and another announcing a certain very important movie from the late 1960s.
I know it's a cliche but if you don't find a whole lot of machines in John's museum that put a huge smile on your face you've got no business riding on two wheels.
