Books

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values 

The Build: Insights from the Masters of Custom Motorcycle Design

The urge has found you daydreaming more than once. The urge to define, bend, shape, fabricate, invent, shove, break. To slide your leg over the seat you finally got back from the leather shop. To twist back the throttle grip you wrapped yourself. To lunge into the darkness of an open highway on a creation all your own. More than a motorcycle, this is about your identity. It's about building something as unique as you are. In The Build, Robert Hoekman Jr compiles insights from today's best builders to help you plot out your own beautiful beast. Loaded with photos, The Build features firsthand advice from the masters of moto design, including John Ryland (Classified Moto), Alan Stulberg (Revival Cycles), Jared Johnson (Holiday Customs), Jarrod DelPrado (DP Customs), and the legendary Max Hazan (Hazan Motorworks). You've seen what can be done. It's time to do it yourself. Get The Build.

Advanced Sheet Metal Fabrication

Advanced Sheet Metal Fabrication is a photo-intensive how-to book. See Craig Naff build a Rolls Royce fender, Rob Roehl create a motorcycle gas tank, Ron Covell forms part of a quarter midget body and Fay Butler shape an aircraft wheel fairing. Methods and tools include the English wheel, power hammer, shrinkers and stretchers, and of course the hammer and dolly. Learn from the experts how to weld the various panels into one complete, finished piece with minimal warpage - with either TIG or gas. 144 pages, 100% colour.

My Papi Has A Motorcycle

When Daisy Ramona zooms around her neighbourhood with her papi on his motorcycle, she sees the people and places she's always known in this celebration of the love between a father and daughter, and of a vibrant immigrant neighbourhood, by an award-winning author and illustrator duo. Full colour.

How To Build A Cafe Racer (Do It Yourself)

The first time that I thought about building a Cafe Racer some years ago, my mechanical knowledge was limited. I had no idea about design, and of course, I did not know the regulations regarding the homologation of reforms on a motorcycle. The result: a Ducati Forza from the 79, painted and upholstered by myself, almost impossible to ride, and of course not homologable to circulate in any Spanish city. I had to sell it in pieces because the mess could not be solved in any other way. After Lucky, my Ducati's name, many more came. I spent countless hours training and in my workshop, along with failures and victories. That time was dedicated to what I liked most: restoring and transforming motorcycles. I love what I do, and I love telling it. Through this book I want to help you avoid making the same mistakes I did when I started, and above all, to show you that you can do it. You can choose a motorcycle that will be the basis of your Cafe Racer project. You can design your dream motorcycle yourself. You can get the elements and mount them on the chassis. You can get everything to work perfectly. And finally, I want to show you that you will only need a toolbox, a small workshop (even a storage room), and lots of lots of desires. I am not a mechanic by any means, although I admire them with all my heart. Thanks to listening to them, I've learned a lot about what I know. However, like doctors, they sometimes speak in a language that is very complicated for common folk to understand. I'm going to tell you how to build a Cafe Racer as if we were having a beer in the bar next to the workshop, with words that everyone understands, because that is my dream: to bring motorcycle transformations to people like you and me. Here begins the road... do you go up?

Rebuilding The Indian: A Memoir

The building of a vintage Indian Chief motorcycle is more than the restoration of a bike-it's the resurrection of a dream. Rebuilding the Indian chronicles one man's journey through the fearful expanse of midlife in a quest for peace, parts, and a happy second fatherhood. Fred Haefele was a writer who couldn't get his book published, an arborist whose precarious livelihood might just kill him, and an expectant father for the first time in over twenty years. He was in a rut, until he purchased a box of parts not so euphemistically referred to as a "basket case" and tackled the restoration of an Indian Chief motorcycle. With limited mechanical skills, one foot in the money pit, and a colorful cast of local experts, Haefele takes us down the rocky road of restoration to the headlong, heart-thrilling rush of open highway on his gleaming midnight-blue Millennium Flyer. Fred Haefele has taught creative writing at Stanford University and the University of Montana. He currently works as an arborist in Montana, where he lives with his wife and two children.

What Branches Grow

A boldly imagined, exhilarating quest through post-apocalyptic America, where human nature is torn between the violent desperation to survive and the desire to forge connection.

Thirty-five years ago, the world was ravaged by war. Delia, driven from her home in Savannah by loss, travels north in search of a future. Gennero is tortured by his violent past and devotion to his hometown. Ordered to apprehend Delia, he follows her into the post-apocalyptic landscape. The wasteland is rife with dangers for those seeking to traverse it: homicidal raiders, dictatorial leaders, mutated humans, and increasingly violent and hungry wildlife.

What Branches Grow is an unflinching depiction of life after civilization, where, above all else, trust is the hardest thing to achieve and to give. The survivors have an audacious dream of a better life, but their quest may end up being a fruitless endeavour in a world openly hostile to hope.

The Chopper: The Real Story

Marc Notes:

Discovering The Motorcycle

Discovering the Motorcycle is a highly acclaimed comprehensive, never-before completed history and cultural evaluation of motorcycling from 1867 to the present. Based on over fifty years of the author's personal experience, this textbook introduces readers to the vast world of motorcycling, its history, social impact, and how these machines are built and function. If you ride or have always wanted to ride and crave to know everything about the world of motorcycles, this 510-page book is now your bible.

Each individual chapter is devoted to a major aspect of motorcycling; ranging from historical discussions of the machines that lead the way to our modern sportbikes, vintage classics, choppers and bobbers, off-road machines, touring rigs, and electric motorcycles. Chapters include the history of motorcycle racing, bike events, museums, and clubs. The book honors motorcycling's great marques, with representation in each chapter.

Technical sections explore engineering matters, while the captions beneath over 1,000 color photographs and illustrations add detail about the makes and their mechanical attributes. The chapter on the engine is unique in that it offers a glimpse into the four hundred-year evolution of the internal combustion engine.

Many years of experience, research, and sharing of information between credible resources in the motorcycling world have resulted in an unprecedented biography of the sport. Discovering the Motorcycle will make a perfect gift for those who dream of cruising through the wind on two (or three) wheels, and for the casual weekend rider who just wishes to know more about this amazing world.