Converting motorcycle to Bevo tailgating bike

[Texasbootz]

Ok, so I owned and loved a motorcycle in college (1981 grad). Bought a used 2012 blue and white Triumph America promising my wife to clean it up and sell for a profit (she and daughter forbid me from riding it..). I then got the crazy idea to “mean it up” by covering it with black leather (pebbled chrome tanned). I live in the Austin, TX area where UT Longhorn Football fandom and tailgating is HUGE. So, I stretched my leather dress-up idea into creating a custom longhorn bull (Bevo) tailgating bike - yes, I’m subconsciously trying to delay flipping it as long as possible ;-) I’m hoping to add fun customizations that still maintain a safe ride. Anyway, this was my first intro into working with leather and I’ve since become hooked. I’ll post progress/questions in this thread. I’ll try to post the good, bad and ugly with the eventual goal of putting it up for sale (assuming my wife does not divorce me first!). So here’s the starting bike as advertised when I bought it.

[Texasbootz]

I started simple. My first customization was to cover this small triangular side panel with a segment of leather extracted from a leather purse I found at my a thrift store. I was able to cut out and attach a piece while retaining the use of a zipper which serves as a thin pouch for holding stuff like insurance card, credit card, spare cash, etc. Leather is secured to the panel with the “haphazard beginner’s stitch” using heavy waxed twine as shown (stitching ugliness is conveniently hidden once panel is popped back into place 

[Texasbootz]

Next, I secured a pair of longhorn bull horns and cow skull to the handlebars via heavy duty Lock-washered U-bolts and metal brackets. To do so I had to first remove the windshield and reposition the speedometer on top of the horn. I also protected the chrome handlebars scratch damage via insertion of rubber inner tube material between metal touch points. Note, the leather pouch shown below the speedometer was placed temporarily to assess adding it as a “glove box”.

[Rhale]

Any bobble could be dangerous with that set of horns!  Nice though

[Texasbootz]

1 hour ago, Rhale said:

Any bobble could be dangerous with that set of horns!  Nice though

Thanks. Agree, however, she’ll be inspected and tested before releasing as a touring bike as apposed to just for show.

[TargetRockLeather]

Don't sell it. You'll be kicking yourself for the rest of your life. Tell the wife "I'm still working on it".

[Texasbootz]

1 hour ago, TargetRockLeather said:

Don't sell it. You'll be kicking yourself for the rest of your life. Tell the wife "I'm still working on it".

Its good to get that encouragement, thank you. The more I work on it, the harder it is to let go..

[Texasbootz]

Of course, I couldn’t resist revisiting the joy of motorcycle maintenance like changing plugs, oil, brake pads and shining up all the chrome, painted surfaces and existing leather saddle bags.
 

After exploring multiple placements of the skull for looks and safe attachment, I decided to remove the central headlight and mount the skull in its place. Doing so didn’t seem to significantly compromise night visibility of the road or bike (ie, headlight was redundant IMO). It also allowed reinstallation of windshield. 

In the spirit of exploring longhorn bull customization, I started dressing up my “man doll” with stuff I had laying around:

A cow bell - I temporarily attached this below the skull but later removed it since it would have hit front fender if/when shocks ever became fully compressed.

Horse shoes - I temporarily zip tied these to the front and back foot pedals but subsequently removed them since Texas bulls don’t need horse shoes - duh. 

Cow rib bones - Yes, in Texas we love our Oak-smoked BBQd ribs! I zip tied a couple of these to each saddle bag. Although a nice effect, I decided that ribs should be positioned on the tank instead (hmm, how to do this? )

My efforts began attracting neighborhood attention and started getting photo op requests. So these pics show each of the above experiments. Didn’t realize how much fun this was going to be!!

[Texasbootz]

Before spending $ on more leather, I mocked up what the bike would look like with fenders and tank wrapped in black felt - IMHO the result was striking!  Felt also served as a way to create size and shape patterns for each piece of leather to be cut. In the meantime I also stumbled across an online pic of someone who had previously done what I was envisioning minus the leg bones (guess I’m not the only crazy one!)

[pzarkov]

 Riding with these horns , front of your face...for me ,it is very dangerous . 

 

[Texasbootz]

I get your concern. However, keep in mind the horns are behind and closely follow the same contour as the side mirrors so road/riding visibility  is not degraded much if any. Of course, all bets are off if you lay the bike down at high speed horns or no horns.