Posts Tagged biker
Custom Motorcycles – Custom Motorcycle Parts
Custom motorcycles have come a long way in the past several decades or so. In the Fifties and Sixties, if you wanted a chopper, you bought a stock Harley or Indian motorcycle and then proceeded to chop off anything that was deemed unnecessary. You would chop off the fenders, replace the seat, drag out the front wheel, and perhaps weld on some massive ape hanger handlebars. Custom bikes were the domain of the back yard mechanics and the rebel bikers.
As the bike culture progressed and the modern biker with a nine to five day job emerged the custom bike industry progressed. Top line designers began making customized bikes for anyone with an expendable income and the bikes began to be built and designed from the ground up in lieu of coming from stock parts. For the amateur bike builder, however there is still away to relive the glory days when choppers were built in backyards and garages. Custom motorcycle parts are readily available to anyone who dares to try to put together their own bike.
The easiest place to find custom motorcycle parts is online. There are quite a number of websites that offer everything for custom motorcycles, from complete kits to individual parts like wheels, frames, gas tanks, and engines. If you are mechanically inclined and know what you want in a bike than this is a good way to obtain all of your custom motorcycle parts.
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Custom Motorcycle Parts, The China Threat
We all know that after quite a few years of exuberance, our V-Twin after-market industry has slowed down and that at the same time, coincidence or not, Asia produced motorcycle parts have invaded our showrooms and found their place on our American motorcycles. In reaction to this invasion, Team America is the theme of a collective ad campaign regrouping major American manufacturers and running now in motorcycle magazines. It aims at convincing bikers to only purchase American Made Products.
If I agree with any endeavor supporting the economy of my country, I think that this campaign doesn’t address clearly enough a couple of essential points. First, let me ask you. What are the 2 main reasons why, as a biker, you buy an American motorcycle part? Probably because it is of superior quality, of its beautiful design and because deep inside it makes you feel good to own the genuine part (by the same token rewarding financially the original inventor/designer/manufacturer). In the copy of the Team America ads I didn’t see anywhere any justification given to buy American. Why? This campaign is signed by a group of the best American companies of our industry. So, why don’t they promote their creativity, their engineering as the main justifications of buying their products?
Let me tell you right away: I am in favor of free trade. The relative costs, benefits of free trade are debated since centuries by governments and trade groups. Nearly all economists support the proposition that free trade is a net gain to both trading partners and that the gains from free trade outweigh the losses. Practically it means that if there is a superior genuine foreign product at a reasonable price, I don’t feel guilty to buy it. Nor you. And it can be whatever you buy: motorcycle part, TV, car, etc. So, can an American manufacturer convince you to blindly buy its products because they are made in America? I don’t think so. The real issue affecting negatively most of us in the industry is not free trade, the fair competition from foreign corporations trying to outsmart us. It is the unfair competition from low cost labor Asian countries whose business is to steal our designs & engineering, repackaging everything in knock-off products to be sold back to our clients in the US.
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