Story was originally posted on joyridesartco.blogspot.com
Go to joyridesartco.blogspot.com to see the imagesSo I finally had the opportunity to meet John Edwards and shoot his 1952 Panhead at his house in Garden Grove, CA. I first saw his bike at the Mooneyes BBQ party a few months back. I had taken photos of it in the parking lot and sent the pics over to Nelson Kanno. I knew Nelson would know who owned the bike. "That's John Edwards's bike, everyone loves that one." I can see why. Nelson offered to give John a call for me, but I got tied up with other projects so I was not able to follow up right away.
A few months past and I was at Brandon Holstein's of "Brawny Built" shooting his "Rusty Nail" bike and I was asking him questions about it. Brandon told me that John had done the paint job for it. That got me back on track of trying to hook up with John. Brandon made a call to John and let him know I was interested in shooting his bike. I then gave John a call and set up a day and time to meet.
My wife Liz and I drove down to John's house in Garden Grove and met him and his fiancée, Fawn. John was either in the middle of painting or just finishing but greeted us and offered us drinks. We looked at the bike and John started getting into the details of how it came to be and then showed me some of the other projects he has going on in his garage.
Fawn had turned on her laptop to show us bikes and cars that John had painted in the past. Turns out he painted the roof top on my old '64 SS Impala that I had sold to one of his friends a few years back. You can also see John's work in the newest "Horse" mag in the article that I shot of Denver Dan's "Chainsaw" motorcycle.
After we were done looking at some of his amazing work, I started shooting his Panhead.
It is a '52 Panhead with a late '54 to '57 straight leg frame with LOTS of modifications done to it. It has a molded Peanut tank, an old leather seat and also a Custom Cycle Engineering dish pans, bird deflector and foot pegs. The foot pegs are rare and hard to find. I got one from Nelson Kanno, "Thanks Nelson", and the other from Tim Wallingford.
It has stomper brakes like they used in the bay area, early sixties flavor ripple pipes and Magneto, Stelling risers and bars. The Stelling risers were designed for stock springer front top clamps. So if a guy fell and bent the bars, you could chop them off and put on another set of bars. There is a chromed ribbed English rear fender and WM0 Front wheel. Those are kind of sought after. I got the wheels from Johnny Chop. I haven't seen any on a bike except mine and one other guy I know. Chica had helped out a lot on the bike. He did the wiring and a lot of the welding.
We made the pipes together and I did most of the fabrication. Brawny did the tank. It has a 1935 VL front end that I bought off of Jeff Decker's dad Allen, years ago. The paint is a special mix to make the lavender color. I had help with the search for parts from Mike D.
I had actually bought the bike from Nelson when he worked at Harley Davidson. He went halves on it with a buddy of his. The bike was kind of a funky deal. Funky king and queen seat with a big 5 gallon tank. Basically when I bought it from Nelson I kept the engine, trans and frame. That was maybe 6 years ago. I then ended up trading it for the full dress '57 that I still have in the garage.
I am currently reworking that one now. I ended getting it back and I redid it. It took me about 8 months to redo everything and I rode it for the first time in April.
I had an idea of what I wanted to do with the bike, a little taller sissy bar, and lots of chrome, something real simple and to the point. I wanted to let the little accoutrements grab your eye and speak for it self. At first I was going to do a lot of tin stuff and not a lot of aluminum stuff. It turned out I did a lot of aluminum stuff like polished wheels, valve cover, primary cover and just a lot of little shit.
All in all John Edward's Panhead is one beautiful piece of machinery.
Hope you enjoyed this feature on John Edwards and his '52 Panhead.
Thank you to John and his Fiance, Fawn for letting us come to your house and do this feature.