Movin’ on up, out the South side…

April 13th, 2010

In an effort to confuse and divert my enemies, I’ve slid from one department to another here within the dealership. No longer will you find my smiling face greeting new prospective Harley-Davidson owners out on the sales floor, but rather I’ll be at the back of the store and to the right of the parts department filling the chair as Thunder Mountain Harley-Davidson’s freshly anointed Chrome Consultant. For those not completely indoctrinated with Harley’s verbiage, Chrome Consulting is a profession Milwaukee’s finest fabricated near the beginning of the century, and consists of being the go-to guy for parts, accessories and installation for all of our new and used bike customers. Basically, I’ve become the keeper of the toy box.

Need a chrome front end on your new Road King? I’m your guy. Your significant other is making your life a living hell until you buy up a bigger, plusher seat for that Sportster? See me and I’ll fix you up. You need enough horsepower to ruin tires, belts and possibly even the asphalt underneath you? Look no further, I got you covered.

So whether your project is big or small, look me up and I’ll do my best to help you toward having the bike of your dreams.

Hope to see you around the shop!
Justin “Two-Bit” Schilling

2010 Fat Boy Lo Ride Review

December 16th, 2009

FatBoyLo

2010 Fat Boy Lo Ride Review, or How Harley Built the Baddest MoFo on the Floor

I’ll be honest here – Harley very rarely blows me away with their styling.

Do they build the best mass-produced cruiser motorcycle in the world? Yes. Is their quality second to none? Yes. Do the rest of the world’s major manufactures continue to trip over each other, scratching and clawing to get just a whiff of the Bar and Shield’s proverbial tailpipe? Yep, that’s true too.

All that being said though, I’ve always seen Harleys when they come out of the box as a pristine blank canvas – nowhere near finished and in need of some serious personalization, at least for my taste. Now before every cat in the world rolling a stock Street Glide with a set of Rineharts and a high flow writes in to tell me just how wrong I am and how perfect their bike is just the way it is, let’s look at the facts.

Harley didn’t sponsor the custom Harley class at this year’s AMD World Championships of Custom Bike Building in Sturgis for no reason. Nor do they print that two-inch-thick parts and accessories catalog year in and year out so you can leave good enough alone. They want you to trick them out, and more importantly Harley wants to see them when you’re done so they can steer the mother ship’s styling based on what the average Joe is doing to his bike once it leaves the factory.

Imagine my surprise then at seeing the new 2010 Fat Boy Lo in the flesh for the first time. For me, it’s as close to finished as Harley has come with a bike in a long, long time. Its blacked-out industrial styling is as subtle as a shotgun at the company Christmas party. Wisely, Harley refrained from dipping in black tip to tip and added just enough bits in their new “Satin Chrome” finish to give the bike some contrast against the choice of Vivid Black or Black Denim tins and a Harley first Black Denim frame.

It’s a symphony of simplicity that gives the Fat Boy Lo its finished look.  What could you add to it? Does it need pipes and an air cleaner? Of course, what Harley doesn’t? Outside of that though I would be tempted to leave it the heck alone – Wiley G and the boys actually got it right.

But how does it ride you ask? Thankfully for those that were (or will be) lured in by this girl’s stunning appearance, she rides as good as she looks. Ergonomically, the Lo varies quite a bit from its standard Fat Boy brethren. With a lowered suspension and thin cut seat, it sits lower than any other big twin Harley has ever build at just 24.25” – good news for short legged bikers like myself. It’s a combination that will find more people flatfooted than any bike that’s come before it.

The handlebars lean more toward a drag persuasion, and get you leaning/rocking forward into a more aggressive posture than most. Coupled with the low “down-in-the-bike” seating, the Lo had me feeling confident to throw it deep into some turns, which I got a chance to do recently before all this freezing cold weather set in.

Rolling around town on the Lo was a blast. She’s a looker, as more than a few double-taking and rubbernecking cage drivers quickly confirmed. For a bike that looks so right because of its subtleties, it’s hard to imagine how you could not get noticed riding it.

The wide, low handlebars were an easy reach and the seat was comfortable for the duration, as the balanced Twin Cam 96 B made quick work of getting me up to speed and down the road. Remembering back to the buzz-prone 1996 Heritage I used to ride, it’s hard to fathom how much of an improvement Harley made with their balanced engine. Glassy smooth, with ample torque always waiting at the ready, it’s simply a pleasure to ride. Couple this engine with H-D’s six-speed Cruise Drive transmission, and you’ve got a package that feels at home puttin’ down the main drag, or blazing down the interstate.

The lowered chassis has the added benefit of giving the bike an even lower center of gravity than before, making switchbacks an effortless task and giving the bike a very light in-hand feel. If there’s a gripe to be had at all it would be the low floorboard height and the compromise that creates in hard cornering, but it’s not adverse and will probably only be noticed by the most aggressive of riders.

On the whole, the Lo impressed me more than most anything the factory has rolled out in forever with a winning combination of ride and looks that is hard to deny. It won’t be for those who still believe the chrome is going to get them home, but for everyone else you owe it to yourself to demo ride this machine and see what all the buzz is about.

See you on the road,
Justin “Two-Bit” Schilling

An Introduction

December 9th, 2009

ridingSo, in the interest of introducing myself without making this sound like a personals ad, I’ll refrain from telling you that I like watching sunsets and long walks on the beach, and do my best to stick to the facts. My name is Justin Schilling and I work as a salesman on the floor here at Thunder Mountain Harley-Davidson. If you’ve been into our store in the last year I may have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, or you might at least recognize my ugly mug from seeing me around.

What then, you might ask, makes me qualified to wax poetic about all things American Motorcycle in this shiny new blog? Well, that resume starts at about seven-years-old when I started abducting my father’s motorcycle magazines and appreciating them for something other than all the pretty pictures. I was the kid sitting on the bowl with the latest issue of Easyriders pouring over every word about the latest custom from Ron Simms or Donnie Smith, the coolest new part from Arlen Ness, or expanding my prepubescent horizons through the natural wonders of the Fox Hunt. My fascination turned to borderline addiction through my teenage years until I finally got my first Harley-based bike in 1999, taking delivery of a shiny, black Buell M2 Cyclone. It lasted two days as stock before I started tearing apart, tweaking and generally making it a one of a kind.

That transfusion of 20w/50 lead to me ditching my college education and career in Journalism and joining the sales team at my local dealership way back in 2002. It’s been a twisty road since then, with stops at Harley-Davidson dealers, as well as officer gigs in the performance aftermarket and launching my own custom parts line. Along the way I’ve kept my writing chops working for a number of motorcycle magazines, including bylines for Thunder Press, Ironworks, Battle2Win, and contributing editor status with Hot Bike and Street Chopper. Bottom line, I eat, sleep and breath this stuff, and enjoy nothing more than educating those new to the life all about it.

As for the new Thunder Mountain Blog here, I’ve got big plans. Some of it will be utilitarian, updating you on upcoming events, store specials, etc., some of it will hopefully be educational, as I walk you through tech articles on the latest and greatest performance products and bolt-on attention getters, and some of it might even border on belligerent rambling, as I give you my take on the wins and losses around this great big v-twin industry of ours. Above all though, I hope I can make this space entertaining enough for you to come back every now and again and see what’s new, catch up on your news, and maybe get a laugh out of my terminal mental diarrhea.

So sit back, grab your favorite adult beverage, and hang on for what is sure to turn into a twisted ride for all of us.

I’ll see you on the road,
Justin “Two-Bit” Schilling

Why Thunder Mountain?

December 9th, 2009

blog_2When I landed at Thunder Mountain almost a year ago now I had quite a few of my more loyal customers follow me North, adopting a new home dealership to keep doing business with yours truly. You know who you are, and I can’t thank you all enough. In the process of calling all my old customers upon arrival I got several variations of the old, “Why should I buy from Thunder Mountain?” and it got me thinking.

Why the heck should you part with your hard earned cash here rather than the next Bar and Shield Emporium along the highway? As it happened, that very question was one our boss here in the sales department was about to pose to the sales team and after a category IV brainstorming session we distilled it down to three distinct advantages we had over the competition.

If we don’t have it, or can’t get, you probably don’t want it. Simply put this place is huge, and that hugeness allows us to stock in and display more parts and accessories and motorclothes than any of our competition around the region. So, if you’re anything like me and devoid of reasonable patience this is of particular interest – you want you want when you want it, which is now. I get you, as does our Motorclothes Manager Tammy Ellis and our Parts Manager Dylan Scheie. They spend their days making sure you have the coolest new bits for your back or your bike on the shelf and ready for your immediate gratification and consumption.

Second, our service department is full of ringers and they’re going to fix your baby right the first time every time. The scary truth at most Harley shops is that they’ll have guys at all levels or training wrenching on bikes, from greenhorns fresh out of trade school on up to maybe one or two Master Certified techs. Is your big bore motor build being done by a virgin who needs the practice, or a hardened veteran who could do it in his sleep? Other places that decision might be left up to luck of the draw, as the next open tech gets the next work order on the pile. Here, all five of our techs have their master level certification and four of them are what Harley calls Masters of Service Technology. It’s H-D’s highest level of training and only the best of the best achieve it. So while doing a performance upgrade or dealing with a busted bike can be a stressful situation, knowing that your bike is guaranteed to be in the hands of one of the best techs in the country should give you some peace of mind.

And lastly, you can’t beat our commitment to events. Whether it be our Spring Fling, Hot-Rods and Harleys, the ever popular Beach Party, the annual pilgrimage known as Thunder in the Rockies or any of the other bi-weekly events we put on, you can’t find a better or more active ownership experience than you will at Thunder Mountain. Just check out our events calendar and you’ll see what I mean.

So, if you haven’t given us a try yet come in and I’ll be happy to show you around. If you’ve done business with us before we want to welcome you back again soon, and continue to earn your business in the future.

Keep the rubber side down,
Justin “Two-Bit” Schilling