AEE Square glide triple tree

We recently discovered that the triple tree had an inherent weakness to them which may explain why most of them have a bent top plate.  The square leg holes do not and can not pinch the legs hard neough to hold them in place as well as they should. hence the legs transmitted movement to the top plate bending it. We added a stiffener under the top plate (after straightening the top plate). I discovered this problem but Dave Brackett our friend and AEE engineer figured out why it was doing it and the fix for it.

Manifold needed

I normally would not put up a post like this but I'm getting hard up. Need a Ironhead to Weber side draft carb manifold like this one by MPD. It sticks straight out from the engine as opposed to pointing forward. If you have one I'm buying...polished or chrome is even better!

Video of the AEE Choppers Corvair Trike!

This is a clip from the 1969 movie The Babysitter. It was a cheap quasi biker film. In this clip Tom McMullen is aboard the famous Oakland Roadster show winning Corvair Trike. If you watch close you will see the chopper that started AEE Choppers parked in front of the AEE shop, the equally famous Mindbender. I have searched for a number of years for this clip so I hope you enjoy!

find AEE

here is some fun....Google map 730 Monroe Way, Placentia, CA.
The stick pin will be stuck in to the last AEE location. That buildings is one of 4 we had (the four that are all joined together). The main building held our showroom, offices and parts warehouse, building just below this one was our warehouse and where we kept the cats, Spoke and Cibie (cats as in mountain lions). First building to the right of the main building was our production/welding/assembly/machine shop. Building just below it was for Street Chopper and prototype department.
There were a few exceptions to this but in general that is the way it laid out.

You can do the same with the previous shop at 1420 Burton Place, Anaheim, CA and the original shop at 7931 Wittaker, Buena Park, CA.  I worked at the last two locations but missed out on Wittaker!

Love the smile......

A shot of our Sportster Kit Bike with one of the young ladies from the office on the back.....look at that smile!
This bike was more of a parts mule than any other bike we had. Many different seats, sissy bars, handle bars, mirrors and headlights etc. ended up on this chopper. It also ended up with multiple types of induction on it. Plus it was stone reliable....1970 electric start Sporty.

Dave Bell

Dave Bell did lots of cartoons for Street Chopper and does them for Street Rodder to this day. Lenny Cenotti our parts manager at AEE was fortunate enough to have Dave draw him a personal cartoon of Lenny riding. According to Lenny one day Rose McMullen walked out and said "here is a package for you". In it was this drawing for Lenny. Enjoy a sidelight of the AEE years thanks to Lenny and Dave. Oh, and those cases of Coors are close to correct, Lenny and I polished off many a drink back in the day together! In fact at one point we were both so broke that Lenny invented a drink for us...he had an old bottle of Galliano liquor that had been sitting around looking cool gathering dust. We dumped that in a glass with ice and coke and we had an instant "Tall Cool Lenny".

No update today

On my way to New Mexico for a few days to see my son and his wife. Back posting more AEE news soon.

the End! 1969 AEE catalog- back cover is Mindbender the one that strated it all

Almost done! 1969 AEE catalog check out the helmets!

Sixth installment of the 1969 AEE Choppers catalog

Ya get 2 postings today. I'm feeling generous. I'm also working on a way to make this  PDF and have it available on our website.

fifth installment of the 1969 AEE Choppers catalog

I'm back for a New Years vacation and posting away!

fourth installment of 1969 AEE catalog

HAPPY NEW YEARS!   FROM THE GREATEST CHOPPER COMPANY IN THE WORLD.....AEE CHOPPERS.

third installment of the 1969 first AEE catalog

Hope someone out there is checking this stuff out! Nice picture of the first AEE springer sitting on a box. You will note AEE never liked slugs and some people called us and others criminals for selling them. Reality is they are safe used correctly. You can see in the catalog they have specific directions of usage.

more 1969 first AEE catalog

I took a few days off but here are some more pages of the very first catalog AEE ever produced:

part 2 of the 1969 AEE catalog

Next four pages...how does a fully painted tank, fender and frame for a couple hundred bucks sound? Rake neck for $25? Enjoy!

First AEE catalog 1969

Over the next week or so I am going to post every page of the first 1969 catalog, actually November 1968 (there were actually two catalogs in 1969, more on that later). I do this more for archive purposes than anything else. Many of the pages were taken straight out of the MCM catalog as an example. first up is the frotn and back covers.

Rose McMullen with the famous Corvair Trike and Boomer the shop lion. The back cover is Tom's Mindbender shot at what looks like the Fullerton airport. The Mindbender is the chopper that started it all and the first bike with a fully molded yet removable tank. Also one of the first street choppers with a fully chromed engine.

Denvers Choppers

Denvers Choppers built a lot of bikes in it's day. Kayelynn with Dream Machines over in Kingman, AZ has made it his duty to find and restore Denver's bikes where ever he can find them. I have seen some of them, and heard them run too. Great pieces, some restored, some left alone but all great pieces of 70's chopper history. A few have some AEE items on them but eventually Denver began building lots of his own parts. I post this here for Kayelynn and to salute his efforts saving our collective chopper past!

AEE at it's peak!

Never thought I'd find this picture but here it is...I helped set this up, rolled the bikes out and helped with the shot.....rear row left to right Corvair Trike and the mighty Big Twin, front row, The Shovelhead, Mindbender, Really and Supersport. These are the bikes that existed when I arrived at AEE (though Big Twin was red at the time). Not long after this shot the Corvair Trike was won in a contest, Big Twin sold to the show circuit and Mindbender was sold to person unknown.....enjoy the only shot of this many AEE bikes in one picture that I am aware of......

A fan's AEE story....

Dave Brackett our talented designer/engineer/fabricator  received this recently from a fan of AEE and Molly:

Dave
I've really enjoyed reading your AEE & Molly histories. I grew up in Placentia Ca. AEE was just down the street and I went there many times with friends that were building Choppers. The first time I went to AEE it was still in Anaheim and I remember seeing Big Twin with those tires all the way across the rear. It was the most radical thing I had ever seen. I don't believe it was finished when I saw it. All the other trips were to the Placentia Location. I remember being a little freaked out when Rose came to the counter. Turns out she new more about Chopper parts than we did. In the early 70's a lot of my friends built or bought Choppers. Two of them were painted by Molly. My neighbor, Frank, traded a Triumph 650 for a really nice 59 Panhead Chopper. Shortly after he laid it down on the 57 freeway. He wasn't hurt but the bike didn't fair to well. He tore the bike down and sent the tank,fender and frame to Molly for paint. I went with him several times to check out the progress on the paint. On one trip another friend of mine decided to light his pipe in the shop. The fender was sitting on a 55 gallon drum. After lighting his pipe he threw the match into the drum. The fumes in the drum ignited and blew the fender across the shop. After Molly threw us out of the shop he brought out the fender which just had silver flake on it. There was a small crack in the Bondo at the tip of the fender and he told my friend that he wasn't going to fix it. That crack was there for the life of the bike. When He brought everything home I thought that paint job was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I helped Frank assemble the bike and he let me borrow it whenever I wanted.
I didn't build anything back then. Well a few years ago I decided to build a clone of Frank's Panhead. I had taken a lot of pictures of his bike so I made enlargements to use as a guide. I found a 60 Panhead in the Cycle Trader that had been chopped in 1970. The guy finished it and hardly ever rode it. The bike made the March 72 cover of Cycle World's Special Choppers Magazine. It was in great shape but was ugly ! He bought most of the parts at AEE including the springer. The rest of the parts were purchased at Cheatah Choppers in Santa Ana. I took it all apart and built my clone. The springer is the original chrome. I copied the Molly paint job from the pictures I had. I spent days tapeing out the designs that he probably did in hours. His paint jobs were epoxy but I used House Of Kolors urethane. It's really a nice bike to ride and I was surprised how well the springer works. Most Choppers were hard tails but Franks wasn't and at 60 I can't ride a hardtail. I attached three pictures. One of the clone, another of my paint and finally one of the originally Molly job. Thanks for taking time to read this. I could have gone on for pages. Thanks again for the website.
 
Art Holling

 and thanks to Art for confirming that our chrome and springers were the best!

7Up Triumph once again

Another shot of one of two 7UP Triumphs built for 7UP Bottling of Los Angeles. One was a 650 and the other a 500. Gorgeous Molly paint in 7UP green (sorry about the black and white the green was incredible). Bikes were pretty much all AEE catalog items. One notable exception is the sissy bar had 7UP spelled out on it (you can just see the bottom of it in the photo) At that time period we sold a tremendous amount of parts for the Triumphs. I always loved the crossing upsweep pipes, Beautiful flow to them.