Street Chopper January 1969

Here are the first 6 pages of the very first issue of Street Chopper. Read the editorial and you will see even in 1969 AEE was trying to tell everyone it isn't all about Harley's! Chop what ya got! The cover of course is the Mindbender and the Corvair Trike. In 1969 there was only 4 issues and my intenet is to post all of each issue.  hang with us this is very labor intensive and I have a chopper I'm building so I must choose my battles.

McMullen roadster model

I don't think I posted this before but this is a video of Tom's roadster  as a model from Danbury Mint.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BCj9SRMPsY

AEE sportster frame

here is the first ad for the AEE Sportster rigid frame. Designed and built by Dave Brackett our designer, engineer and all around craftsman and inventor! We sold a lot of these along the way as did Dave on his own. High quality and well thought out. This is from the August 1970 Street Chopper which means they were in production earlier in the year.

"New" AEE seat

I sent an AEE seat over to the Haifley Brothers in Phoenix for them to renew it. Came back looking perfect! I highly recommend them, great work and good guys, they went the extra mile to match up the stitching to the original that was falling apart.......check it out.

The Inheritance

This is for my friend Lenny and his bro Steve.....

more Supersport

Sadly very few color pictures exist of most of the AEE bikes. At that time most things were published in black and white so it's hard to find much. Also the shots that I do have are in the catalogs and Street Chopper's of the time and they are now over 40 years old. very delicate and tough to scan them without wrecking the publication. However here are a couple more shots....and the Molly paint on this and the Shovelhead were unreal. The red and gold and striping and design were spot on. I wish I had taken some shots when I worked there but when you are around something every day you don't think much about it.

Sportsters

I thought I should bring up the whole subject of Sportsters. These days they get looked down upon as a "girls" bike. The reality is back in the day they were the hot rod of the HD line. Probably more Sportsters got chopped than anything else. They were fast, light and compact and lots of chopper parts became available for them. The first (and our only) kit bike we ever produced was a Sportster. We actually did the kit idea a couple times over the years in Street Chopper magazine and it was always a Sportster. Our racing side of the business had Leo Payne on the Turnip Eater, fastest Sporty in the world for a long time. Of course our most famous Sportster was our bike called "Supersport shown here with Tom McMullen aboard. Designed and built by Dave Brackett. So I'd prevail upon everyone to take a second look at all sportsters, not jsut the old Ironheads as a very viable option. Remember in the dawn of choppers we chopped everything not just Hogs.....light and fast was the word...Sportys, Triumphs, Hondas and so on.

A taste of AEE goodness