BIG TWIN UPDATE

Here is the latest: The original girder front end designed and built by Dave Brackett (just like the rest of Big Twin) has been mounted back up to it for the first time in years. Pictures aren't real clear but enjoy...its slowly coming together at Bones Legacy in Las Vegas.

AEE seats in my stash

I'll get back to the first issue of Street Chopper soon but I happened to be cleaning up the garage and shot these pictures of my current stock of AEE seats (I have two others that are mounted up currently).

The cobra style tuck and roll seat is for a swing arm HD, all three King and Queen seats are for rigid frames, the two pads go on anything. The diamond pattern seat is almost with flaws which is amazing after 40 years. However the cobra seat is perfect, zero flaws AND it still has the AEE part number tag on it! I just need enough more chops to build to use these all up...not to mention money and time!

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

More EBAY rant!

I've said it before but this is ridiculous...out of 49 items listed today as AEE exactly ONE is!!!!!!
Buyer beware please, and to all of you out there trading on AEE's good name go the hell away.

Street Digger

This innovative chopper was built after both Dave Brackett and I left AEE. As you can see they threw everything at it, AEE parts, supercharger, digger style body and so on. As you can see in the picture Lenny our parts manager and friend (standing next to Rose McMullen) look shighly skeptical. he was right. As you will see in the pictures somehow the rear disc got chromed. Tom hops on for the first ride, and since he wasn't known for being discrete, he hammers this blown 74....grabs for the brake and nothing! that chrome disc didn't slow him at all, he proceeded across the street and plowed up the field according to Lenny! The location of this AEE chopper is unknown like all of the rest except for Big Twin which is undergoing a very slow restoration.

Sportster tanks from AEE

AEE only sold two different Sportster tanks and only both styles at the same time for a short while. This picture is from the Summer 1971 catalog and shows both types. We had just added the white gel tank with the vertical tabs (the other tank disappeared after this) and kept it in the catalog for a few years. It was the only fibergalss tank we had other than a skull tank for a short while and later a coffin tank for a while. We always had both the banana and peanut tanks in steel (some were Wassell tanks but most were knock off's from Hap Jones, Rocky and others that made them). And of course the famous wing tank which we never called that! It was a "custom contour tank". I never was a fan of the fibergalss sportster tank but Lenny our parts manager ran one on his ex-cop shovelhead and it seemed to work well plus it had a killer paint job on it.

flying update

This has nothing to do with AEE but it is a cool piece of machinery and I had a blast so thought I'd share....nice long flight the length of the northern part of the SF Bay. Then back and did some aerobatics over the wine country...I caught 2 loops and a roll on the video then I couldn' t hang on to the camera any more...enjoy, I sure did!
Oh, its a 1942 Stearman biplane.....

Going flying!

Though I am not a pilot I love to fly and today I am going up in a mid1930's Stearman biplane (open cockpit of course). Besides cruising around the northern part of the Bay Area and the wine country I will be doing aerobatics, loops, rolls, hammerhead and cuban 8.....Yeah! so no post today!

AEE finned dishpans

This is an interesting piece I came across....this is an ad from the very early days of AEE Choppers. It shows their name as AEE Choppers Unlimited. The blacked out area shows who the actual producer of these items were with AEE distributing them. the name looks like Custom Cycle Engineering, Gardena, CA.
At some point there was a lawsuit between Tom McMullen the founder and whoever came up with the finned panhead covers. We always sold them but ours had been modified (you can see them in the catalogs), I presume to get around the design by the guy that sued Tom. At any rate here is another long lost piece of AEE history:

AEE - We Ride What We Sell

Where it started for me

This is me at the whopping age of one year sitting on my dad's motorcycle, that's him and my older sister behind me. This is the only shot of this particular bike. A few years later my dad couldn't justify the expense of owning motorcycles and raising a fmaily on a carpenters wage. Later in life he did by a couple Honda's, a 160 and 350, until he wrecked the 350 and broke his leg. He had owned a variety of bikes along the way including a Henderson. Picture taken June 1953.

sorry for no posts

Due to family illness and now death in family I have been very busy away from my beloved AEE. Mosr coming soon for you fans!

Dave Brackett's Honda 750 dragster found!

Dave Brackett, AEE's famous designer and engineer has built many vehicles over the years. When Dave had his own chassis company he teamed up with Action Fours (famous Honda engine builders and racers) to build a Honda 750 rear engined dragster. As the decades went by it was lost to time.....until now. A gentleman named Kenneth Bell and his son Kurtis found it beside a barn in Temecula,CA. Their intent is to restore it to original configuration. Here is a picture of Dave with it and how the chassis looked when found: