Scratch the Pan
There isn’t a whole lot we could really tell you more about Myk Rok at this point, but we still wanted to feature his amazing Panhead. Myk pieced the bike together part by part, over a bit of time, trading for this, hunting for that. Patience paid off and the Pan you see here is […]
New Church Moto
Pretty much from the time I was born I was around industrial sewing machines, and was raised in a family of entrepreneurs so I have that blood pumping through my veins and I don’t know any other way. In 1982, the year I was born, my dad opened Long Valley Canvas Co. in McCall, Idaho. […]
BackFire Moto
Backfire http://www.backfiremoto.com/ is a project organized over five years ago by three best friends who have been riding together for two decades. Sean Dunlap , Sean Westlake and Todd Werny. As far as Cafe Racer bikes go …. we have been riding, wrenching, advocating and organizing Cafe Racer events for over 20 years here in the Northwest. […]
Black Sunshine
Some bikes just look right, Black Sunshine is one of those bikes. It was originally Myk Rok’s personal bike, he rode the shit out of it, the bike took every mile and asked for more. He was forced to sell it to fund a Panhead project and it wasn’t an easy parting but something that […]
Mean Green Winning Machine
Spring has officially sprung, and to enjoy the warmer weather we took a trip out to Myk’s the other week under the guise of shooting a couple of his bikes for the site. Although partly true there is a feeling you get sitting out at Myk’s place thats hard to beat, especially when you’re a […]
A Little Prelude….
It dawned us this week that quite a few bikes we have coming up are directly related to our friend Myk Rok. Here is a little video that our friend Ethan Miller shot of Myk, doing what he does. Hope you enjoy it
Booger Sugar
A bunch of years ago at a shitty furniture place I met Tyler Doubt, he was a skateboarder and so was I, we ended up working in the same department for a while before I got fired, it wasn’t until 8 years later that I ran into Ty again at some dive bar. we were […]
One Man’s Trash
If you live in Vancouver and ride a motorcycle there’s a good chance that you have crossed paths with Brett Beadle. Co-Owner of The Shop Vancouver and long time motorcycle enthusiast Brett’s been reviving old bikes and passing them along to new owners for a while now, its a nice supplement to the coffee/moto shop. […]
The Dirty Buffet
Sometime about five years ago the popularity of the XS650 skyrocketed, they went from another neglected UJM to the most sought after Jap bike to customize. A strong after market parts market soon followed and it no longer mattered if you wanted a cafe, tracker or chopper, there was a website or forum out there […]
A Little Thank You
Its been a long six months for us here at Oil & Rust, we went live at the start of the winter last year, not exactly the best time for a site dedicated to a culture that almost entirely revolves around fair weather. After the initial bugs were worked out and we felt that we […]
Co-op Moto Culture
The Business model that MotoMethod follows is a very unique and successful, part shop, part community and part hang out. Don’t let that fool you, the boys (and girl) that run the show are all business and their passion for motorcycles run deep. I’ll let Simon Travers explain how it all happened. “Paul and I came […]
Let ‘Em Breathe
This past Saturday the boys at Clark & Frances put on the first invite only chopper show in Vancouver, to say it was a resounding success would be an understatement, in a city where sometimes attitudes outshine personalities it was great to see so many people come together and celebrate custom motorcycles. The choice of […]
Red Rooster
Out here on the Canadian prairies the winter building season plays a special role in the hearts of those lucky enough to have a warm stove to heat our greasy, grimy bits by. With temperatures reaching into the -40’s, at times, it’s tough to imagine anyone is even thinking about motorcycles here let alone building […]
Where Good Things Go To Die
I know what you’re thinking and you are right, we missed an update. We didn’t forget about you guys, we were moving shop and because of that we got a little backed up with things, an update being one of them. What I discovered about moving again is the amount of stuff that you keep […]
Less Is More
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Hinckley power plant, while most people are buying Sporties as an introduction to a modern bike it seems the the Triumph gets over looked time and again. It’s always puzzled me and left me wondering if people are actually test riding bikes before they take the plunge. […]
Baja Fresh
Let me Introduce you to Chris Webb, Chris races the Baja among other things, for those of you that aren’t super familiar with the Baja I asked Chris to break it down to give you an idea of the madness that is ‘The Baja’”The Baja 500 is a loop race that starts and ends in […]
Fancy a Pint, Buy a Bike?
Sometimes a drunken purchase can be one of the worst decisions you can make, other times you wake up pleasantly surprised, this was the case when Rob Munro shook off the hangover and realized he had bought a BSA from ebay. The bike had Le Mans race history and some funky 60s race features, not […]
Built To Scale
A few features back we ran the Panhead Travis from HighTest is building for the Showclass BF5 contest. While we were out there our good friend Luke Uri managed to get some photos of his XS as well. We told you before that Travis is a multi talented man and further proof of that is […]
The Knob Lobber
When I first met Neale he was riding around on a semi-abused little Honda and I was riding a flashy cafe bike. All he could talk about at the time was his dream of owning a Triumph, not a unit either. Neale wouldn’t settle for anything less that a Pre-Unit. Well it wasn’t long before he […]
3, 2, 1 Lift Off
After all of work in the background of the business, we went live with the website in late November hoping that with barely little promotion and a lot of effort we could make a dent in the already over saturated world of motorcycle blogs and websites. The idea was that we wanted to Focus […]
Jaded is What Made It
Jaded is what happens when a build goes terribly wrong. I started this bike build back in 2008. I bought a brass Unity spotlight from an internet forum, and the search was on for a project bike, preferably a Triumph. One of the ladies I work with mentioned to me her husband had a Triumph […]
Sound The Trumpet
Quite a few years back when a bunch of us started to get into choppers seriously, we caught wind of an old grey beard living out in the valley that had been building Triumphs for most of his life. We went out there on a whim one day to see what he was all about. […]
Show Some Class For Bike 21
I think it’s safe to say that if over the last few months you’ve found your way onto this website or even If you’ve just stumbled across it now for the first time, you’re a fan of custom bikes. I’m also willing to guess that the few hours a day you spend sifting through blogs […]
All In The Family
In the last few years businesses that have seemingly been around forever have slowly started vanishing and it’s not just the smaller ones either, it was shocking to see major corporations go ‘the way of the DoDo’ as the world changed so quickly and the availability of things became easier. If your business model didn’t […]
Smoke ‘em If You Got ‘em
Sitting in the warmth of ‘The Shop Vancouver’ is this pristine JPS Norton 850 Commando. An understated piece of British perfection. There wasn’t a question if we were going to feature the bike, the question became when. We were told the bike’s owner was out of town but were welcome to come down and take […]
The 1 Moto
Right about now if you are living in the wonderful Pacific Northwest you are dealing with a mixture of rain, snow, frost or below freezing clear days. We get all kinds of weather changing daily up in this corner of the world, occasionally its enough to drive a sane person crazy and its more than […]
The 1 That Got Away
Pride is a double edged sword, its all things positive and on the flip side in can be all things negative, also it is said that its the hardest thing to swallow. Every once in a while we all get an exercise in dealing with pride. This feature was ours, the first time we saw […]
A Picture is Worth (2)
Welcome back for part two of the interview with photographer Jason Lang. For the first part of the interview you can click back to the home page under this feature or by clicking HERE. I tried to get more out of Jason but I forget sometimes he can be a little bit of an introvert. […]
A Picture is Worth…
Many, many years ago I lived with one of my best friends in small two bedroom on the top floor of a sketchy character house that was on busy main road. About the only advantages it did have was that the rent was cheap and the cable was free, Sometime close to the beginning of […]
Service with a Style
Just before Christmas we featured the retail side of Clark & Frances here. Darren sat down with us to have a drink and give us the low down on the store front, during the conversation he mentioned that the retail side was only half the business model and that the shop is the second half. […]
Spirit of Giving
Harley Davidson’s Sportster has been the go to motorcycle for customizers for well over 50 years now. Most times its fairly affordable to get into one whether it be an EVO or an Ironhead, seemingly they seem to share the price bracket pretty evenly. The Sporty is also the way most people get in on […]
Beards, Basements and Beers
On a recent trip to Portland we ran into Kenneth from Moto Galore. One of the guys we were with recognized him from Born Free, so we struck up a conversation about the two triumphs that we saw earlier this year at The One Show and then again at BF. A bit of conversation and […]
Dupree’s little T
By 1946 the war was over and Triumph was back to making bikes for pleasure use. There were plenty of the 500 flatheads kicking around in the form of war surplus, but if you had your heart set on owning a Triumph, it was the T series you were after. Starting at 350 and eventually […]
Tricky Trikey
Most people live in a bubble and go about the day comfortably repeating the steps from the day before and the week before that, then the month before that and so on. Sometimes its the same for motorcycles, we are so used to what can be done or what has been done already that usually […]
For The Righteous Chopper Shopper
The first time we heard of Clark & Frances we were as much stoked as we were confused. Part of the reason is the store front/retail part of the business is located on basically Main and Broadway in Vancouver, the other side of the business is run out of the motorcycle shop at, you guessed it […]
