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Hello fellow brothers and sisters. I have been receiving a lot of interest in the Pizza Bike and have an update from your resident custom bike builder/Pizzaiolo or should I say Pizzaiolo/custom bike builder. Our industry’s first Pizza Bike has had some progress and is being built and on schedule to debut at PMQ’s New York Pizza Show (March 4-6, 2007) for all the hard working Pizzaiolos. This project has so many purposes, first to show respect for all the great people that work so hard in our industry to provide the greatest food in the world, bar none. Second, it is to create something that is fun and exciting and use it as a publicity tool to bring more attention to our industry. Third, we want to use the Pizza Bike as something our industry can use to support a good cause. I could go into a whole article on this very subject. When you talk about the Pizza Bike, you can be happy and confident to say, “Look at what we are building.” I can someday soon see every pizzeria displaying cool posters of the Pizza Bike in their establishments. Let’s look at where we are to date.
We have made progress in the engineering of some of the key components on the bike. We are using a rubber mounted, twin-cam Dyna motor, which is a motor that no one we know of has used yet, so of course it has many specific issues. A right side transmission did not exist for this motor. Because the back tire is 300 centimeters, which is a whopping 12-inches wide, we have to stagger the motor over to the right to make the tranny’s front chain pulley line up with the large rear wheel pulley. This would have made the bike really off balance. I talked with every V-Twin tech person out there and even the largest transmission companies and no one could tell me if I could swap out and convert the guts from a right side drive to a left side tranny. Well, we did it! It’s a ‘worlds first’ and reminded me of the early days in pizza when certain equipment was not available and we had to build custom homemade equipment. We have also designed our own air ride system for the rear suspension. These units exist, but are about $2,000 dollars, so we thought we would make our own, just like making our own sauce or dough, right?
I had to sit on the bike to see were bike would sit with my weight on the bike to check clearances. Jim Sr (head frame builder and welder/fabricator extraordinaire for this project) was making jokes about my weight (he should stick to welding). With 10,000 comedians out of work, I am stuck with him. As I was sitting on the bike the whole thing let go and the swing arm collapsed with a huge bang. I thought the worst, but it was only the tack welds breaking. Jim just tack welds everything until the complete mock up is done and everything is in its place. When we are happy with everything, it is completely disassembled and all the welds are completed for strength, safety and for cosmetics. Those are just some of the advances we have made and where we are with fabrication.
I am excited to announce some new companies I am talking with that are coming on board. The first company I am excited about because I love their front ends. Our front end will be coming from Mean Street Products Inc. (8785 Castner Drive in El Paso, Texas 79907 Tel 915-592-6887 Fax 915-592-4751 www.meanstreetproducts.com Call Tim “awesome guy” Hanlon). When you have the right front end on a custom bike it just makes it flow beautifully and completes the lines. You really appreciate a beautiful front end even more so when you are riding a bike looking over the handlebars at the stallion’s arms in front of you. It is an extension of who and what you are. The front-end is like an ultimate gourmet, high flavor topping and if Tim and Mike (the Hanlon brothers) were making pizzas they would make one very fine pie.
Next, I would like to talk about the trailer company that we are in negotiations with and that I would give them an honorary mention at this point and maybe entice them to help us out. It would be awesome to carry our prized possession in one of their luxury-enclosed trailers with sponsors, the Pizza Bike and New York Pizza Show logos. These trailers are what the dough is to a great pizza, the base and the foundation; a vehicle to carry all other ingredients. George Lott, I hope your listening. The company is Forest River and the division is US Cargo. These people make many great products from buses, motor homes and so on.
Another awesome company is BDL Belt Drive Limited. They are the leaders in belt systems and you cannot have a great show bike without a cool wide belt drive system. Steve and Bob, I believe you could really help us put another great gourmet topping on our Pizza Bike.
Someone else we have not talked with yet, but are attempting to make contact with is S and S Cycles. These people do V-Twin motors and transmissions. We are talking to Weld Wheels for our custom Pizza Bike wheels. Lastly, as you can see, we are revealing the first look at the Official USA Pizza Bike with the artist renditions you see here. The paint theme is not shown, as it is top secret. This is an artist rendition, but is to scale and 98 percent accurate of what it will look like with the addition of sponsor logoed items that will be added as more sponsors join in the action. You will notice a preliminary oven concept that we want to build and tow behind our Pizza Bike. We are looking for a visionary oven company to team with us to make this oven happen. In closing, I am getting really excited and want to mention our new engine builder and wiring person, Scott, who is a very welcomed asset to our team that will make our stallion roar.
I will have some updates in the March issue of PMQ’s Pizza Magazine, but if you really want to feel the excitement, be at PMQ’s New York Pizza Show as the final product is scheduled to make its grand debut. Your friend in pizza and choppers… Dino ‘Zaa Man’ Ciccone.