Drifter 800 - "Maxine"

 

In my earliest days of fantasizing about motorcycles, I always knew that I liked Indians. But when the Kawasaki Drifter hit the market, that fantasy suddenly took on a new face. I think I had read a magazine article about it at the time, 10 or 12 year-old me seeing the photos of the blue-and-black 1999 model and telling myself it was the coolest shit I'd ever seen. The model was wearing a half helmet, sneakers and mom jeans, and even he looked good on it. So as a kid, I think I told myself I was going to have one of those SOBs one day. 

I'm pretty sure this is the image I saw as a kid. The internet reveals this was in an October 2000 issue of Motorcycle Cruiser.

At some point, when I was older and realistically getting into bikes, I rode a VN800 and became obsessed with that powerplant. To this day I often claim to people that the Vulcan 800 is the world's best motorcycle, and I'll die on that hill. Yeah, I know that answer is endlessly reliant on context. But for me, it really was the most natural thing I'd ever ridden. At 5"7 and 145lbs that bike felt like putting on an old catcher's mitt. I also learned everything I knew about riding on a 750 twin, so maybe I have a bred inclination for that particular weight class. But I can say without a shred of doubt that there has been no single motorcycle that I have ever straddled that is a more natural fit for my body type and my riding style than the Vulcan 800. There's plenty of other bikes that are similar - Shadows, Sportsters, Vstars - but the Vulcan rides like a Kawasaki, and my blood will always run green. It quickly became my favorite cruiser. So the fact that they made one of these in Indian style was nothing short of divine intervention afaic.

Drifters in general are pretty rare birds. They only made a small number globally and only half of those ended up in the States, and of those, most of them didn't sell. At the time, it just wasn't something the Boomers were buying. The Gilroy Indians came out the same year as the Drifter, so that untimely coincidence probably killed whatever geezer interest might have been. They barely sold here. I've only ever encountered one other 800 in the wild, and probably seen less than five 1500's (funny enough, one of which was my next door neighbor when I lived in Page, AZ. He bought it for cheap without any idea of what it was. He wanted a Harley). The times they did come up for sale were rare, and they were almost always completely roached. I had looked at one in Boise at one point, but it was rough. And as much as I still dreamt about these bikes, I couldn't agree with the idea of paying $5000 for something that had rats living in it.  

I was making pretty good money working at a dude ranch in Wyoming in 2019 when I decided to get on searchtempest and see if my luck was willing to change. I found an '04 in Portland, OR that looked immaculate and was decently priced, and was practically next door to my best friend's house at the time. I called the guy on the phone and talked his ear off - it was garaged, maintained, ridden, perfect. I lowballed him and he went for it, I think mostly because he wanted it to go to someone that actually cared about it and knew what it was. I had my mechanic friend in Portland go check it out in person and he vouched for it 100%, so I made him the proposal - buy it for me, do an oil change on it, and then ride it from Oregon to Wyoming for a summer vacation and I would pay to fly him home. He responded with one word: "Absolutely." 

It was a 2004 model in Galaxy Silver/Ebony. I was disappointed in not getting one of the earlier generations that had the ribbed engine cases and blacked out forks. But for how long I'd been searching, I wasn't going to be picky.

The Drifter as it appeared the first day I got it. Jarod had delivered it safely the previous day.

It was probably about the third week of September when Jarod showed up with the bike, and we met at the SuperFoods in town. I let him follow me back to the ranch so he could say goodbye to the bike with a last ride through some nice country. He stayed with me about a week in the country before I arranged to get him home, which of course turned into an ordeal - that's another story.

As I write this now, I'm realizing what a perfect deal I got with the bike. Not only have I never seen another Drifter in such immaculate condition, but the amount of stuff that came with the bike was absurd. The previous owner sent Jarod off with a windscreen, backrest and luggage rack, an extra seat, and saddlebags. When you consider the price I paid - even back then - it was probably my best purchase. 

The saddlebags in particular were a style I have never seen since. I'm assuming they were some sort of special order Kawasaki option in 2004, since the previous owner had bought dealership. They were actually really cool, but they didn't fit the vision I had for the bike and never would, so I sold them on VDR and hope somebody is running them to this day. In fact, I tried harder than usual to sell most of the take-off parts from this bike, on account of their rarity. Most of it did eventually sell, which put a marginal amount of money back in my pocket for the build. I wonder how many of those parts are still being run on Drifters around the world? 

Day two, after stripping off everything I considered extraneous. I couldn't ditch those reflectors fast enough.

 

I wasted no time in stripping the bike down as far as I reasonably could and rode it like that for the remainder of the year. I still had a couple of months (hopefully) of riding weather, so I enjoyed it as much as I could before winter. Apart from a very short fling with a Virago 750, I had never owned a v-twin before, and I remember that learning curve in that fall-colored high country very well. Finally in possession of my dream bike, and during what was arguably still my best years of living and working. I was living out a fantasy from a younger age. That was a formative time.

I ended up as a winter caretaker on a cattle ranch on the reservation that year, and brought the bike with me with the goal of "finishing" it there - whatever that meant at the time. 

So now that the history is out of the way, I'm going to start writing about the build itself. My aim with this posting is to create as much coverage as possible with this build, not only for my own future reference should I ever decide to go back and change anything, but largely for the benefit of anyone else who is striving to create something similar, and could find use in having many of the tips I scoured the internet for consolidated in one place.

With a stash of Christmas money I did splurge on the performance jet kit from Dynojet, and this was purely to get the adjustable racing needle out of it. I realize that 60 dollars for a carb needle is outrageous, but the declining aftermarket support for these aging motorcycles was a little discouraging, and I didn't want to put the bike together only to be left with the feeling that I could have gotten more out of it. So yeah. There's a 60 dollar needle in this carb.
The jets themselves were cheap enough that maybe they helped cancel out the cost of the stupid needle. They came from China and took months to get here, but worked great and it was nice to be able to buy a generous set of sizes to tune with all at once. After finishing my new air cleaner, I originally set up my carb with a 162 main, a 52 pilot, and needle on third clip from the top. I tend to aim slightly rich on my bikes, but seeing as I live at about 7,500 feet and most internet bike theory comes from sea level, theoretical jetting can be a challenge. As a first attempt went, this was probably my best on record. The bike ran well enough on the first fire that I rode it like that for weeks untouched, even taking it on a few longer trips without a single gripe. But a lack of real speed at WOT and some sluggish mid-range proved to me that it was a bit rich, and I had a suspicion that the mixture screw could use some tweaking too. So eventually, I tried for a second time.
This time I went down to a 160 and moved the needle up a clip, to the second from the top. I also spent the time to properly adjust the idle mixture screw and, being new to the CV carb, think I did an okay job. Performance seemed close enough to the same as before, but slightly improved - so as far as I’m concerned, perfect.

The air cleaner was inspired from a guy on the Drifter Riders board. He linked to a cheap auto air filter and cover, and claimed it would be a perfect fit over the OEM backplate if you cut it down right. It costed something like 15 bucks. Sure as shit, once I finished my "grampsizing" and ground down the edge on the plate, the bead on the new filter sat on top of it perfectly. 

 

This is the stock air assembly. The goal was to cut off all protruding plastic to create a perfect circle for the air filter to sit on.

 

Snowy night activities

 I used the cut off scraps of plastic to fill in the holes on the assembly, using RTV silicone to seal it all up. At the time, Permatex was all I had, so I figured it would be a temporary job. Turns out, it's still on the bike today without any signs of failure. For some stupid reason I didn't think it was necessary to take any "after" photos of the finished part I had worked so hard to make. But there is plenty of material available online if you want to do this mod. Just search "Grampsizing Mod" on Wolf's Bike Shop or VDR.

 

The cover height even lined up close enough on the stud that I only needed a single washer to make up the difference. Perhaps the coolest part of this whole mod was that I used the spin nut from my Chevy 350 which had just recently become worthless after changing to a taller air filter. I don't even know why exactly I held onto the thing, other than that I thought it was cool because it was from the 70's. And now it's front and center on my other ride. Haha.

I became way more comfortable with the bike after getting all that EPA crap out of the way. It's amazing how much the engine cleans up without it. I opted to cover the head reeds with caps rather than connect them, because that made more sense to me. I've learned the hard way that when it comes to caps, vinyl is king - no rubber!  

I had stripped the bike completely in the beginning, planning to repaint all of it in sequence as I worked through my intake mods etc. But at a certain point I realized that my faith in being able to paint anything during the Wyoming winter was a bit optimistic. I thought about trying to set something up in the heated calving barn at one point, but the dust would have been so bad that I decided I was better off just enjoying the factory paint until I was somewhere a bit more temperate. In hindsight, I'm really glad for this. Because I was about to pull the plug on 10 cans of Rustoleum metallic red and I know now how much I would have regretted that. 

However I did paint all the small parts in my bathroom. So although I was still running the factory paint, I managed to black out everything I had wanted to, forks, lights, etc. I used Rust-Oleum Metallic Midnight Black for this. It was not true black but rather a highly flaked charcoal color. This gave it a really cool standout/contrasting look against the pure black frame. I really liked it at the time, and the paint went on beautiful.
My one misstep here however was not using primer. The instructions on the can were very confident about spraying it over any surface, so I decided to see if it shot straight over chrome. It seemed to work great.

Well, turns out that beautiful finish wasn't very durable without primer under it, and although it seemed perfect on the ground, I wasn't 2 days into my summer trip before I started noticing flaking. So it wasn't a very permanent job, but at least it looked pretty good for my trip.

Originally, the bars were the narrower of the two Emgo "Beach Bar" offerings. I effing loved those bars, low and wide just how I like, and they made me think of an old Indian every time I saw the bike. However after doing a few longer rides I realized I could have lived with an extra inch or two of pullback. So after some time I upgraded to the Flanders Grande Beach Bar. With an extra 2" of pullback this was a totally perfect seating position for me and comfortable for the life of the bike. However I never thought these bars looked quite as good as the Emgos did. They are slightly more angular and less graceful. 

 
The grips are the "economy" vintage grips from JPcycles. I love them, but they took a lot of work to fit with the stock controls. I had to grind out larger openings on both the clamshells and shorten the clutch side body. Once fitted properly, I really love these grips. They are stout, comfortable, and look the part extremely well. It's five years and 15,000 miles later now and I'm still running the originals and they still look pretty good. I didn't want to do risers because to me that would have totally compromised the look.

The exhaust is a V&H Cruzer that I got from a salvage eBay listing for 200 bucks. Funny enough, these were the pipes I originally wanted for the build, but it seemed Vance and Hines had discontinued their vn800 pipes a while prior, so I couldn't find them stocked anywhere after scouring the internet. And I needed a new pipe solution when my OEM muffler leapt off the bike on the ranch driveway. So I was planning on welding up my own janky pipe with the broken stock header and a Harley muffler. But at the last second I saw these come up. They came off a crashed Vulcan and allegedly had road rash, but in reality the damage was only on the heat shields and the pipes beneath were in perfect condition. Once they showed up, it took me a total of 5 minutes to plug them in, and I fell in love with the sound. Holy crap. 

First fitting of the new pipes. Looking back now, it's crazy seeing the bike with this much chrome.

 

They were painted with Rust-Oleum barbeque paint, which in my experience is much better than the ceramic header paints, which tend to be chalky. I've had to redo them a couple times over the years.

The lights were a little tricky. I'm very particular about proportions when it comes to lights on my bikes, and I had a real specific idea of the look I was after. I ended up settling on a Cycle Standard Springer style headlight. It was an odd size, fitting nicely between two Emgo Bates replicas. I mounted the spots directly onto the stock turn signal bracket by drilling holes. The headlight took a little fabricating...I used a Drag Specialties headlight bracket as a base, bent it, then mounted it on risers to get it to the right height. The "risers" in question are simply plumbing adapters from ranch stock. Free shit is always king. 

I tinted the lenses with Rustoleum’s “Stained Glass” paint, which I very highly recommend. In over 20,000 miles I have only repainted them once.

I chopped down the extraneous bumperette crap on the rear fender and shaved it down. Then I plugged the cut tops with some carriage bolts and gas welded them solid. I could have done a marginally cleaner job but it is one area of the bike I am really not worried about. 

A carriage bolt made a good topper for the trimmed down bumperette

 

The taillight remained stock, although it was painted and the upper lens was tinted to match the headlights. I ran it like this for a long time. I thought about putting an R75 repro on, but I didn't like the cheap build quality. Bailing wire license plate mounts are one of my specialties and make an appearance on most of my bikes. However this time I got really fancy and found some electrical grommets to use as anchors. High life! 

The fringe was the cheap stuff you can find on eBay, attached to the seat skirt by way of cheap velcro. They flew off on the driveway once, so I ended up gluing the Velcro. It was never a good job, but to be fair it stayed on for years.

Something that immediately pissed me off about the stock Drifter was the way the stupid OEM license plate mounts to the rear fender. When I pulled that shit off I realized that the mounting holes beneath were a monstrosity, and would require huge efforts of bodywork to get rid of properly. Or, you can just put a big sticker over it and pretend it never happened.

Every vacuum petcock I've ever had has failed with enough time. Every one. Sure as shit, after about 4 months of riding the OEM petcock refused to run in the on position, leaving me on the side of the road one cold morning. I could only operate it in prime.
I upgraded it to an aftermarket manual petcock found on eBay. I don't know where exactly this part comes from, but it is stout and is a direct replacement for the 800 and 1500 Vulcans and fit without issue. Much higher build quality and ease of operation; and the best part, I finally got rid of that stupid plastic knob, which I hated. It also runs the nipple straight vertical below the gas tank, which was actually a happy accident, since it really contributed to a clean setup, dropping the hose neatly between the jugs and keeping the line totally straight into the carb. Overall it just makes me feel better having a heavy metal manual mechanism on my ride. Flying Fortresses didn’t use plastic vacuum petcocks. 

For fuel I ran a Gates Barricade 5/16 fuel injection line. There was a filter on the new petcock inlet, so I kept my fuel hose ultra clean.

On one of my carb tuning journeys I decided to swap out the stock ⅜” plastic fuel inlet with a ¼ Harley replacement. This started with a desire to have a compatible inlet and outlet size and therefore use one continuous length of single diameter hose. I didn’t have an issue with the plastic elbow, but I had read so many horror stories online about them deteriorating that it didn’t take much convincing for me to swap it out, since doing that on the side of the road halfway into a 10,000 mile trip was nightmare-inducing. I narrowly avoided panicking on the install. The part is an extremely tight fit, and the shape of it is not conducive to getting good leverage whatsoever. I had to carefully grind down the end of the tube into a cone in order to get it started in the carb. I then ground a flat spot onto the elbow, and from there used a large C-clamp to shove it into the carb body, thinking I was going to break the aluminum carb body the whole time. I was sweating. Worthy upgrade for sure, but oh my God, the stress. The 5/16 hose fits it not perfectly, but pretty well. Plus, when you're putting it on, you can angle it however you like. Later I ended up using an inline reducer to splice a length of ¼" onto the end, making for a true fit. It leaked once before so it just made me nervous.

There was a coolant leak somewhere on the bike when I got it, which was hard to trace. So to be safe I just went ahead and upgraded all the coolant hoses with new silicon. I bought a full kit on eBay from some Chinese sportbike place. I was tempted to get them in a flashy color, but realized that didn't make sense with the style of the bike. Zerex orange coolant made for a fresh fill. 

I also replaced the master cylinder cover with a streamlined upgrade from Highway Hawk. Sure beats looking at idiot warning labels on the highway. Much later, this part would get donated to another bike.

The oil filler cap got an upgrade to a plain hand-turned version. I planned on putting some serious miles on this bike, and the thought of trying to key a slotted cap during a parking lot oil change was not appealing. Hand tight, just right.

Most of my everyday and shorter local weekends were done with my rucksack or full size backpack. However for the long haul going out of Sturgis I wanted something a little more rigid that would give me some packing flexibility and the chance to rest my back.
This bike actually came to me with the exceedingly rare Drifter dress kit with the hard saddlebags. I wish I liked the hard bags more. But I found them to be too small, flimsily built (one of them was already breaking) and honestly pretty unattractive. I ditched the whole setup to another Drifter rider and made a little extra money from them. Starting from scratch, I put a good amount of resources into creating the perfect, end-all sissy bar. 

I made the bar height around fitting the backpack I was going to use. The top loop on the pack would go over the peak of the bar. I added the rebar cross-brace mostly for more places to hook straps to. My idea was to create a shelf for the backpack to sit on so that everything wouldn't be hanging. I made the shelf a bit longer than needed so that I could stack extra stuff on the edge of it if I picked up anything on the road. I also wanted to keep the load high so that I could use my fender luggage rack in addition to the main load. This came in super handy for the last part of the trip when I had to start carrying aerosol cans.

I also wanted to make sure the bar was positioned at the right spot so that I could strap a rolled up jacket to use as a backrest. That ended up being the best idea I had.   

 
The best part about the whole thing is that it was made for free. And by free I mean literally, 100% not a single dime spent on it. All scrap metal left over on the farm and using the leftovers from my boss’ old gas tanks. Free is always king.

Since the beginning I had a little bit of an issue with the way this bike was geared, not from a power perspective really but more from awkward shifting. In my rural part of the country the two speed limits that I encounter the most are 70mph and 35mph. Both of those speeds seemed to sit at awkward points in the Drifter’s gearing. It seemed like 35 was too fast for 1st gear but would lug 2nd, and 70 was near the top of third gear but fourth liked to sit more around 80. So I upped the front sprocket to an 18 tooth hoping that it would make just a slight change in shift times. I think it worked out that way. So now I am running 18/40. I've kept this gearing for the life of the bike.

The rear tire got replaced with a Shinko TourMaster at the beginning of my longest trip. Halfway into said trip the front tire got replaced as well. So I ran TourMasters front and back for several years and the bike liked it all across the country. 

A couple of days before I set out on the big trip I had a drink at my local favorite bar and glued the bottlecap onto my choke knob for good luck. I guess it worked. 

 

I am going to try my hardest to keep this condensed, since I could probably make an entire blog post (or book) about just this trip and it will be extremely easy for these pics to get totally out of control. So in the name of keeping this post on track, I am going to show two photos from each week that I was on the road. Which is still a lot of photos, but it's better than 10,000. 

First morning leaving home

Adopted by the Sturgis ants

pulled over to help this couple. They had sheared the splines off of their shifter. They found me again at the rally days later and remembered the help. Good people. 

Getting rained on at Devil's Tower, right after I ran over a rattlesnake

Right before I ran out of gas the 1st time. Somewhere between Laramie and Denver. Getting dark.Another biker helped me out.

After the summer of 2022 Maxine got shut down. I was absolutely tired of seeing the bike live outside and getting wrecked in the sun and rain. I'll never forget sitting inside during a crazy ass dust storm in New Mexico that winter and watching pounds of dust blowing up the exhaust pipes. I felt like an abusive parents that the cops come to the house and the kids are sitting in some shitty patio with full diapers and no food.

 

It was in 2024 that I had finally had enough of dreaming, and with my new VN1500 effectively replacing Maxine as the "touring" bike, I fully committed to the process of making her as pretty as she deserved. So I got Maxine running one final time, and Brody and I took a trip to Anza-Borrego desert. This was ceremoniously my last ride with this bike before doing the rebuild. 

I threw this helmet in the literal garbage can before the end of this trip. Just because something is free doesn't mean you should take it.

There were a bunch of ragged spots on the frame that got touched up with Rustoleum Professional Enamel, which is about as close to the factory frame finish as you can get.

I did quite a bit of bodywork on the fenders before painting. I repaired the chip in the front fender and filled in the frenching for the taillight by using pieces of sintra PVC that I cut out and shaped with a heat gun. I then cemented both pieces in place with big humps of Plastic Weld and sanded them down flush. I also finally got rid of that stupid license plate bracket mount and made that bitch flush after so many years. But ironically I ended up missing my sticker so I replaced it and made all that work totally pointless. 

I decided on using a Knucklehead-era Beehive taillight. Just felt right. I replaced some of the screws with brass ones, and then I painted that little upper lens yellow like I did on the Kawasaki one. Small touches. 

Deciding on a color for Maxine's new facelift was a big point, but eventually, I had to admit to myself that I couldn't get Clement Salvadori's '48 Chief out of my head. 

 

I just couldn't seem to unsee this picture

After MUCH deliberation, the paint I eventually decided on was DupliColor Pacific Green. I watched a ton of videos from the YouTuber "Paint Society" who is a pro at working with this particular paint. It was not easy to use or do well, but his videos left me pretty confident. I was prepared to do it right when the time came. And I mostly did. There are mistakes in the finish for sure, but they are my secrets to keep.

I used SprayMax 2k clear coat which was honestly the MVP of the whole job. This shit is for real. I can't recommend this product enough. I went for the highly glossy version. I buffed the clearcoat to eliminate orange peel and it came out 90% of what I want. No, it isn't perfect. But I don't need to obsess over something that is still meant to be ridden.  

A comparison of the paint before and after applying the 2K Clear.

 

 

IMO the thing that really brings the whole wheel together is the [famously elusive] Fire and Steel hub cover. I scored that off a guy on VDR for a great price. Lucky me.

Unfortunately I'm not running a speedometer because I think the cable looks like shit. Also, the hub cover effectively deletes the speedo drive. Ask me if I GAF.

The polished wheel covers were a rad part from the UK. Guy makes them by the name of Chunky Wilson. Totally freaking awesome. They are a great fit and easy to install. He sends you the whole hardware kit. Great product.

Wheel Covers + Hub Cover = New Bike

I don't usually put logos on any of my bikes, because I like the idea of people being unsure of what my custom deathtrap started out as. But for the Drifter I felt the need to acknowledge the pedigree it had. I found this extremely fitting side cover badge that Kawasaki used for exactly one bike in 1962 and then never used again. Perfect. They were originally only available in gold. So I had these ones special ordered in chrome. Probably the only ones in existence. These badges were custom repros made for me by Badge Replicas Australia. 

I think the script is absolutely perfect for the style of the bike. I like that it's not a recognizable Kawasaki logo, and I like that someone actually has to get close in order to spell out what it is they're looking at. So probably only the real gearheads are ever actually going to notice this. To me it's perfect for that whole "Kawasaki making a 40's Indian clone" thing.

My new logos the day they arrived. I waited half a year for these SOBs

I fitted them to the tank by heating carefully with a heat gun. As SOON as the metal starts to cool down, STOP bending it and heat it up again! Once they were shaped to my liking, I used 3M mounting foam adhesive and cut to shape with an artist's knife.

 

I had the front headlight bezels made up at sendcutsend.com out of 1/8in. mild steel. For those that don't see it, this was inspired by the corresponding headlight bezel on the 1950 Indian Chief. The original was just a single plastic shield that bolted to the top clamp. This one is broken down into two pieces for top and bottom. They sit cradled just inside the forks. 

 

 

 

For both pieces, I welded 2in. long unthreaded bosses onto the back so it would thread into the same mount as the headlight and spotlight bar. I'm pretty proud of this one. This is probably the most unique thing on this bike. The little chrome logo came off a 1950's Pontiac Starchief. If anyone is interested in the 3D files for these pieces on their own bike, email me.

 

A terrible photo of a 1950 Roadmaster and I can't be bothered to find a better one

 

I ground down the really ugly stamped logo on the rear brake caliper. That logo was always way more noticeable than you would think. I was tempted to do some hoss-ass caliper paint on it, but I didn't want to bring that much attention to it. So I stuck with the aluminum.

 

The rectifier cover was my own design. I drew up a pattern of what I wanted and made it in cardboard, then (after a LOT of phone calls) I found a guy who could punch 1.5" louvers for me. Stanley Chavik and his wife Daisy run one of the coolest businesses I've ever seen. They build salt flat speedsters and have some serious Area 51 shit in this place. This has nothing to do with bikes, just go check out his website because it's ****ing awesome. hotrodchavik.com

When Stanley pressed the louvers for me I cut out the rest of the shape and drilled the holes and wa-la, instant rectifier cover. 

 

I didn't let the 2K cure for long enough on this part, so when I bolted it on, the finish made these little ripples under the bolt heads. Lesson learned. Now I wait 5 days minimum after clear before assembly. 

The WLA horn got replaced by this weird deco-styled one from a Spanish company called Artes. Super rare.

 

Since I wasn't so concerned about using this as a touring bike anymore I decided a more vintage tire was now in order. Front and back got matching Shinko 270s. I originally considered Firestone Champions, but figured the tires were barely visible under those fenders so it would have been a waste of $100. 

Yes, those are Kustom Tech levers and are the most expensive part on this bike. I tried to convince myself of many cheaper alternatives, but in the end I just couldn't unsee it. I don't regret it per se, but I am still salty about the cost. I spent an entire paycheck on these.

I got a custom Venhill front brake line. Really love using this company.

I ended up using an automotive style momentary key for the starter. I don't usually like doing these on bikes, but in the name of keeping everything as minimal as possible I figured it would be a good choice. The unit I found was almost the exact same size as the OEM switch housing so it was a shoe-in. A little bit of fabbing a mounting plate, a lot of bit of fabbing the wiring. The biggest downside of having Japanese bikes is that I definitely need help whenever I'm dicking with the wiring. Thankfully I have a friend that was a literal wiring technician for Honda so he's gotten me out of some serious jams but sometimes even he can't figure this shit out.  

 

I wanted to cover up the little holes left in the lightbar by the turn signals, but I wanted to do something creative with the space. For the longest time I couldn't think on what, until eventually I realized that a set of old Harley saddle spears were a perfect fit...so I clipped the tabs off with pliers, filled the inside with foam, exacto'ed it onto some double-stick tape and presto.  

 

The gas cap lever is an interesting story. It's just a spare key epoxied into the slot with a topper on it. I've used this trick a few times on my other bikes, usually with air cleaner nuts. But with the Drifter I wanted something more unique and I had a visualization of what that was without really knowing. I could see it in my mind, it was a curved lever, sort of like the top lock on a shotgun. So in the beginning of 2024 I fly out to Portland, to the town where the bike came from, for Jarod's ceremony. His wife asks me to help her get rid of his old van because she knows I mess with old Chevys. So I drive it off to ditch it. So I fire up this old van for the last time and I'm looking around the inside, pontificating on life and death and thinking of Jarod, my eyes glance down and see this perfectly sized, perfectly shaped, aluminum lever.

I think it was a fuel cut-off switch. Underneath the passenger seat and almost completely hidden. Kind of crazy that I managed to see it at all. So in a sweat I pulled it off and put it in my pocket and that was absolutely the part that had been in my mind all that time. And it came from Jarod, post-mortem, in the place where he had bought the bike for me all those years ago. 

Life is funny sometimes. 

So now every time I fill up, I think of him. And that's how I like it. 

I made the assembly by cutting up a spare key with a finishing washer and a brass screw and epoxying it all together, then jamming some super glue into the keyhole. 

It feels typical that only so near the end, after 10,000+ miles of the roughest shit in the country, the side cover decided to jump ship on a suburban street 5 miles from home and disappeared without a trace. Being this close to finishing the bike had me jumpy and irritable, so it was just annoying.

But it all turned out alright because I found a VN800 Classic replacement for $20 and it came with this sweet ass decal. 

Here it is after painting and reworking.

I decided to eliminate the key latch by expoying in a fender washer and using a screw to mount to the original key mount point. In retrospect, I didn't get the idea until starting over with the side cover anyway. And I'm way happier with it this way, so losing the original was probably a good thing. 

Something that had stuck around from the first days of the bike was this Blue Moon cap on the choke knob, which had been a good luck token from my last drink with my friends in town before leaving Wyoming in 2020 on the big trip. 

It had definitely brought me some good luck, but I wasn't drinking anymore, so it seemed a little inappropriate now, and besides, the new color scheme didn't gel. So I kept the cap, but decided to replace it with something else. While at an antique store with Kylie one day we found a glass case full of bottlecaps from the 50s and 60s and she pointed out this one from 1960. A way better fit. 

 

One of the last things I did on the bike was a seat rail. I had passively looked around for a while at some aftermarket options for old Harleys and Indians and liked how a few of them looked well enough, but I knew they would never come close to fitting right, and for the money they'd cost it would be pointless. So in the days that I started becoming more of a real fabricator the idea got a little less and less intimidating, and eventually, I tried it. I made my own pipe bender out of steel, which I might have a photo of somewhere, and then used two different diameters of steel rod to get slightly different radius bends and put them on a set of mounting plates that fit on the OEM seat mounts. It actually was a really easy thing to make once I had a good idea for it. 

 

I thought about getting this chromed to match the handlebars, but I painted it black temporarily and then realized that was actually the right call to make, so it stayed that way.  

With the seat rail done, I was just in time to enter Maxine in Chopperfest in California that year. I rode with Brody and his Triumph and we defaced a hotel, it was a good time. 

Late night car wash 

First one there...

...last to leave!

Don't let that kid grow up to ride any Jap shit!!!

Chopperfest is a hell of a time and it was a great day. I am proud to say that she took home 2nd place in Metric. 1st went to a dude with a fkng wicked CB750 that was leagues beyond anything I could ever do, so I was pretty honored.

 

This marked Maxine's first big intro back into the world after being mothballed for so long. The last time she'd seen this much action, was a totally different bike. 

Technically, the Chopperfest appearance was not 100% done, because I was still waiting on my chromed air cleaner decals (the ones in the show were white). But once those went on, I stepped away from the bike for good. Which meant it was time to celebrate...

Jake, Regina and I filmed this music video as a tribute to the bike and the stories that we've shared.  

The video was made over 2 days near and around Morro Bay, CA. I can think of a million reasons why I loved doing that shoot. It was just me on my dream machine grooving to one of my favorite songs, perfect weather on abandoned coastal roads and a lazy weekend with two of my best friends. The energy of that shoot was fantastic since we had very little to do and lots of time to do it. I only NEEDED about 25 shots to make the bare minimum video, which we got in like 4 hours, so all the rest was just fun and experimenting, just like we did in college. And not least of all, we were working on something that was actually FUN and really laid back, which I think both Jake and Regina desperately needed at that point in their film careers, so the energy that weekend was appropriately positive. No stress, no pressure. We took our time, chilled in perfect weather, had a remote area to ourselves and listened to loud music while we watched the sunset. Stayed in a hotel and walked to a nice seafood dinner and ran around Morro Bay at night chasing UFOs (true story). Honestly, the whole process was a fantasy and definitely the best memory of my love-hate [mostly hate] relationship with film. Maybe my favorite project I've ever worked on, I'm not kidding. 

Here's some photos Regina took. She had just gotten this camera, so we hadn't figured out the focus quite yet.

 

 

 

 And here's some from my pocket camera...

The 8mm shot Jake is taking in this picture appears in the finished film!

Can you spot the crossover?

If I needed further proof that everything about that weekend was meant to be, I broke a clutch cable on the freeway headed home a mere hour after wrapping our last shot. If it had happened any time during the shoot, it would have ended the video on the spot. But it happened immediately after wrapping. All things considered, I'd never been in a better mood about being stranded. 

Busted clutch practically the moment we finished the video - someone was watching out for me

 

I can't overstate that the making of that Khruangbin video was a monumentally happy time, for a billion reasons. Not only was it a massive celebration marking the completion of this years-long dream of mine, but it also served as my perfect vacation with my oldest friends. I was loving life.

So in regards to Maxine, that video officially marked the end of the journey. And what a happy ending it was.

So this is how she sits now, and will continue to sit. I've stared and stared and there's nothing more I want to do, which can sometimes be a rare thing for me. 

 

If I WAS to do one more thing to the bike, it would be a belt drive conversion. At the time of this writing, I did manage to find one last year at a great price, so it is waiting for a tryout some day, when I feel like it. But otherwise, Maxine is "done", and it feels great. 

Here's a video tour of the bike. This is essentially just a breakdown of everything written in this post. But hell, if you feel like watching it, be my guest. 
 

Now, the bike is squirreled away at my parent's house, safely covered and insulated and no longer living the outdoor life she was molded by. Maxine gets the cushion treatment now. I don't get to see the bike hardly at all anymore, just for a week or two every few years when I show up for the holidays. It's kind of surreal these days, seeing the bike under a cover in a garage with paint and polish and only taking it out for "easy" rides. She's being treated like an old guy's Corvette now. And I can't shake that weird feeling that all that western history we experienced together in 2020 and beyond, thousands and thousands of miles together roughing it in wild country, happened to somebody else. 

Bikers know that you can't pick favorites. Every machine is different and has a different soul and moves you in a different way to a different place. So every one of my bikes is my "favorite" in its own way. But Maxine definitely holds a place that goes a little deeper. It was one of my earliest dream bikes, for one, from a time before I knew jackshit about anything. And the whole vibe of this machine, like this historically ambiguous thing that exists on some place outside of time, resonates with my experience and the way people treat me. Not to mention the physical fit; it's sized and weighted perfect for me, and has just the right amount of power; from the moment I first rode this sucker I'd never felt more melted into a bike, like putting on a well-worn hat. And the fact that my deceased best friend played such a big role in this bike's journey is really meaningful to me, now more than ever. I always remember him whenever I fire her up. So although you can never REALLY say it, for the above reasons, this is the bike that usually answers that impossible question.

This is the bike I want to be buried with.