I am a Garage Builder and President/CEO of Dennis Kirk

Bob, our CEO and President of Dennis Kirk, has been working hard in his shop on his latest garage build! Bob will be chronicling the build for us, which we’ll post his updates on here and on our social media. This is the introduction to his build, so be sure to follow the journey!

My Bike Building Background

My name is Bob, and I have had the pleasure of running Dennis Kirk since 2000. It has been a fun and amazing ride working with a great group of people who have made Dennis Kirk the class of the motorcycle industry.

Some of you will remember that back in the 90s, buying a new Harley was a challenge. It required a $500 down payment along with the order, and then, you had to wait for the dealer to call and say your new Harley was ready to be picked up. That sounds relatively simple; however, the hitch was that you had to wait a year or two before your long-awaited motorcycle arrived.

Since I am not a patient guy, I decided to build my own Harley rather than wait. Not a factory Harley, but a custom motorcycle based on Harley aftermarket parts. My friends and family said, “you don’t know how to do that.” To some degree, they were right, but also, being a bit stubborn, I went for it anyway.

So, I  got out the aftermarket catalogs and started ordering parts. Many of them came from Dennis Kirk, which is how I first became familiar with the company. I also hooked up with a local dealer shop in St. Paul, MN, owned and operated by a fellow named Bear. He was the source for some parts and offered expert advice when I needed it. More on him in episode 1.

6 months later, my garage-built B-1 Harley was on the street, and I could officially call myself a motorcycle builder. For a 1^st build, I thought it turned out pretty good. Not perfect, but acceptable. Completing that project taught me a lot, and it also got my bike building juices really flowing.

Even though I was riding factory motorcycles on a daily basis, I always had an itch to do more project bikes. So, over the years, I’ve done 6 more project bikes. Each was different, and not all of them were Harley’s. The last one I finished was a Harley FXRT. You can check it out on garagebuild.com.

When I finished the FXRT, I made a short video that told the story of the build. I showed the video to my staff during a meeting one day. They said it was really cool, or maybe they were just blowing smoke at the boss. Regardless, they suggested we build a website where our customers and other garage builders could tell their stories about how they made their motorcycles their own. And boom garagebuild.com was born.

So why am I making this post at this time? Another project bike just landed in my shop. It is a 2009 Sporster 883, and my management team thinks it would be interesting to post about the build on social media. Over the next 6 months or so, I’ll tear the bike down to the frame and build back up to what I hope will be a high-performance cool looking Bobber. You won’t be surprised to find out that Dennis Kirk will be my source for parts, and I have over 185,000 to choose from.

If you want, you can follow along as I work my way through the project. I will provide regular updates highlighting what I am doing and how I am doing it.

Episode 1 will soon follow this post. It will detail where I found the bike and its arrival in my shop. The following chapters will document the build itself. In the end, if the finished motorcycle turns out to be something special, we may just give it away!

My Shop

As I previously mentioned, I set up my first motorcycle shop in the mid-1990s. As you would guess, it was not very sophisticated in the beginning. In fact, it was a small little area in my garage. The toolset was limited, and I didn’t have the sort of equipment I needed to do anything more than bolt on parts.

However, when I decided to build a motorcycle from the ground up, that had to change, and it did. I purchased a bike lift, a small compressor, and some air tools. I acquired a mechanics cabinet and stocked it with the basic tools I needed. As that project progressed, I added to my tool assortment as required. In total, I spent a ton of money setting up the shop and purchasing tools so I could properly complete the build.

My current shop/man cave measures 15 by 25 feet. It is not small, but I wouldn’t call it big either. The shop is a bit crude, better than some, but not as good as others. It is located in the lower level of my home, complete with a walkout entrance—or, more accurately, a motorcycle entrance. It’s pretty slick: I ride the bike in, take a sharp right, open the double doors, and roll the motorcycle right into the shop. Once the doors are closed, you’d never guess there’s a workshop hidden inside.

As the years passed and the projects became more numerous, I added to and enhanced my tool assortment to the point where my current shop is pretty well equipped. It has a good variety of mechanics tools. A bike lift. Lots of good lighting. Electrical outlets everywhere, and a good deal of workbench space. It has a full assortment of mechanics tools. In addition, I have acquired a number of motorcycle specialty tools as well.

So I don’t have to deal with the noise; I have a 60-gallon compressor in another utility room with an air-line running to the shop. About 15 years ago, I purchased a tig welder to complete a CB750c Café Racer project. I also installed a hoist to make removing and installing engines much easier, significantly reducing the amount of muscle power required.

Then there are the power tools. Drills, angle grinders, cutoff wheel devices, metal chop saw, Dremels, Dynafile, sanders, heat gun, soldering iron, drill press, bench grinder, polishing machine, benchtop belt/disc sander. I also have a half dozen air tools; however, I am shifting more and more to battery power devices because they are easier to work with, and I don’t have to run the compressor as much.

Like any proper man cave, it’s equipped with a TV (perfect for watching plenty of football and baseball), a streaming device, and walls covered in memorabilia. The space is filled with mementos that reflect—good times with friends, unforgettable experiences, motorcycles I’ve worked on, and an assortment of tchotchkes collected from here, there, and everywhere.

So, the point being, I have a good place to operate on the 2009 Sporster 883c project. Now I need to get in the shop and get to work!