Thompson Choppers

This is Joe DeSteffel from Powersport Institute. We're at the 2012 Las Vegas Bike Fest. We're out in the Vendor Village. This is the Powersport Institute booth. It's rather long. We're going to walk down and show you some of the sponsors and some of the things going on. Thompson Choppers, which we'll talk about later, he donated the frame for that bike build down there. The idea of this bike is a bike that the students built for the AMD World Championship Show in 2011. It fared very well against professional builders. Again, these are students. You see SNS motor. I think it'sNS transmission in there. Mike Corbin did a special seat for it. That's Corbin bags that were modified. A lot of cool stuff going on there. Right over here, let's go on over here, Jack. We've got a fellow by the name of Ron Redigy. Ron, how are you? Taking a break. Taking a break. Long, long hot day. It's been 90 degrees plus every day here. Today'saturday. Runs the education manager for the V-Twin curricul He's the guiding light for all the guys that you see here. You see- I'm pretty sure I said something. He's the sweet innocent one. He said if you didn't hear that. I believe it. There's all kinds of things you can learn at this school. In the situation of PSI, you see now you have a choice. PSI, manufacturer, training. These companies send dealers to Powersport Institute to get trained and to get upgrades on education for new bikes that are coming out and stay on top of their game. They don't go to the motor company, they go to PSI. Those companies support the schools directly. Not dealers, but the motor companies themselves. That's big time. You're in the big league when you're with PSI. You see the logo. This is the mark of excellence right here. The International Master Bike Builders Association, otherwise known as IMBB. Jeff Starchy founded this about, I guess probably about eight years ago now. It's all about certifying, third party certification of builders so that when you see this logo in a custom builder shop, He showed evidence. He's earned a stripe, so to speak. If it says Master Builder level two, he's the man. At this show, aside from all that cool stuff we just showed you, this bike came here, painted obviously. Painted by the guys at OTC, Deacon Zollers and Bat Downing did it. The old fashioned endless lines. Gotta love it. Of course, it's a barber, so we're trying to go old fashioned. This frame, I guess we call it a roller, but the frame, the sheet metal oil tank and so forth was donated by Paul York, the owner, proprietor of Thompson Trappers in Nixza, Missouri, which is actually a little suburb of Springfield, Missouri, down there. These wheels, sprockets and so forth, this was supplied by Sam at Ride Right Wheels. He's getting involved in the Forge Billet wheels now, so that's pretty cool. He's been the man on spoke wheels for a n This bike will be burning gas by the end of the day, Thompson Trappers, and you'll see Thompson Springer front ends, real cool stuff, and a lineup of his frame, excuse me. He builds the order so you can get any rake, any stretch, any angles you want. You can get rigid, you can get soft tail type swing arm frames, you can get it with the slopes, you can get drop seat, you can get pretty much whatever you want. This guy's a good guy, does what he says, I think he's got about a five week lead time, but if he tells you four weeks, four years, four months, four days, or four minutes, it's going to be done right when he says it. Real good guy, great frames, great quality. If you just look, these are just powder coated. I mean, there's no big prep work here. The weld quality is smooth as a baby's butt. These things, the body guys, the paint guys at OTC and PSI loved it. I mean working on this thing was a dream. They didn't have to do a ton of body work. He does sheet metal, so if you order a frame from him, you can get the front end, you can get him to build you the oil tank, and you can get your choice of gas tanks. Again, all done right in house. I think he buys the shells, depending on the type of tank, he'll English wheel it, he'll do whatever, but all done in house. He is the manufacturer. It's not farmed out, and again, real nice people. You see here, which is a cool thing on this oil tank, Paul's got the plasma cutter right at the shop down there, Thompson choppers, and he cut this thing right out. Were actually there when he cut these struts out, and that was on the first edition of the Journey to Vegas video a couple of months ago. So we got Wimmer, we got RideRide, we got SNS, we got Thompson choppers, we've got genuine HD stuff, Harley front end, and we've got students building all this stuff. Very cool. This is a great place. If you ever think that you want to do this for a living, this is your dream. You want to be a tech, you want to be involved in the motorcycle, power sports industry, think PSI, that's PowerSport Institute. The site is www. psidashnow. com. Great guys, they don't just work on them, they don't just teach people. They ride, they race, they participate. It's a great place. So this is Joe D. I've said enough for now. Check out the rest of the stuff. We'll Cadillac Joe D signing off. I'm always glad to see you.