Another shot of my '65 survivor. Vilmino commented in the previous post that it's a S.I.E. sissy bar.
One cool thing I found out right after buying this bike is that the rear fender is an old knucklehead front fender. It's been molded smooth but I first noticed they left the holes where the original fender's supports were riveted, then I spotted it's three piece construction on the inside.
A combination one piece fender strut/sissy bar is a clean way to set up a swing arm bike. Makes for pretty good lines too.
The last owner had it since 1970 so the bike probably took on this form fairly early on. The oil tank must have been swapped out later, as the original tank (chromed), along with the stock battery box came in a box of extra parts.
Mark Schauwecker sent in a similar constructed sissy bar. He says it's NOS and has Munch Choppers Chicago stamped on the inside. He got it from a friend who bought out an old dealer (Banta's in Lancaster, Ohio), in '91.
2 comments:
Been out in SoCal this last weekend, thought I'd see you in Ventura.
I'm a little late to the sissy bar posts, but I remember seeing that sissy bar in the SIE ads. Here's the tie-in, kinda like the 3 degrees of Kevin Bacon....
SIE was an acronym for Steve Iorio Enterprises. At that time, Steve was based in Chicago, had a retail outlet and a big mailorder business. So, it's quite possible that Munch made them for SIE to retail, too.
Steve Iorio also was part owner, then the editor of Supercycle after Larry Kumnferman died. Iorio used to take out lots of ad space in Supercycle when he was in Chicago. He moved the SIE operation out to the West Coast and morfed it into Harley-Nostalgia, then Nostalgia Cycles.
Iorio was good friends with Dick Allen, so it's possible that's where the connection on the sissy bar comes in, maybe Dick saw it, and told the guy in the photo about it, and that's how it wound up on that bike.
Or, I could be totally fucked up....haha, more than likely!
Rich, I originally planned on going but... kind of blew it.
I think you mentioned Steve's history with S.I.E. in one of your post, but of course, I forgot about that until now.
I use to buy Supercycle and bought a couple of things from Nostalgia in Huntington Beach, so I knew of Steve.
Thanks for tying it all together.
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