A Little Moto History

A follower on Donzzilla's social media saw one of his restoration projects - The Ted Boody Harley Davidson. He was gracious enough to share a neat story from his past on those unique front fork guards. Here is the message sent from Eric Frahm.

"Good morning, I love your restoration work and your dedication to getting all of the details right. I went to Jr. High with Ted Boody . His older sister Lynda was actually in my grade. On the weekends, Ted and I would assemble new bikes out of crates for his Dad's Kawasaki shop. Ted and Ed Morris had just really gotten into ice racing and indoor short track, on the little green Streaks G31m's. And both had gotten their novice license soon after. They moved up to the Yamaha 360's and Ed's Dad Erv started making frames for the Yamaha's. the guy could build anything, super creative. I started working at Haslett Motorsports - Honda and Suzuki dealership owned by Joe Lachniet. He also ran Meridian Cycle Supply out of Haslett - kind of like Rocky Supply back in the day. And he was really in to road racing and had a branch called Competition Cycle Supply that catered to the road racing crowd. Sold fairings and had a lot of factory Yamaha parts. He knew Erv Morris through Haslett's Service Department where we did the boring on Ed's and Ted's cylinders. First I recall any big connection was Joe asking Erv to build fork stops for the road racing crowd that clamped onto the fork tubes. Erv made hundreds it seemed and then used them on the dirt track bikes, after which Trophy racing frames came to be. Erv would make dirt track frames with extended swing arm for the early MX with moved up shocks. And with Ed and Ted both getting their Junior licenses and then their experts. The fork lowers and tubes would get all beaten up. After playing around with the Ceriani tubes he built a vacuum form machine and used an old lower and tube as the form they looke great and sold great. Joe somehow ended up taking over the fork protector adding the Trophy name and marketing them. I do not know what happened after that, but just wanted to share what I knew about Erv one of the most creative and honest people I ever knew that was always there to help. I always felt Erv was taken advantage of, the man could build anything. He did some early prototype casting of intake manifolds for the early Corvette fuel injection systems in his garage for General Motors. Thanks again for all of your great work."

Follow Donzzilla for to see all of his vintage motorcycle projects and restorations. Donzzilla's Facebook