I was always a fan of Then Came Bronson since childhood. When the series aired, I was too young to stay up to watch it, but my older brothers did, and I could pester Mom enough to let me see the opening credits before trailing off to bed, highly disappointed. It was the powerful force that led my brothers and I into motorcycles early on, and we have remained there ever since. WE vowed among ourselves that one of us would have to reproduce a Bronson bike some day, long after the show vanished off the air. We bought the albums, the novels and the model kit. We even bought the issue of MAD featuring Then Came Bombsome!
As time passed, we grew older, and our interests shifted. But our love of Bronson as symbol of freedom and motorcycles never left! I owned several motorcycles, one after another, large and small. And eventually a Sportster. About ten years ago, after collecting a few significant parts from years of swap meets, I found a 1974 XLCH and began the process of making a Bronson reproduction. After much hard work and time, I succeeded with a pretty good replica, which ended up with Don in Texas. I had done Bronson and thought I had it out of my system. Not so! A few years ago my brother not only made the whole album sets on CD as a gift, but managed to acquire all the episodes and put them onto a DVD set about a Christmas ago.

After all these years, I finally got to watch the show! The bug was back! I started looking at the other replicas using an Evo Sportster and decided I could have my Bronson and ride it too! I began searching Craigslist and boning up on the aspects of the Evo Sportsters, about which I knew little. I found a great, low-mileage 1994 Sportster near to me, (above right), for a great price. After one ride, I made a deal, and owned a Sportster again! Needing to keep my investment as low as possible, I removed what I would not use and sold those parts. This included the tank and fenders as a unit.

I spent a fair amount of time gathering needed parts mostly off eBay, building the front 21 inch wheel from several parts, and finding the genuine HD 18 inch aluminum 1970 rear wheel (to acquire spokes also) and relaced it to the correct mid-90s hub. The tank was a NOS unit never mounted on a bike, the rear fender a damaged one at the base, lending itself perfectly as I cut off the damage to match Bronson's bobbed fender. The only genuine period parts are the rear rim, the front fender (a GENUINE British item I got for $8 off eBay!!), the instrument housing (which takes the modern instruments without alteration) and rear sissy bar, which originally came off a 70s Triumph chopper, to which I added a towel ring as a circle. The paint was mixed from the exact color card retrieved from Antique Cycle, and applied by Jeff in Denver. He did a fantastic job.

The mufflers are repro 30s-50s Big Twin Emgo units, and work perfectly. I bought a set of Drag pipes to fit and cut them after I measured for the mufflers. I picked up a vintage round air cleaner cover, a new UNI filter for it and cut the original oval back plate into a circle, to retain all the original breathing hardware. The signals are aftermarket jobs off eBay, are bright and retain safety while taking none of the simplicity of Bronson's bike away. The most difficult part of this conversion was dealing with Harleys huge and ugly automotive connectors. They work well but had to be CUT off and reattached when swapping headlight and idiot lights. For more details, feel free to In all, this is the most satisfying repro I have done, as it runs reliably, powerfully, comfortably and is modern in all respects that matter. I ended up barely a few hundred dollars into my initial investment, so I am very happy with the outcome. Hang in there!