Steve Broyles' Twister-Her
77 images Created 3 Aug 2020
Steve Broyles' Twister-Her - 2005
All history starts with someone's mentors, or as in my case, my parents.I watched my dad go from a truck driver to a dispatcher and then work his way up the chain of command to become the president eventually of the Geo F. Alger company, a transportation company here in Detroit.
My mother, well, that's another story she was a strong-willed woman who taught me how to weld at the age of 12. She was a welder in the Naval shipyard in Boston during WWII welding the warships and me, well I just tried welding a plate onto a 20" bicycle frame to build a mini-bike. She didn't know what I was doing, but then, she always used to say to me, "if you put your mind to it, you can do it."
In August of 1969, my son was born when I was 17. I had just opened my first shop in the garage behind my parent's house naming it Stevenson's Cycle after my son and me. It was in December of that same year I got my first commission to build a bike, a 1952 Panhead, for a friend/customer named Larry G. It took me 4-months to finish and collect the money, the rest is history.
Stevenson's Cycle has been in business for over 50-years now. Looking back, I remind myself that perseverance, determination, and passion is what has kept me going all these years. The passion is for motorcycles, and that's what drives my determination to stay in business. It's pretty tricky to maintain a business that needs a boatload of your time AND a truckload of your money. It's that passion again that keeps me going during the low times.
I sit here writing today just after reopening my shop after an 8-week forced closure due to COVID19. It's times like this that I remind myself this isn't the first time things have been tough, and I'm sure it's not going to be the last. Over the past 50 years, I have refinanced my home 4-times to get through rough patches, so that I could keep playing with motorcycles. It's always said if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life, and this, my friend, is why I love playing with motorcycles.
The inspiration for TWISTER-HER came after building SWITCHED, a reverse flow Shovelhead. I looked down and saw two S&S carburetors and thought this would be an excellent idea for a motorcycle. I held the two carburetors up by an Evolution engine and said I'm going to put them right here. I have always pictured ideas in my head rather than drawing them on paper, so what you see here is what I saw in my head as I built TWISTER-HER with its reversed flow Evolution engine and hand-crafted transmission. I wanted to give TWISTER-HER a 1950-60 hot rod look, which I hope you'll agree I achieved. It hasn't always been easy, but anything worth doing is never going to be easy. Just put your mind to it, and you can do it.
-Steve Broyles (2020)
All history starts with someone's mentors, or as in my case, my parents.I watched my dad go from a truck driver to a dispatcher and then work his way up the chain of command to become the president eventually of the Geo F. Alger company, a transportation company here in Detroit.
My mother, well, that's another story she was a strong-willed woman who taught me how to weld at the age of 12. She was a welder in the Naval shipyard in Boston during WWII welding the warships and me, well I just tried welding a plate onto a 20" bicycle frame to build a mini-bike. She didn't know what I was doing, but then, she always used to say to me, "if you put your mind to it, you can do it."
In August of 1969, my son was born when I was 17. I had just opened my first shop in the garage behind my parent's house naming it Stevenson's Cycle after my son and me. It was in December of that same year I got my first commission to build a bike, a 1952 Panhead, for a friend/customer named Larry G. It took me 4-months to finish and collect the money, the rest is history.
Stevenson's Cycle has been in business for over 50-years now. Looking back, I remind myself that perseverance, determination, and passion is what has kept me going all these years. The passion is for motorcycles, and that's what drives my determination to stay in business. It's pretty tricky to maintain a business that needs a boatload of your time AND a truckload of your money. It's that passion again that keeps me going during the low times.
I sit here writing today just after reopening my shop after an 8-week forced closure due to COVID19. It's times like this that I remind myself this isn't the first time things have been tough, and I'm sure it's not going to be the last. Over the past 50 years, I have refinanced my home 4-times to get through rough patches, so that I could keep playing with motorcycles. It's always said if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life, and this, my friend, is why I love playing with motorcycles.
The inspiration for TWISTER-HER came after building SWITCHED, a reverse flow Shovelhead. I looked down and saw two S&S carburetors and thought this would be an excellent idea for a motorcycle. I held the two carburetors up by an Evolution engine and said I'm going to put them right here. I have always pictured ideas in my head rather than drawing them on paper, so what you see here is what I saw in my head as I built TWISTER-HER with its reversed flow Evolution engine and hand-crafted transmission. I wanted to give TWISTER-HER a 1950-60 hot rod look, which I hope you'll agree I achieved. It hasn't always been easy, but anything worth doing is never going to be easy. Just put your mind to it, and you can do it.
-Steve Broyles (2020)
