This magazine's 15-year history has been a bit of a roller coaster. Known variously as HOT ROD HARLEYS, HOT ROD BIKES and its current HOT ROD'S BIKE-WORKS, some cool and historic stuff has gone on here. With world-class editors and photographers writing about and photographing some of the coolest machines out there, there's quite a bit that could be considered for this feature. This may not be a complete list of coolness, but it's close enough for us. October '93Hot Rod Harleys One-ShotEvery fire starts with a spark. In this case, HOT ROD's editors launched a motorcycle hop-up single issue publication. It was a little more popular than they anticipated.October '93 Hot Rod Harleys One-Shot Every fire starts with a spark. In this case, HOT March '94Hot Rod HarleysEric Falconer helmed our maiden voyage as a bi-monthly magazine, with HOT ROD's 45th anniversary theme bike as our first cover.March '94 Hot Rod Harleys Eric Falconer helmed our maiden voyage as a bi-monthly magazin January '95Hot Rod BikesLess than a year after the magazine's inception, Frank Kaisler had taken over for Falconer, bringing a wealth of magazine and technical experience with him. January 1995 also saw our new title. With the custom bike scene growing beyond strict Harley-based customs, the change made sense (and a court-order from Harley-Davidson helped things along).January '95 Hot Rod Bikes Less than a year after the magazine's inception, Frank Kaisler February '97Draw on Wide Tires with a Fine LineKip Woodring's narrow drive belt conversion let riders run "fat" 150 series rear tires. Little did we know what the industry would do with back tires in the following years.February '97 Draw on Wide Tires with a Fine Line Kip Woodring's narrow drive belt conver August '98First Horsepower by the DollarThis issue marked John Sullivan's first Horsepower by the Dollar article, wherein he sought out which parts combos gave the best bang for the buck. The series ran about 5 years, during which he tested a pretty wide range of performance parts for Big Twins.August '98 First Horsepower by the Dollar This issue marked John Sullivan's first Horsepo August '99First Ness Twin Cam-Powered CustomRight after Bob Dron got his hands on his first Twin Cam Dyna at his NorCal dealership, his buddy Arlen Ness took it off his hands for a makeover. It certainly the first Ness Twin Cam, and possibly the first custom Twin Cam. Either way, Arlen was nice enough to let us run it on our cover.August '99 First Ness Twin Cam-Powered Custom Right after Bob Dron got his hands on his January '00First Todd's GarageIn 1998 Frank stole Billy Bartels away from motorcycle.com (MO for short), and by the end of '99 snatched up MO alumnus Todd Canavan for our staff. It was the beginning of an era for us that saw a lot of unconventional thinking, like our Todd's Garage series. We'd done garage pimping before, but not as an ongoing thing, and this series was extremely popular with our readers.January '00 First Todd's Garage In 1998 Frank stole Billy Bartels away from motorcycle.c July '00Team HRB's First Drag RaceFrank and Todd got it in their heads to team up with Gene Thomason at Thomason Racing to create Team HRB, wherein Gene and Todd traveled the AHDRA circuit and chronicled the whole journey. It not only gave us exposure at the races, it gave our readers insight into all aspects of Harley drag racing, and how the high-performance stuff we learned on the track translated to street bikes. The July 2000 issue marked the team's first AHDRA event in Daytona.July '00 Team HRB's First Drag Race Frank and Todd got it in their heads to team up with October '00Feuling's W-3Jim Feuling's W-3 motor was an interesting experiment that also worked, as we found out when Billy Bartels test rode it later on. It was essentially a 3-cylinder version of an H-D-style motor and one of the more intriguing bikes to grace our cover.October '00 Feuling's W-3 Jim Feuling's W-3 motor was an interesting experiment that als 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | » | View Full Article By Billy Bartels, Mark Masker Enjoyed this Post? Subscribe to our RSS Feed, or use your favorite social media to recommend us to friends and colleagues!
