w
e came across this killer bike on the Dennis Kirk Garage Build pages. This bike began in 2011 as a challenge when Sam Baldi, now 62, of Cherry Valley, California, had recently won a bike show in Sturgis 2010. He was challenged by the promoter to build another one and come back in 2012 to compete in the AMD show. Baldi, never one to turn down a challenge, accepted and immediately. He went home to his fabricator buddy, Jimmy Totorovitch, full of ideas to make a bike look old school but use modern technology. They knew they wanted to fabricate as many parts as possible with the end goal for it to look like there weren’t enough parts for it to run. With those goals in mind, it became a “What do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do?”
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June - July ‘21 - CYCLE SOURCE MAGAZINE
situation with the two of them. They finally decided to go pro-street style. Which, after a bit, decided was the wrong direction. After five different frame chops and multiple design ideas, the board-tracker style became their top choice. They both worked day jobs, so they could only put the time in on evenings and weekends in Jimmy’s home garage. The motor was sourced from Patrick Racing, who supplied them with one of their 113 S&S Motors. Next, they went to Baker Transmissions and asked them to build a 6-speed break with a tranny, which was a first for them. The bike was almost complete, save for the paint job, when in the last year of the build, tragedy struck Sam’s family. At the time, his daughter was pregnant with what would be their first grandchild, a girl. Shortly
