  he FatBook has done it again, coming up with just about everything needed for a great custom. This time the moto-feast started with a New York City Choppers Big Twin Bobber Frame, went on to include one of those “too-cool-for-school” 93-inch S&S Shovelhead Alt/Gen Motors and a Baker 5-speed Torquebox, added a bit of tasty sheet metal from Paughco and Russ Wernimont, mixed in some Roland Sands Vintage and then set it all rolling on American Wire 100 spokers. All right out of the catalog. The Shadley Bros.–Mark and Paul–of Whitman, Massachusetts, did the cooking here and it turned out to be nothing short of delicious.This is the first FatBook bike from these guys and it’s a beauty. Crisp, clean and right to the point. “The folks over at Drag Specialties picked the frame, the transmission, the handlebars and the forward controls,” Mark Shadley tells us. “Pretty much everything else,” he says, “was left up to us.” Flipping through that big catalog, they chose wisely. While massaged and detailed everywhere, Mark says this was a quick little project, probably taking a month. It could have been a total bolt-together job, too, but the Shadley Bros. couldn’t leave things at that, not for their first-ever FatBook built. So getting a little tricky they included a GMA belt final drive and left-side brake/pulley combo, something that Nick at NYC Choppers hadn’t designed this frame, cool as it is, to accommodate. “We had to cut things up a little to make some room back there,” Mark says. That Baker Torquebox 5-speed required a little frame re-work, too; it sat pretty close to the center tube so the Shadley Bros. ended up notching that area just a little. While they were at it they made a new top motor mount, kind of a shop signature piece. We mention all this just to make it perfectly clear that, in the configuration we see here, and with the parts Mark and Paul chose–specifically that left-side brake/pulley combo–it’s not exactly a bolt-together build. Close, but not quite. Substitute a slightly narrower rear wheel and tire, use chain drive and a right-side brake and Mark says you’ll be home free. “We just wanted to do it this way,” he goes on to explain. “We wanted that right side clean and open.” Check out the little hubcap sort of deal over there, too. That’s another addition by the Shadley Bros. Heading back to the FatBook, the gas tank is a Paughco Mustang-style, bottom mounted. The fuel filler has been relocated, moved from the side to dead-center up top. Mark and Paul tucked the ignition switch into the seat post area, and the oil tank–another Paughco item–had its sides stretched to conceal twin ignition coils. The plug wires run inside the frame tube and then drop down to the spark plugs. The guys also made a little filler pan under the RSD Vintage seat to clean up that area, “And we drilled the front of the frame gusset to match the handlebars.” Another neat little trick here is the oil filter housing. It’s machined to resemble a generator. It disassembles for service and looks great, right at home on a Shovelhead. The Shadley Bros. made up the exhaust system using a pair of those new Bub 7 Slip-on mufflers and when it came time for paint, “We tried to keep that simple, too,” Mark says. It’s a PPG flip/flop color. Out in the sun it goes between orange and green and yellow. Nice little bike, and a nice representation of the kind of work these guys do. “We try,” Mark says. “We like to keep everything clean and simple.” The Shadley Bros. have been doing this, keeping it “clean and simple,” for the past eight years, ever since moving into their new Whitman location on the Massachusetts south shore, near the Cape. That’s not when the brothers started building motorcycles that get noticed, though. Mark had his first magazine cover bike way back in ‘78. Well, it’s all a whole lot easier now. Almost everything in and on this bike is right out of the FatBook. “We really made an effort to keep this one catalog-correct,” Mark says. And he did. It’s definitely correct–and take a look at the build sheet–it’s all out of the catalog. Inspired? We are…
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