About FatDog Vintage Salvage
Two decades of grease, grit, and genuine passion
It started with a rusted-out 1952 Harley-Davidson Panhead sitting in my grandfather's barn. I was nineteen years old, had no idea what I was doing, and absolutely no business trying to restore a motorcycle. But something about that old iron spoke to me — the weight of it, the history, the idea that someone had ridden that machine across America decades before I was born.
That Panhead took me three years to restore. I made every mistake in the book. I bought wrong parts, stripped threads, and painted things the wrong color. But by the time I kicked it over for the first time, I was hooked for life. FatDog Vintage Salvage grew out of that obsession — first as a way to fund my own projects, then as a full-time business serving restorers just like me.
Today we operate out of a 4,000 square foot workshop in rural Ohio. We have a full machine shop, a plating facility, and a parts inventory that would make your head spin. We have restored over 200 motorcycles in the past twenty years — from complete frame-off restorations to simple engine rebuilds — and we have shipped parts to restorers in 34 countries.
The name? My dog Biscuit. She was a fat, lazy basset hound who slept under the workbench for twelve years. Best shop dog there ever was. This one's for her.
The workshop, circa 2018