Moxxi

Motorcycle addiction runs rampant within the Sallings family, and there seems to be no immediate vaccine. It didn’t take long for Jan’s youngest son, Sean, to spread his passion for vintage motorcycles to his then-girlfriend, now-wife, Kat. In 2015, she co-built this sinister 1972 Honda CB175 café racer with her future father-in-law.

Oozing spunk and audacity, the build received its name in reference to the term ‘moxie’—with spelling extracted from Borderlands character, Mad Moxxi. While its name undoubtedly refers to the motorcycle’s fierce appearance, it also holds a more sentimental meaning in reference to the life-changing, spiritual nature of the build process itself, according to Kat.

As a kid, Kat had enjoyed the occasional ride on the back of her Papa’s Honda Goldwing, but she’d never intended to pilot a motorcycle of her own. In 2012, at the age of twenty, it had been several years since she had been on a motorcycle at all when, in January of that year, she began dating Sean Sallings, who owned a then-superficial CL350 café racer that he called ‘Murphy.’ It was the first café racer that Kat had ever seen, and she immediately became enamored by its sleek, minimal aesthetic and charismatic nature. Though his motorcycle was not a two-seater, Sean still took Kat out on his brother’s Ducati Monster whenever he had a chance. She rapidly found herself bewitched by the exhilaration of being on a motorcycle once again, and she became dead set on getting a bike of her own.

Kat came across a 1972 Honda CB175 K6 'Super Sport' on Craigslist in 2013, and didn’t hesitate to buy it. Though the bike ran, it needed some work. While she was waiting on a gas tank, carburetors, and battery to arrive, Kat took the opportunity to turn the CB175 into a superficial café racer by slapping some clubman handlebars and a café seat on the bike. “I didn’t want to spend too much time customizing it. I really just wanted to ride,” she says. But, after riding the cycle in that condition for roughly a year and a half, Kat was eager to turn Moxxi into a show bike.

Being around Jan, who builds beautiful, trophy-winning custom motorcycles, quickly changed my mindset. When my bike suffered a broken piston ring in April of 2015, I decided to finally give it a full makeover with his help.

Kat Stovall

Sean resolved to properly rebuild his CL350 as well, and the two got to work, simultaneously building their own motorcycles with Jan. “I’m actually kind of glad it happened the way it did, because after a year and a half of riding that half-baked café racer around, I realized every little thing that needed to change,” Kat says. One of the things that she wanted to modify was the CB175’s boxy backbone, which impeded the sinuous, aerodynamic stance that she sought for the finished build. Inspired by a design elsewhere on the frame, she contemplated cutting a column of circles descending in size into the rear face of the backbone. Thanks to Jan’s expertise, she verified that it wouldn’t compromise the structural integrity of the frame before the two drilled into the backbone. They then fitted the cut-outs with a polished, perforated metal insert.

In order to complement the customized backbone, similar modifications were made to Moxxi’s clutch cover and front wheel hub. Kat and Jan drilled Jan’s signature front hub design into the hub and drilled lines which run parallel to the slant of the backbone into the clutch cover, then fitted the cut-outs with perforated metal.

I had a specific idea of what I wanted my bike to look like, but I didn’t know how to get there. Thankfully Jan was there to teach and guide me the whole way. With his help, I was able to do something I never imagined myself to be capable of doing. We customized the frame, completely rebuilt the engine, customized many parts, and much more.

Kat Stovall