We say this every year, but it’s true: Our 2012 J&P Cycles catalog — refurbished, renovated, refined and featuring 1,064 pages — is our best ever! And we mean it this time. It’s chock-full of the latest brand name items from S&S, Custom Chrome, Vance and Hines, Drag Specialties, Bikers Choice, V-Twin Manufacturing and others. This catalog is your one-stop place to shop.

The 2012 catalog offers a whopping 40,000 individual unique numbers, ensuring you that we’ll probably be able to handle all your Harley parts needs. Over the last couple years, we’ve been using product specialists to bring new and exciting products to each chapter… Continue Reading

If you’re still in denial that riding season is indeed over for the year, and you’re a little hesitant about putting your bike in winter storage, just stick your head out the front door and take a look. Winter has arrived, baby, and there’s no two ways about it. Heck, it’s even been raining in Southern California and they never have weather!

And unless you’re a motorcycle newbie, you know that putting your ride in hibernation doesn’t mean rolling it into the garage and putting the kickstand down. If that was your best thinking, we’ve got some more bad news for you. Winter storage requires some action on your part.… Continue Reading

There’s always been confusion and conflict when it comes to any discussion about oil, which is of course, the lifeblood of our beloved motorcycles. And I’m probably not going to bring world peace to this topic with anything I’ll say in today’s blog post. Truth be told, this topic has created more debate on our Riders Forum on the J&P Cycles website than any other subject.

In fact, I’m mostly going to stick to the facts in this post, steering away from the controversies for the most part. First off, let’s explore the function of oil in an internal combustion engine — the educational portion of this… Continue Reading

When producers from the long-running ABC television show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” called us in early October and asked us to work some mechanical magic into a pair of three-decades-old derelict bikes, our crew jumped at the opportunity.

A couple of our top techs rounded up a van and trailer and drove the 90-minutes from J&P Cycles’ headquarters in Anamosa to West Union, Iowa, to meet up with the ABC crew and surprise Audrey Gibbs and her six children.

The back story is this: Seven months after her husband died, Audrey Gibbs suffered a brain aneurism that left her legally blind and raising six children… Continue Reading

Patrick Garvin, one of our more prolific bloggers and motorcycle tech experts grabbed a microphone and wandered around what he calls the “belly of the beast” here at J&P Cycles, asking a sampling of employees for their New Year’s resolutions.

Were this a bank or financial institution, you would expect those resolutions to center around balancing a checkbook or putting more into savings. But J&P Cycles sells motorcycle parts — about 130,000 of them at last count — and our employees seem to have a common theme when it comes to resolutions.

And that theme is this: Fix the bike that’s in the garage. For example, senior technician… Continue Reading

Editor’s Note: Indian Larry was the legendary machinist, metal-sculptor and motorcycle mechanical genius out of New York who built a style of bike that was a cross between a classic chopper and a hot-rod racebike. He won dozens of custom bike show competitions, and raced and performed in movies and television productions. This guest blog post is written for J&P Cycles by James Simonelli of BAKER Drivetrain, who is a frequent contributor to IronWorks Magazine. Here’s his take on Indian Larry.

I took this picture of Indian Larry back in June of 2003 at the Laconia Rally in Laconia, NH. Larry was a pretty cool guy, and he was really… Continue Reading

So far this winter, we’ve still got tree leaves covering the Iowa highways instead of snow. Nevertheless, the opportunity to spend time on two wheels is rapidly drawing to a close and our thoughts turn instead to winter projects and the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.

Here at J&P Cycles, we’re constantly inundated with hot deals and promotions, all centered around the after-holiday sales. So what I wanted to do was just take a deep breath and pause to reflect for a moment on what this season is really all about.

And of course, it’s about being thankful — just like we were taught way back in elementary… Continue Reading

 Here at J&P Cycles, we feel strongly in the concept that it’s important to give back what was so freely given to us. Whether that means taking part in a local highway clean-up project or holding a fund-raiser for one of our favorite charities, we do our best to do our part for this community that has served us so well over the decades.

Recently, we helped bring some additional holiday cheer to down-on-their-luck families in Jones County, Iowa, home to the J&P headquarters. We raised $1,200 for Anamosa Charities, Inc., a local nonprofit that has provided toys around the holidays to Jones County families since 1992. Before that,… Continue Reading

Allstate^® Motorcycle Insurance is up to its old tricks, giving away money in the form of  $2,500 in J&P gift cards in its Allstate J&P Cycles Sweepstakes.

If you want to enter this contest — and why on Earth wouldn’t you? — Allstate Motorcycle Insurance makes it easy. Just go their Facebook page, click on the J&P Cycles Sweepstakes tab located at the top left, then click on the orange “Enter Sweepstakes” button in the middle of the page. From there, you fill out the form and you’re good as gold. The sweepstakes contest ends at 11:59 p.m. EST on Dec. 22, so you’d best get… Continue Reading

Josh Schmit is a problem solver and he’s been resolving customer issues here at J&P Cycles for the past seven years. Heck, he’s got answers for questions posed by other J&P techs. All this equipment knowledge comes from years of working on bikes. And Josh will be the first to tell you that squatting down in front of a bike with a wrench is the best education you can get in this industry.

Meet Josh Schmit:

J&P Cycles: What got you interested in motorcycles?

JS: It started for me the first time I actually tore apart a lawnmower engine at 9 years old and my older brother helped me get… Continue Reading