What’s Going on with Billy Lane? New Shop & Race Track News - Harley Chopper

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Now, sit close and pay attention because I got to tell you about my new shop that I just built for myself.

[00:00:06]In 2019, we decided to move our family to Franklin, Tennessee, cuz it's such a great place to raise our kids. But before we left Daytona for Tennessee, the building I purchased in Tennessee caught on fire. So, I had to move into a temporary location for work, but I was able to take time to repair the building that I purchased in Columbia, Tennessee.

[00:00:27]The building next to the building I purchased caught on fire and mostly burned the roof out. It's a brick building, so mostly burned the roof and the roof trusses out. So, I spent the winter putting new roof roof trusses in and redecking the roof and getting everything fixed up so that I'd be able to move into the building as soon as possible. This definitely wasn't how I planned to start my move to Tennessee, but it just the circumstances I've been thrown. And ever since I got to Tennessee, it's been really difficult.

[00:00:54]Follow along as I tell you the rest of the story. It's going to be hard for you to believe, but it's been a really crazy few years of circumstances here. I really hadn't intended to move to Tennessee. It really took me by surprise. We were visiting friends in Franklin, Tennessee in the Nashville area and we found out how great it is of an area to raise your kids and have a family. So, we just decided to move and I purchased this building. I've been looking for over a year and purchased this building in downtown Columbia, Tennessee. And commercial real estate in middle Tennessee in the Nashville area is really at a premium. So, it's very hard to find a good building. It's very hard to find anything affordably. And Mike Wolf from American Pickers found this building for me and I purchased it literally over the telephone. And um you know, before I was able to close, the building caught on fire. So, we had all this damage to fix.

[00:01:42]Nonetheless, it was a good experience for me because I learned a lot about construction and contracting, but we got the building fixed and got moved in. And I also learned a lot about moving equipment, which is going to come in handy in the next few years.

[00:01:55]Moving from Daytona Beach, Florida to Tennessee was pretty difficult. And uh and then having to move again a few months later once I got the building repaired was more difficulty and more a setback. And I've just had so many setbacks to my work life because of all the moving. But, you know, I was happy to be in Tennessee, happy to get my own place. And I'm really ready to get back to work. Uh started moving my equipment in. had the shop set up pretty nice and did my best to start getting caught up, but that was to be short-lived as you'll see because I had just more difficulty come my way. In the summer of 2020, we went on a family vacation to South Carolina coast. took the whole family and when I came back from the vacation, I found that a water supply line upstairs in my building had broken and it completely flooded the upstairs all the way to the water, collapsed the floor upstairs and the ceiling downstairs and fell down all over all my motorcycles and completely wrecked all the repair work we just done.

[00:02:58]This was so hard to believe. It was just a total heartbreak. I mean, as you look through this video, you can see the damage to the building and all the work we've done. But also, I mean, my Crocker, my 1941 Crocker sitting right here, my West Coast chopper, hubless bike, uh, so many of these things got damaged. My guitars got damaged, my amplifiers got damaged. Just so many things that I had that meant so much to me. It had so much sentimental value got damaged. Some stuff was damaged beyond repair and irreplaceable. And that's just what I had to deal with with this.

[00:03:30]And uh it was just such a hard pill to swallow, but it was just one more step and get me to where I am today. The water line broke upstairs and just there was so much standing water upstairs. It took us weeks to dry it out before we could even start making repairs. I mean, we had to get in here with dehumidifiers and towels and just soak everything up and get all anything that would absorb moisture out of the building so that we could dry it out before I can make the repair so I wouldn't have any mold issues or any, you know, moisture issues. So, there was a lot of work. But then I had a lot of friends come in, step up and really help me out. Everybody pitched in and helped me fix it. Everybody felt really bad for me because I had just got this place fixed. In the end, we got it fixed up pretty nice. And um I was able to get back in there and try and get back to work. But it had just been one thing after the next after the next ever since we decided to leave Daytona Beach and come to Tennessee. It was almost like the universe was telling me not to come.

[00:04:41]But like I always do, I just move forward, push through it, and we got it done. And I'm grateful for all the help and everything else. And um you know, did actually get some great work done in this building for a short period of time. But this is where it starts to get really confusing. In the summer of 2022, my wife got really homesick, especially for family. We decided to pack everything up, sell my building in Tennessee and our house, and move everything back to Florida. So, we bought a house back there with the help of friends. I moved it all back down to Florida. Got myself into a really crappy small warehouse in Melbourne, Florida that I was very unhappy about. It was too small for me, but I did the best I could. Well, after a couple of months in Florida, my wife decided that she wasn't happy down there anymore and wanted to move back to Tennessee, but I had a lease on the building it was at. We had just bought a house there. So, we actually stayed in Florida for a little bit over two years. Um, and then I packed everything up and started moving it back to Tennessee again. And that was one hell of a move. Five months later, I was back in Tennessee again. And that move was one of the worst experiences of my life. I mean, I made 13 trips and each trip seemed like it was worse than the last. I damaged so much stuff. I had blown out more trailer tires than you could imagine, but I finally got myself back to Tennessee and that's really where I wanted to be. I never wanted to leave. I was born and raised in Florida and absolutely loved it there. Uh, living near the ocean and everything, but once we moved to Tennessee, I really fell in love with Tennessee. The writing is so phenomenal. We made so many great friends in Tennessee. So, I was really happy to be here. And uh but I become so good at rigging stuff and moving stuff.

[00:06:20]My friends would just marvel at how I rig stuff. Look at I got these ultra toe straps from Northern Tool. And I mean I was able to use these straps and load stuff out of the you know putting this lathe in the back of a U-Haul moving truck truck is not the best move. I was able to use the straps and drag everything in and out and load it on the forklift and get it in and out of a really narrow shop. Now check out this shop I'm moving into. I'm moving into this small shop in Spring Hill, Tennessee. I was told it was 2500 ft².

[00:06:51]When I got here, I found it was 1,250 ft². Way too small for me. I just could not squeeze my stuff in there. I I got a lot of stuff in. I left a lot of stuff outside for months and months. But it took me probably 6 months just to figure out the floor space game so that I had enough space in the shop to even work with all my equipment. I had to get rid of a lot of stuff. It just made things really difficult. very hard to get any work done. I'd come in in the morning and spend about an hour pushing bikes outside and just moving stuff around so I could get to the work and get my job done. So really the last 5 years have been very non-productive for me cuz I spent so much time loading and moving and breaking down and setting up. I mean it's just um really been a crazy few years and I've through all of it I just wondered when is this madness going to end? when's it going to end? But the answer to my question was really kind of already predetermined because I had considered buying this racetrack here in Hoenwald, Tennessee that we were racing at before we moved to Florida. And uh once we moved to Florida, it almost became like a pipe dream, something that wouldn't have been possible because it'd be impossible to take care of the track and the land from three states away. So I had really kind of forgotten about it.

[00:08:11]But once we decided to move back to Tennessee, we were still in Florida for quite a few months, I called the owner of the track and I said, "Hey, are you still willing to sell me that property in the track and we've been discussing it?" We kind of carved out a deal and I just told him, I said, "Listen, I, you know, I can't commit to anything now because with my wife and my family, I don't know what's going to happen, but if I get back to Tennessee, I'd really like to buy the track and build my shop property on it."

[00:08:39]And that's what that site right there is.

[00:08:42]So this track in Holden Wall, Tennessee was 19 acres with the track and that red building right there was a shop building on it. And before I purchased it, the owner had sold that red building. So um I bought the track without that building. So we decided to put my shop building right here where that gravel site is. I think I closed on the track in June of 2025.

[00:09:06]And uh they started, you know, the site work in July of 2025 and told me the building should be done by November. It wasn't done on time, which is, you know, pretty much always the case, but I was okay with that because I wasn't really in a lease where I'd been at the small shop in Spring Hill. So, I was kind of able to go monthtomonth until this building was done.

[00:09:31]I'm here outside of the new Choppers, Inc. building. Uh, it's going up. It's supposed to be done in about a month.

[00:09:38]So, you can see they've got the structure up. The roof is on it. Let's go take a walk inside.

[00:09:47]The building is 50 ft by 80 ft. So, it's 4,000 square ft.

[00:09:54]So, you're looking down the length of 80 feet here.

[00:10:02]4,000 square feet is good for me.

[00:10:04]Uh, I've really downsized in the last few years, but they got all the gravel down now. They'll put all the plumbing, electrical rough ends in, and they'll pour this foundation, but you can see got high ceilings so that I can fly a drone in here, shoot my YouTube videos, and just have some space to go up if I need to. I think like right back here in this corner there's going to be an elevated mezzanine that is going to be basically my office. Uh, you know, so I'll be up above everything. I can look out over the railing and look out and see what's going on in the shop, which should be nothing because nobody works here but me. But there's the building from the front.

[00:11:02]Pretty stoked to have this.

[00:11:10]And what's great is I roll a few feet over here and there's the speedway and we can go out and race, ride motorcycles, have some fun.

[00:11:23]So, it's going to be really good to have my shop on site here.

[00:11:29]It's November now and the concrete slab is poured and the electric and plumbing roughings are all in. But there's no doors on the building yet. None of the electrical is done. None of the plumbing is done. Really, none of the buildout is done on the place. So, um, it's starting to become really clear to me at this point that it's not going to be done on time, which I kind of prepared myself for. Good things are worth waiting for.

[00:11:53]This is a really killer building. I mean, I love the black exterior of it.

[00:11:57]you know, it's got no windows. Um, which is what I wanted. I just wanted a big place where I can come in and work and get a lot of stuff done, make YouTube videos, and um, you know, get my race bikes ready for the track.

[00:12:12]But just knowing I'm going to have all this space is a great feeling. Knowing that I'm going to be able to own again after renting for three years, because this is a secret for you. If you're in the motorcycle business, you got to own your own building over time. That's the only way to really make it in this business. But here's the view from the mezzanine upstairs. We ended up putting the mezzanine on the west end of the building instead of the east end of the building. Uh, makes perfect sense. And I had the builder partition off the last 1,000 ft of the shop. And you can see that as I pan down here. That's what that wall is at the end there. That's 1,000 ft of shop partitioned off just for storage, for keeping bikes and parts and hardware and things that I may not be needing. That's going to stay on that one end. Then I have 3,000 square ft of workspace here for me to do my thing in.

[00:13:04]And that's more than enough.

[00:13:06]The doors are on the building now.

[00:13:07]They're in here starting to do the interior build out and getting the bathroom done and everything else. And there's a full shower and a full laundry. So, it won't be long before I'm ready to move.

[00:13:19]It's February now and uh we've had a pretty hard winter. We had some really bad cold snaps here. Lots of ice on the road, fallen trees all over the place.

[00:13:28]So, everything's been going slow in including construction and the building's still not done, but I'm starting to get stuff out of my old shop in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and move it over there. With the stuff that I can move, I'm taking over there. Here, I'm using the Strongway gantry crane that I got from Northern Tool and lifting this Hemi. It's a a 1953 Dodto Hemi engine that I bought for the Model A coupe. I'm going to put in that car. So, I'm lifting that up off the ground and getting it out of the shop and getting it in the back of my F250 so I can take it over to Hoenwald and get that thing out of my way. I'm just starting to pick up everything that I can, especially the things I can get with the gantry crane because I don't have access to a forklift right now. So, I get all this stuff out of the shop, get it loaded and moved over there because I know this is going to be a monthsl long endeavor getting everything moved out of this shop.

[00:14:18]It's been a lot of late nights, a lot of early mornings rigging all this stuff up, picking it up, loading it, packing stuff up, getting everything ready to move. But, it's going to be worth it. My YouTube video upload schedule has suffered. I haven't put up many videos in the last few months because I've been so busy moving this stuff, but doesn't mean I haven't been making content. And um you know, look at this Hemi engine. I mean, this Hemi engine is gonna go in a Model A Ford. I haven't even told you about the Model A coupe yet, but got a Model A coupe that I'll be showing you what I'm doing with. So, there's a lot of really great stuff coming, but this move is kind of the precursor to all those things that are coming soon. I haven't worked on my Crocker in I think three years. I haven't worked on Blow in over a year. I mean, I know people you all ask me about that in the comments when I do upload a video about some of these bikes. And I'm just here to tell you that I've everything suffered. I mean, I've let a lot of customers down.

[00:15:11]I've busted a lot of deadlines. There's been a lot of things I just haven't been able to do because I've been so consumed by getting all this moving done.

[00:15:19]But I'm on the home stretch. I mean, now that I'm done moving out, I got to start moving in.

[00:15:26]Moving out's been such a trip. I had to put the king of hearts, this hubless bike up on top of this pallet rack in the shop because I really didn't have any place to keep it and the shop was so small. I was always bumping into stuff and banging stuff and the bike got minor damage when the water issue happened at my building in Columbia a couple years before, three years before, but I had the bike way up on top of this pallet rack and I got up there with the forklift and Joe and I getting it down here is um something that's a quite a spectacle to see us getting it down. It wasn't easy, but got it down on this pallet and loaded it back down on the ground. to me was kind of like the final step of moving out, getting this thing down off the rack and down onto the ground and into the truck to head out to the racetrack. And Homewald was kind of like a defining moment for me. Okay, this is it. I'm out of here. Once this bike is down and mo loaded up and moved, I'm on my way to a new location and uh really something to look forward to cuz I got big news for you. What's going to happen out this place at this racetrack.

[00:16:31]So, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Moving into a new place is definitely harder than moving out of the old place, but moving out is definitely a lot of work. But getting moving to the new place is so much work. I mean, loading everything up and getting it off of the truck and trailer and figuring out how to queue everything into the new building really took a lot of work, a lot of planning because I'm bringing everything in in waves over here. It's not like I have everything at once. I've been moving for months. So, I'm bringing a wave of stuff and trying to figure out where to set it, where to put it where it's not going to be in my way. Making sure I have enough room to bring new equipment in because once I got into this new building in hon steer forklift, I didn't have a small zeroturn turn forklift anymore. I'm using a skid steer takes up quite a bit of space and uh when you lift with a skid steer, you know, your forks tilt, so you have to be able to adjust your forks as you're lifting or lowering.

[00:17:24]It's just a whole different thing. But it took up a lot of space in the shop to drive the skid steer. So it was really a lot of work trying to figure out where to put everything. And I'm sometimes moving the same item three, four or five times in a row just to get out of my way so I can get to something else or get something else in there and then going back and moving that same same item again. So really been a lot of work getting moved in. But it's all good because I'm in my final resting spot now. This is where I'm going to stay.

[00:17:52]And I think now is probably the best time to give you some really exciting news.

[00:17:58]We've been racing Sons of Speed Vintage Motorcycle Racing for 10 seasons now.

[00:18:02]This is our 10th season racing. You know, we started in Daytona and then a few years ago we started having races up here in Tennessee at this Hoen Wall track when I was just leasing the track before I owned it. But now that I own it, I want to make it really special.

[00:18:15]And I've been working for over a year on this deal. But this summer, just in a few weeks, June 5th and 6th, we have Vintage Sons of Speed Racing up here.

[00:18:25]But we also have American Flat Track Pros coming and racing the same weekend as the Sons of Speed at my track. We're calling it the Nashville Short Track.

[00:18:35]And uh it's on the American Flat Track website. I'll put the website on here and put the link below. You can buy tickets, but you're going to get to see all the pros racing. Harley-Davidson, Yamaha, KTM, Kawasaki, Suzuki, all the big names are going to be here. All the pros, the grand national champions are going to be here that race all over the country every year. So, we're really excited to have AFT American flat track here with us racing Sons of Speed vintage bikes cuz Sons of Speed is, you know, 1909 to 1950 motorcycles.

[00:19:08]But the motorcycles American flat track races really derived from the bikes that we're racing. The Harley-Davidson and Indian 45 cubic inch bikes that we race at Sons of Speed were the first class C race motorcycles which is what American flat track races now. So it's going to be really exciting to have them there.

[00:19:27]It's going to be really exciting to have you here cuz you need to come see this event for a bunch of reasons. One is it's going to be televised on Fox, which is really cool to have national and international viewers watching Sons of Speed and American Flat Track racing at my track. And two, that same weekend that we have the American Flat Track races. I'm having a grand opening shop party at the shop. So, you can come in and see the shop and see where everything's done. A lot of the tools and equipment I have I've had since I was doing biker build off. I have a lot of memorabilia from back in those days, a lot of stuff from before I was on Biker Buildoff from when I was just a nobody building motorcycles in my garage. But in order to come to the shop party, you've got to buy a ticket from American Flat Track for the Flatrack races at www.americanflatrack.com.

[00:20:22]And I'll put that link down below also.

[00:20:25]But you got to come to the races. Come support. Come support American Flat Track and Sons of Speed Vintage Racing.

[00:20:32]And if you want to see the shop and be a part of something brand new, the next 20 25 years of my life, my career, all the custom bikes I'm going to be building, everything you see me do on YouTube, it's all going to happen right here in this shop. So, this is my invite to you.

[00:20:47]Grab yourself a ticket. Come be a part of this. It's going to be really special. And I just want to say thank you to everybody who's helped me in these moves. I couldn't have done all this by myself. I did a lot of it by myself, but I couldn't have done all of it by myself. I want to thank everybody who's helped me in the moves. I want to thank my customers who've been patient with me. I want to thank those of you who supported me and, you know, um, in any way helped me out. I know I've been really difficult for the past 5 years. I hope this video explains why my life has been a wreck from all this moving. I mean, all the months of moving, all this stuff. Just think of all the downtime that I wasn't able to work on a motorcycle or get anything done because I was picking something up or putting it down or loading it into a truck or strapping it to some piece of equipment.

[00:21:33]So, the last four or five years have been really strenuous and difficult, but it's almost over now. I'm getting myself moved in here. I'm still moving in as I record this for you. And there will be a part two once I get everything in the shop. I'm going to do a shop tour. I'm going to take you around my shop and show you where everything is. I'm going to show you what everything does. You know, I'm going to show you what my lathe does. I'm going to show you what this uh Thomas piece of equipment I'm moving here does. You know, this is basically a pullmax machine for shaping sheet metal. So, I'll show you what that machine does and how I use it and I'll walk you through the whole place and show you. But instead of watching it on a video, make sure you grab a American Flat Track ticket. Come out to the property June 5th and 6th. see American Flat Track Pro Racers and Sons of Speed Vintage Outlaw Racing at the track. You won't be disappointed. It's gonna be a damn good time. I hope you're able to make it, but if you're not, I will be posting a video up here. But I just want to say thank you so much to everybody who supported me and um you're going to see a lot of really cool stuff happen in this building the next few years. I'm ready to settle down. I'm ready for stability. I'm going to get a lot of really cool work done and I'm going to show you every bit of it.