{"id":58063,"date":"2021-10-12T09:03:30","date_gmt":"2021-10-12T13:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/motorcyclemojo.com\/?p=58063"},"modified":"2021-10-12T09:03:30","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T13:03:30","slug":"start-them-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motorcyclemojo.com\/2021\/10\/start-them-young\/","title":{"rendered":"Start Them Young"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At just 11 years old, this girl already knows her motorcycle inside and out.<\/p>\n<p>She hasn\u2019t yet learned to ride a motorcycle, but 11-year-old Alexis Neill has just completed building her first custom Harley-Davidson. Working alongside her papaw, Roger Wilson, the pair from Granite Falls, North Carolina, took two years to resurrect a tired 1994 Sportster 883. That means she was just nine years old when the project started.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to this build, Alexis says she\u2019d \u201chelped service the lawnmower, and I\u2019d worked a bit on my four-wheeler. After that, I just wanted to build something.\u201d The \u201csomething\u201d arrived in the form of the Sportster, a bike that had once belonged to a friend of Wilson\u2019s. It had sat unridden for many years, and, at one point, a barn had actually collapsed on top of the machine. Wilson rescued it and dragged it home. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it looked good,\u201d Alexis says of her first impression, \u201cand neither did my papaw. It was dirty, it had a weird seat on it, and we didn\u2019t like the square mirrors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Change of Plans<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-58066\" src=\"https:\/\/motorcyclemojo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/85528ED8-B518-4B78-AD6D-3A6C4EF9DCC2-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\">\u201cI was going to go through it and get it set up for her grandmother to ride,\u201d Wilson adds \u201cAlexis saw me getting after it, and asked if she could help. I wasn\u2019t going to pass up some grandfather\/granddaughter time, and we made a deal: If she followed through with the build, I\u2019d do everything I could to get her story in a magazine.\u201d As they worked on the bike, though, Wilson abandoned the idea of setting it up for his girlfriend, Joye Bumgarner (Alexis\u2019s grandmother, or mamaw), and opted instead to give it to Alexis.<\/p>\n<p>Wilson has been riding motorcycles since he was 10 years old, starting off on a Yamaha 100. Now, he\u2019s got a 2010 CVO Street Glide, and Bumgarner rides a 2010 Kawasaki Voyager with a trike kit. Alexis lives with her grandparents and is familiar with the layout of the garage, where there\u2019s a chest filled with tools used only for working on motorcycles. \u201cShe knows her way around that box, and she catches on really quick,\u201d Wilson says \u201cYou don\u2019t have to keep repeating stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the Sportster was disassembled, Alexis was all hands on deck when removing nuts and bolts. \u201cIf something was too tight, papaw would step in and help,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t really like getting too dirty, but if it\u2019s for a bike, I\u2019d do anything. And I didn\u2019t really mind getting dirty, because I got to put clean parts back on it.\u201d She literally did do anything, working for an hour or two almost daily after school and on weekends.<\/p>\n<p><strong>New Engine Internals<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The entire Sportster was taken down, with the engine and transmission removed from the frame and placed on the workbench. Engine cases were split, and all bearings and the connecting rods were&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At just 11 years old, this girl already knows her motorcycle inside and out. She hasn\u2019t yet learned to ride a motorcycle, but 11-year-old Alexis Neill has just completed building her first custom Harley-Davidson. Working alongside her papaw, Roger Wilson, the pair from Granite Falls, North Carolina, took two years to resurrect a tired 1994 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":58064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[373,2069],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Start Them Young | Motorcycle Mojo<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"11-year-old Alexis Neill has just completed building her first custom Harley-Davidson motorcycle. 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