Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/491629
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE E veryone else had morning activities scheduled on one of the last days of our family vacation in Ft. Myers, Florida. So I had a half-day to myself and decided to hop on my bike and explore the city. As I rode towards downtown on McGregor Boulevard, I caught a glimpse of a shop window that stopped me in my tracks. It was a stunning Moto Guzzi that just oozed sex appeal. I had to go in. The striking little boutique shop I'd stumbled upon was called Barn Luck. I stood stunned at the gorgeous custom café motorcycles that surround- ed me. There was a couple of Moto Guzzis, a replica of Cook Neilson's famous Ducati Superbike, a Beemer inspired by the Butler & Smith Superbikes of the 1970s. The Guzzi, inspired by the 1980s Battle of the Twins-winning machines built by Doc John Wittner, in the window was the kind of motorcycle that makes you want to immediately go out and mortgage your house. This was my kind of shop. I was greeted by Dominik Goertz. We chatted and I told him I wrote a weekly column in Cycle News and he immediately said I needed to meet his partner and co-founder of Barn Luck, Rudy Schachinger. Rudy was the builder behind these unique motorcycles, had been a racer most of his life and even won some club and vintage racing titles. He called Rudy, who was at Barn Luck's workshop where they actually converted old air- cooled V-twins into these beautiful works of rolling art and Rudy agreed to meet with me in an hour. Rudy Schachinger was born in Austria in the mid-1950s. He got his first motorcycle, a Jawa 350, when he was 12 years old. "From that point on, my life was all about motorcycles," Schach- inger said. "I tried every little thing. We had a motorsports club there and they had club mo- torcycles you could ride. I rode KTM and an old Adler 250 we modified into a dirt bike. So I rode off-road and then I was introduced to speed- way. We were using the two-valve Jawas on the short track, quarter-mile ovals. I was in a special series they had for young guys. I was also riding enduro with Manfred Horn (an ISDE competitor) who trained me." His family began taking a dimmer view of young Schachinger's motorcycling passion after he crashed a Ducati on a test ride after a rear tire exploded and he ended up hitting a guardrail and breaking a femur. "At that point my family was telling me to give up motorcycles or I was going to kill myself," Schachinger recalls. "So I looked for something else that would give me the same thrill as motorcycles and I found BEDAZZLED BY BARN LUCK P98 Barn Luck's Rudy Schachinger