This is the new Check Your Valves t-shirt from the team at Sabotage Motorcycles, it’s an homage to the legendary Beastie Boys “Check Your Head” album cover from 1992 (see it below).
Checking your valves is an important part of the motorcycle maintenance schedule, particularly for those of us who ride vintage, air-cooled examples that typically need to be adjusted a little more often than a modern bike.
This is the Beastie Boys “Check Your Head” album cover from 1992 that inspired this new tee by Sabotage Motorcycles. Image courtesy of Capitol Records.
History Speedrun: Sabotage Motorcycles
Sabotage Motorcycles was founded by two staples of the Australian custom motorcycle scene – Andy and Giles. The two men met for the first time in a Bunnings car park, just about the most Australian scene imaginable, and they quickly bonded over the fact that they were both riding vintage Honda motorcycles.
The two soon partnered up building their own custom motorcycles, they then opened their own large-scale motorcycle mechanic workshop where they developed a reputation for taking on vintage bikes that most other garages would shy away from.
Before long, they had over a hundred motorcycles on site and it became apparent that the demand for their services was immense. As a result, they moved to an improved two-story location in Marrickville, Sydney where they remain to this day.
Over the years, motorcycles built by Sabotage have been featured on all of the largest custom motorcycle websites in the world, including Bike EXIF, Pipeburn, and Silodrome to boot.
The Check Your Valves T-Shirt By Sabotage Motorcycles
As mentioned higher up, the Check Your Valves t-shirt by Sabotage Motorcycles was designed as an homage for the Beastie Boys “Check Your Head” album cover from 1992.
This is Andy (left) and Giles (right) with one of their vintage Honda creations. Image courtesy of Sabotage Motorcycles.
These shirts are going to be offered in a single production run, and once they sell out they will never be reissued. Each one is printed by hand in Australia by Print Lords on premium AS Colour Staple tees, they come in Dark Grey or Vintage White, and sizing ranges from small to XXX large.
If you’d like to get one you can visit the official Sabotage Motorcycles online store here. They’re selling for $38 AUD each which works out to roughly $25 USD, £18, or €21.
Images provided by Sabotage Motorcycles
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.