A desert sled built without the right period parts always looks slightly wrong. Even if every dimension is correct, even if the bike is mechanically perfect, the eye knows. The parts that get this right are not exotic. There are three names that account for most of them, and each one has a specific story.

Bates

Bates Industries, Long Beach, California. Founded 1933 by Joe Bates. Made motorcycle seats — and a lot of other leather goods — for half of the California racing scene through the 1950s and 1960s.

The desert solo is the seat you want. Low-profile, single-rider, rebuildable. The pan is steel with a specific bend at the rear, the foam is medium-density with a slight crown, the vinyl has a distinctive textured grain. Bates seats were sold direct to riders, through JoMo, and through specialty motorcycle dealers from Long Beach to San Diego.

Original Bates seats are collectible now. A usable original runs $400 to $800. A clean one with original vinyl and a Bates stamp is over a thousand. The good reproductions — Wassell makes one, Brittany Seats in the US does competent restoration on originals — are perfectly fine for a riding build, and from across the shop you cannot tell them from real.

How to identify an original: a Bates stamp under the seat (look on the pan from below), specific rivets at the corners, a particular shape at the rear that the repros mostly get right but not quite. If a seller cannot show you the underside, assume it is a repro.

Preston Petty

Preston Petty founded the company in the 1960s in Southern California. Made plastic fenders for off-road bikes when everyone else was making steel or aluminum. The Mojave front fender was the original product and remains the iconic shape.

The Preston Petty Mojave fender has a distinctive profile — wider than a stock Triumph fender, mounted high on the forks, just enough coverage to keep dust out of the rider’s face without trapping mud the way a tight-fitting steel fender does. Original Preston Pettys are still around, often yellowed from sun and stiff with age. New old stock is rare and worth holding onto.

The company still exists. Preston Petty Products is family-run, makes current fenders from the same molds, in the same colors. White, yellow, red, and natural-color cream. They are not vintage repros — they are the original product, still in production. Buy from them directly. The price is fair and the part is correct.

Bud Ekins

Ekins did not make parts. He made influence.

The Ekins look is a 1968 desert sled in white-and-red paint with a Bates solo, Preston Petty fenders, a specific bar bend, K70 tires, and a particular way of finishing the build — slightly used-looking even when new. The aesthetic Ekins established was copied by Triumph itself in the 1968 factory paint scheme, by JoMo on the bikes they sold from Pasadena, by every desert racer who wanted to look like he belonged in the JoMo team.

Building "to Ekins" is not about a specific part. It is about the visual decisions: white tank, narrow red panels, no chrome trim beyond the engine, dirt-spec gearing, K70s. A bike built to those specifications today looks like a Bud Ekins bike whether or not Ekins ever touched it. That is the influence.

Other names worth knowing

Webco. Custom parts, alloy tanks, small bits that you needed for a sled build. The 2.5-gallon Webco aluminum tank is what most period-correct sleds run. Originals are findable, repros are good.

Akront and Excel. Wheel rims. Akront from Spain for the early period look — hard to find new now. Excel from Japan for late-period look — still made, less character. Either is correct for a 1968 to 1970 build.

Mikuni. Some serious dirt racers were running Mikuni VM30 carbs by 1970. Better cold-start, more consistent across altitude. Period-correct purists keep the Amal Concentric. Period-correct racers may not have.

Bates made the seat. Preston Petty made the fender. Bud Ekins made it cool to want both.

Where to source

Preston Petty Products direct for the fenders. Wassell or Brittany Seats for the seat. Webco originals through specialty dealers (we stock a few). Akront and Excel rims through any major wheel builder.

Putting the right parts on a build is the difference between "vintage-styled" and "actually a desert sled." Most of it is one phone call. If you are building one, drop by the shop. We have most of these on hand and can source the rest from one or two suppliers we know well.