Mooneyes Star: A hardtail knucklehead from Asterisk
The next Yokohama Hot Rod Custom Show is over ten months away, but many top-flight builders are already plotting their next entries.…
Read more »Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson is an icon of American culture and the most popular marque for custom builders. Shortly after the company was founded in 1903 in Milwaukee, customizers started bobbing, chopping and dirt tracking the famous V-twins.
After WW2 Harley motorcycles were at the center of the bobber craze, and kept their lead as Californian bikers turned to choppers in the late 1950s. The 45-degree engines have their own nicknames and folklore: from flatheads, knuckleheads, panheads and shovelheads to today’s Evolution and Milwaukee-Eight motors.
The Sportster is the basis for more Harley-Davidson customs than any other model. Originally fitted with an ‘Ironhead’ motor, it turned 60 years old in 2017. It’s probably the single most customized motorcycle on the planet, and certainly has the largest supply of aftermarket parts.
Custom Bikes Of The Week: 27 January, 2019
Harley’s global dealer custom competition launches with a fusillade of very tasty European builds. We’ve also got a Kawasaki KX450 with amazing…
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Street tracker gold: building a road-legal Harley XR750
The biggest cliché in motorcycle journalism is the ‘listicle’ of the best-looking bikes ever made. If we ever run out of ideas…
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Double Trouble: Hot Chop’s twin-engined Harley drag bike
Squeezing two Harley engines into one chassis is a special form of lunacy, most commonly found in the drag bike scene in…
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Competition Hot: A vintage-style Harley ironhead
Trends ebb and flow in the custom world. And with them, the fortunes of bike builders. It might be tough at the…
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Shovelhead à la française: Shiny Hammer’s 1972 FLH
Most custom motorcycle builders are pretty handy in other areas of life and work. The ability to set up a lathe or…
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Slam Dunk: A lowered Sportster 883 from Hombrese
Quite a few bikes have quirks that can trap the unwary builder. The strange frame curvature on the Honda CX500 is one…
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Custom Heritage Softail: One Way Machine’s ‘Quartermile’
When Harley-Davidson celebrated its 115th anniversary with a party in Prague earlier this year, it invited a select few builders to present…
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Cohn Racers’ Harley XR1200 X is ready to play dirty
If you love the wall of torque delivered by a Harley V-twin but not the laidback handling, the Sportster XR1200 X is…
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Everything old is new again: Norman Reedus’ Knucklehead
The chopper scene has been responsible for some of the greatest atrocities committed against motorcycling: a smorgasbord of tasteless paint jobs, lethal…
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WTF: Turning a tank-shift Harley WLA into a flat tracker
The great thing about flat track racing is that anyone can have a crack. You don’t need a rocket scientist crew chief,…
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Superunknown: A first-time builder hits the big time
Purists will say that a full nuts-n-bolts restoration is the only way to treat a rare classic. But when all you have…
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