Yup, you’re seeing exactly what you think you see with no ‘60s-induced flashbacks involved. That’s three separate wheels mounted together out back consisting of a pair of 21” wheels flanking the 23” middle one. And, this is not some sort of strictly visual trickery as they’re all driven by a complex drive system of multiple jackshafts and chains. Somehow I think Steve answered the question that nobody asked except for the man himself and personally, that’s cool with me. I was never very good at arithmetic, but by my count there’s at least five chain drives driving something at any given time aft of the tranny. According to Steve, the theory on all this is that the three wheels act like a 330mm tire with the smaller diameter outside wheels giving a “rounded” profile for turning. Hey I’m sure it works and all, but then 330 tires really don’t turn worth a sh*t anyway, so for practicality, that was a good example to shoot for. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, it’s not an all day rider or possibly even a bar hopper even if the bar is very close by.

What this ultra-wild concept/engineering exercise on four wheels is actually one man’s dream and test of imagination, talent, and dedication while also being the perfect definition of what a bike built for show/display should be. If you could casually walk by this bike and not stop and check it out without any feelings pro or con, you’d have to be walking in your sleep. Steve did exactly what he set out to do and was rewarded with the Best of Show at the 2012 Rat’s Hole Show. Along with the trophy, I’m sure he left a lot of people just walking around scratching their heads trying to understand the whole design exercise.

Now if the idea of three distinct rear wheels replacing one seems familiar for some reason, it may be because you’ve possibly seen this bike before in a previous life (the bike’s, not yours). Originally it was finished in red with quite a few things changed now besides just the paint color. Quite a few things is an understatement to say the least. Steve took a perfectly good, extremely radical, fresh build and tore it apart, literally. Apparently things just weren’t radical enough as it sat so he put on his Wikked Steel thinking cap (which I assume must be a wizard-style pointed hat with stars and moons on it) and got to work.

Steve kept most everything aft of the steering head which included the mainframe and the chromed tube tanks running a pair of headlights at the forward peak that ran outside the curved top tube while the seat and fenders stayed as is. The over-achieving for a four-wheel custom show bike 152” Ilmor engine (165 lb-ft of torque!) was also kept along with the basic running gear consisting of Pickard USA wheels with the front hiding a rare 360 Brake. Yeah, this bike needed more trickery.

What he did change is the telescoping front end, the giant headlight, and the bars to a front end that scrambles your brain as much as the triple rear wheel does. Where there was once simple hydraulics there’s now a set of wheel-mounted lever arms that work on a sphere inside the “headtube” that works on a leaf spring inside the frame to three coil springs. Hey, if I didn’t get that absolutely correct, I’m sorry. My X-ray vision is not what it used to be, but you get the gist. There’s a whole hell of a lot going on in what appears to be about the simplest, innocent looking set of tubes to connect a front wheel to a frame. If a tiny nuclear reactor and a solar powered pendulum were also involved, it really wouldn’t surprise me, but I have no further information on that uninformed assumption.

With all these changes taking place, Steve did his best Carroll Shelby impersonation and had RC Customz repaint the bike from red to blue. Now for some of us simpletons, that could be the most polarizing decision. Personally I liked it in red, but then I lead a simple life compared to Steve and things like color are easy for my tiny mind to understand and name decisions about. Steve on the other hand lets his mind wander through some other plane of the mind that I have no idea about and that’s okay with me. Red or blue? I’m staying with red, but blue’s okay I guess. That’s my wandering mind in action.

For more info on Wikked Steel and what else has been roaming through Steve’s mind, please visit www.wikkedsteel.com.