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Ben explained how he came to be the caretaker of this bike for the past 25 years. “I worked for a Harley-Davidson dealership for many years back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. I sold this bike to a gentleman, Tony Carruso I think was his name, brand new. We actually had a party at the dealer ‘cause back then if you sold a bike for retail you were like God,” he said. “About three or four months later, he ran the bike into a bridge abutment and the insurance company totaled it. Why, I have no idea. I bought it for a thousand dollars and the only thing that was wrong was the tubes were bent and it had a broken ignition module bracket on the front downtubes.” Ben then started to change things a bit getting rid of the bent tubes and the 19” stock front wheel and replacing them with an ’82 FLH front end he got from a friend whose FLH was stolen, but somehow the “thieves” left the front end behind (But that’s another history story). “I like the whole FL nacelle with the big tire style. I also like windshields. I’m a rider, not a bar hopper,” said Ben. “There’s a bridge called the Jamestown Bridge in Rhode Island that’s a grated steel bridge and it was really bad to ride over if you had a narrow tire. It was scary driving across it, a pain in the ass. A couple of times over that and I said, ‘I gotta get a bigger tire.’ ”

Sticking with the stock front mag simply because he “liked it,” Ben said, “The rear wheel is, well it’s a little story. When I was with ACCEL in I think 1990, nobody had anything in the way of wheels back then for all intents and purposes. I decided it would be great to have a wheel line with ACCEL so I got together with Center Line [wheels] and I told them what I had in mind. That solid wheel is actually the wheel Harley used on Willie G’s Disc Glide in 1983. They did two samples for me that I ran by the bigwigs at ACCEL and they said they didn’t want to get in the wheel business. So, that’s how [laughing] I ended up with the prototype wheel on my bike.”

Anybody who’s familiar with H-D brakes from the ‘80s would only applaud Ben’s use of a Jaybrake caliper grabbing a Lyndall rotor up front along with upgraded pads and braided lines out back. “I wanted the thing to stop when I wanted it to stop, not when it wanted to,” said Ben. “Plus, it looks a whole helluva lot nicer than the stock stuff.”

There’s also another good reason for the need for superior braking on Ben’s bike, where the old stock 80” Evo and 4-speed tranny resided is a complete makeover worthy of a cable TV show. “I came to work for Primo in ’99 and we had a gap in our product line. We had an open belt drive that would fit a ratchet-top 4-speed, but when Harley came out with the rotary-top like on my bike, we tried to come up with a belt drive for it, but never could,” said Ben. That led to him thinking about putting one of Rivera Primo’s 6-speed trannys in place instead and Ben said, “Our R&D guy, Giggie Gilliland, and I sat down and came up with a kit consisting of our transmission, belt drive, and starter as a bolt-on. I wanted mid controls and Giggie made up the billet mid controls. He’s really good at that stuff.”

With a major change like that, Ben “didn’t want to confuse people” and said, “So I bought a brand new 2007 S&S 93” high-compression Shovelhead motor and stuck that in. Actually I like Shovelheads better than Evos. It just looks a lot nicer. At highway speeds it’s beautiful. It’s pretty well balanced so it’s smoother than a stock Shovelhead was, but coupled with our six-speed it drops 500 revs at 75-85 where I normally cruise. It’s night and day compared to a stock one. It’s just a great riding bike.” Giving this motor the right look is Ben’s use of a classic SU carb. “For Shovelheads and Panheads, I recommend the SU. It’s a constant velocity cab, really easy to kick over, it looks great, and the drivability is just great. We’ve always sold a good amount of SU’s every year, but lately it’s been real popular.”

Looks and performance are vitally important to any custom build, but exhaust systems are the life of a bike and possibly the ultimate end result of any build. Everybody has a sound they want to build a bike around. Ben’s no different, but he has definite opinions about some of the exhausts people are running. “I hate to say this, but I don’t like loud f**king pipes! I like performance and there’s no performance in drag pipes or those stupid fishtails with no baffles,” said Ben. “Giggie and I took a set of Khrome Werks mufflers and a set of header pipes and modified them. It’s got a real nice sound to it, it’s throaty, it’s deep, but it’s not overpowering. It’s great to have a 93” high-compression motor, but if I put drag pipes on it, it would’ve killed the power.”

As far as paint, Ben said, “I wanted to keep it simple and be indicative of the fact it’s a Rivera Primo bike. I love flames, but I don’t like fake flames, I love real flames. I went to a guy down the street from us, Jones Custom, and gave him the digital graphics for the logo which he did in silver leaf with real flames behind it over the black base. It’s real simple, real clean, and just what I wanted.” Ben stayed with the stock “comfortable” seat, but called in seat maestro Danny Gray to recover it and it now sports a Rivera Primo logo where the Bar & Shield once resided. Tasteful, purposeful, and timeless design and finish choices gives Ben a ride for the next 25 years or more. After that, whoever becomes the future caretaker of this bike will have myriad past details and changes to scour over and wonder about the history of.

Yeah, Ben’s had a lot of history with this bike since 1985, but his history with his co-worker and good friend, Charles “Giggie” Gilliland (the larger-than-life guy pictured) overshadows the bike and changes the tone in Ben’s always enthusiastic voice to a serious, reverent one as he tells me Giggie passed away two months ago. “He was a really good friend of mine. He had a mean sense of humor and came up with shit sometimes that made you cringe,” said Ben laughing. “He did 99% of the work on this bike, he was really good. Giggie was a great fabricator, a great mechanic, a great friend, just a good guy. I can’t tell you how much we’re going to miss the guy. Not just as a good friend, but how much he did for the company.”

Ben Kudon’s FXSB rolling history lesson now includes a new chapter on how a good friend helped to keep a bit of history on the road and became a part of it in the process. Godspeed Giggie.