Bandit pieced the bike back together, putting a DNA Springer front end on it and adding an extra wide 16-inch front tire. He removed the front fender, added apes and Vance & Hines Longshots, and reworked the electrical system, among other things. He then started in on a wickedly beautiful orange and yellow flame paint job. “I really like that paint,” he said, “but it was...

If the difference between men and boys really is the cost of their toys, Les Desavedo of Bentonville, Arkansas, is Rambo. His garage is a retiree’s dream, stuffed full of Jet Skis, a boat, a couple of Trek bicycles, and other rewards of his years of hard work in Wyoming’s gas and oil industry. A beautiful, gleaming red ’76 Shovelhead sits waiting for repair, a reminder of its...

This now sleek and clean ex-repo wasn’t always that way as Ric described what he started with. “When I bought this bike, it had a set of 10” struts replacing the shocks and a set of off-brand street-sweeper-style pipes hanging low to the ground.With the lowered struts, any right-turn corner you went around just mutilated the tips of the pipes, digging into the ground on every...

It was that Old School look with modern comfort that drew Karen Proctor of Ashland City, Tennessee, to her 2007 Heritage Softail Classic she calls Stinger; the look, but also the classic paint job. “The bike began as a dealer build and I purchased it off the Boswell’s Harley-Davidson [in Nashville] showroom floor with many of the custom parts installed, including the numbered...

There was this guy, and he lived in a little town in the Midwest and he was barreling down the road on his Harley 2004 Heritage Softail and he spun out and had a horrible accident and landed in someone’s yard. That someone just happened to be a doctor who just happened to be at home doing yardwork and he ran over and jabbed an ink pen into the guy’s trachea and saved his life....

Marvin Estes has been riding motorcycles since he was four years old. He’s 49 now, so when he offered to let me ride on the back of his beautiful ’96 Dyna Wide Glide, I felt that he’d probably had enough experience for me to agree. I knew he was responsible. He’d told me about how, for years, he made his monthly child support payments without fail, and when his son turned...

Click here for more photos Sven Cycles Stocker Chopper Job – Made in Switzerland Story by Horst Rosler and Mark BarnettPhotos by Horst Rosler Europe’s oldest democracy has charming landscapes as well as skilled people who know their jobs and work with passion. Sven Traber of Sven Cycles built up this highly modified...

 Sportster Becomes Touring Bike in GreeceStory by Wendy ManningPhotos by Costas TsianakasI’m a complainer by nature, and also a letter writer. I’ve usually got some bee in my bonnet about something, and I don’t hesitate to jot off an email of complaint to iTunes, say, about the lack of free iTunes music cards at...