So what’s all that blather got to do with the cool Roland Sands’ Softail pictured here? Well, after checking it out, it’s hard to believe that this was an unloved Deuce in a former life. “We had a Deuce that we built that had gone through a couple of modifications and had some PM parts on it. Somebody had painted it orange and it didn’t work very good, it was a bad color,” said...

    What Ross has very skillfully done is to combine some of the nicer features of Buells over the years into one model that’s so subtle at first it’s deceiving. Personally, I think it’s deceiving because it’s so well integrated that it brings together some of my favorite features of Buells into a model I wish old Erik was still making. I’m a big fan of the steel frame Buells over...

  Beginning with the 2008 Softail originally commissioned by the late Bruce Rossmeyer, Jesse set out to build a bike where performance and rideability are first and foremost. “There’s no fab really on it. Everything’s kinda bolted onto it,” he said. Taylor is named after the ultra-hip artist who painted it, Taylor Reeve. “She’s a really cool artist,” said Jesse. “I think she’s done...

  Up to this point, Delbert had been riding the daylights out of his first-ever motorcycle, a 2003 Sportster, when someone decided they should take it off his hands without any remuneration. He formed a plan to build a ground-up custom for about the cost of a new Dyna. The term “low-budget ground up” is an oxymoron if there ever was one. Not to Delbert, though, “ I’m a cost...

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...

  Personally, I really liked this fun ride as soon as Sedrick “Mitch” Mitchell sent me a couple of photos to see if I would be interested in it for publication. Silly Mitch, of course I would as it’s cool, custom, and looks ready for riding all at the same time. This bike just looks like sassy fun on two wheels without going over the top. Ricki built this bike at his dad’s shop in...

It was Alaine Angelos’ youthful fascination with de cru motocyclettes (vintage motorcycles) that led this Gen X-er from France to seek out the Old School look in his bike builds and combines it with New School technology and reliability. Having been too young to hop on the Old School bikes before they were Old School, he now looks to add those elements that excited him as a kid to...

Hey, the web’s great and all, but print still has its merits especially when SuperUnknownMC tells how this build came about. “He (DownLow owner Jack Hunt) saw the blue 21 bike in the September issue [#69] and said, ‘Wow, gotta have one. What do I have to do to get one of those?’ He told me to find him a bike so I did.” What SuperUnknownMC found was a decent running ’89 Softail...

Don’t get me wrong, the old steel-framed Buells are a surprisingly fun bike to ride at a good backroad clip and I’ve spent some quality time on a track where I did really enjoy smoothly scooting around. More than ample torque makes it fun to power out of a corner even if you’re not in the right gear and that’s what makes them pleasant and ultimately satisfying to ride. The...

  A good example of this is our feature bike called Brutal built by Troy Lepird and Terry Lee of Envy Cycle Creations in Peoria, Arizona. Beginning with a 2005 Firebolt XB12R, the boys stripped down this bike until pieces were all that remained of a once proud ride. The aluminum frame and swingarm were properly disposed of and replaced by a steel tube version from Redneck...