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The build took about three months from the time the bike was torn down until it was completed and ready to go. “Guilty Customs did almost all of it,” Chris said. “I was there for a couple of pieces. The shop is just down the street from my house, so I was often there in the garage with them, taking it apart. It was my bike so I wanted to have as much to do with the work as possible. But really they’re the ones who did all the cutting welding. I helped put some parts on it when it came into the shop for the final put together.”

H-D Power

The engine is a stock 1200cc engine, “Just a bigger carburetor and a K&N race filter system in it,” Chris said. “None of the engine components were changed, just the K&N filter and carburetor.”

For his custom pipes Chris looked to Pipe Dreamz. “No one was making Sportster pipes like that,” Chris said. “They were the first company that I know of to ever do this crazy cool feature for those, and they’re dipped in black chrome. They’re really different, I’ve never seen a pair, even at Bike Week I’ve never seen a pair yet on a Sportster.”

The front wheel is a bigger wheel than stock. “We put a 21″ on there, which is a much bigger, wider, front end,” Chris said. “I went with an Avon gangster whitewall for the tire to give a little bit more low profile look and a very cool, kind of gangster style, almost like a vintage board racer and yet it crosses with a kind of ‘60s look. I’ve always liked the older, ‘50s and ‘60s style cars and bikes.”

For the fuel tank, they used a peanut tank, but not just any peanut tank. “We had ordered that from Indian Larry’s shop. He’d found some of his older tanks in his garage and posted them online,” said Chris, who’d wanted a smaller tank for Heads-A-Rolling. “I wanted something smaller than the motorcycle so I could see the ridgebone and the backbone. On a Sportster you never see that, the tank comes so far down on Sportsters you never get to see these pretty body lines. I wanted it chopped so I could see that ridgebone right there in the front next to where the seat begins. You look down and you can kind of see the engine, the heads right there, and I guess it’s better breathing room for the engine and plus it makes it look cooler, stripped down more.”

Chris chose to powdercoat the stock forks in black. “As much as possible all the chrome I could take off, I did,” he said. “Everything’s been powdercoated, the forks, the triple trees ― all that stuff. The suspension in the back is Progressive but they’re powdercoated black as well. We lowered the bike just a little in the back and in the front, so it has a lower profile. All around we did about a three-inch drop on it.”

The front headlight has high and low beams controlled by a toggle switch. “I’ve got an old toggle switch on the front, which is cool because it gives it that old feel,” he said. “The taillight is a Maltese cross I picked up at a swap meet. There are custom forward extensions on the pegs so you can extend out your legs. Usually the stock pegs on a bike like this would be right underneath you, so we kind of moved them forward.”

It’s Tricky

One of Chris’s favorite aspects of the bike is the way it starts. “One of the guys at Guilty Customs had very cool old Sportster like mine but 1960’s, and one of the features I saw on his bike was this hidden starting system and I wanted one like it,” Chris said. “It’s a triple-start system; you have to have a key in and a switch turned one way and a hidden start button that you can’t really see at all. No one can just jump on it and figure out what’s going on. You have to know where everything is to get it to go.”

The seat is custom. “Guilty brought in a guy and since there are really no custom seats for Sportsters like that, they came in and fiberglassed one to the frame exactly the way I sit down on the bike,” Chris said. “I told him a little left, a little right, and not too far back, so it came out perfect for me.”

That eye-catching paintjob was done by Steve O’Brien of Liquid Illusions in Sanford, Florida. Chris chose California Gold Kandy by PPG. “It has a metal flake in there, too. A flip-flop grain with metal added. I was like, ‘Okay, that’s the color I want right there.’ They mixed it up for me until I was like, ‘That’s it!’” Steve must be a pretty patient guy, as Chris went out and did some immediate damage to the paintjob. “The night the bike was finished I went on a 2500 mile ride the next day,” Chris says, chuckling. “I’d tested the bike for 30 minutes, took it home, and got up the next morning and my buddies were waiting for me. We took off and went on a ride all the way to upstate New York and back over about a week and a half. I went straight out — the paint was still fresh. It was still soft paint and I wrecked it. I had to go back so they could paint the back fender again.”

Chris’s next project is a bagger version of an old dragger-style bike. “I’ve got all the parts,” Chris said. “I just need the engine.”