Erik actually is a young man in this custom bike scheme of things, but that doesn’t mean he’s a newbie who’s hacking and whacking away until he hopefully gets it right. Far from it. As a wee lad growing up central California, Erik’s design concepts were influenced from hanging around friends and family that were involved in the low rider and custom car cultures. Knowing from a young age that building custom bikes and cars was what he wanted to do, Erik went to school the acquire the welding and fabricating skills to put his ideas into reality. Apparently he’s not only skilled, but a bit of a smart guy too.

The neat bobber Erik built for a customer is not ground breaking or over the top, just a very, very nice bobber with enough fabricated personal touches and attention to detail to make it stand out for itself. Frankly, it’s just one of those bikes that make you want to sling a leg over and go flog the hell out of it. Yeah, it looks like a wicked fun ride. Hey, maybe that’s just my own personal standards speaking here, but any bike that the first thing I want to do is ride is A-okay by me.

Explaining how this year-long build came about, Erik said, “After sitting and talking with the customer to get a feel of his style and idea of what he was looking for we decided on a traditional bobber-style bike.” After ordering up a Kraft Tech rigid frame set up for a reasonable 250mm rear tire, a stock-length Wide Glide front end, and a set of 80-spoke wheels with black rims (21” front and 18” rear), and a 113” Ultima engine backed by an Ultima open-belt drive to a 6-speed tranny, he had a roller.

“Next was deciding how crazy we wanted to go on the fabrication. I found a handmade tank online that I shortened to fit the backbone and moved the filler cap closer to the top of the tank,” said Erik. “I fabricated the sissy bar and made the shields for the exhaust. I hid all the wiring in the frame and ran the cables through the bars to keep it clean. I finished it all off with a front grill inspired by my love for hot rods. Surprisingly, this build went fairly smooth and there weren’t any major hang-ups or disasters that happened during the build.” Man, Erik makes it seem so simple and easy, but I guess when you got the skills, maybe it does seem that way to you. That’s something I’ll never know.

The end result is a tasty ride that begs you to do just that. “We definitely nailed what the guy was looking for. It just has an awesome stance and lots of attitude. The custom fabrication really makes it stand out from the crowd when pulling up to shows and bike nights,” said Erik. “The bike handles extremely well and is quite agile too. And having a 113” Ultima engine in such a small bike makes it a fun bike to ride.”

Normally that’s where the story would end, but this bike had an unexpected experience a bit like, but not the same as the unfortunately destroyed bike I originally inquired about. “The bike was rear ended about eight months after it was finished,” said Erik. “We ended up replacing the rear wheel, the rear fender and made struts instead of a new sissy bar, and also the handlebars. We also changed the whole paint scheme and it came out even better than before.”