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This story and this bike were not subject to any of those vagaries as Javier Medina of La Mesa, New Mexico, can show with a twist of his throttle as he motors away on El Chingon. “It took nine weeks to put it together, but six of those weeks were in the body shop. I picked up the kit and it took me like four days to mock up, I tore it down and sent the frame and tins for paint and powdercoating which took six weeks. The final assembly took two weeks,” said Javier. “Everything was there, even motor oil. The only issue I had, well I didn’t have any issue. I just made some changes like the exhaust, the seat, and some other cosmetic changes to personalize it. The only thing that was not included was, of course, gasoline and getting it painted.”

The bike was a first build for the veteran rider who had intended this to be the first of many. “My intention actually was to build one, sell it, build another, sell it, and so on. But, after I built this one, Custom Chrome quit doing the kits ‘cause the government got involved and they put a stop to it,” said Javier. “I liked the bike itself and figured if I was going to ride it a lot, I wanted something that was easy to ride instead of a hardtail, a chopper style that you could only ride bar to bar on.” As Javier pointed out to me in his pictures, “You’ll see the rear tire’s in need of changing. That’ll be the fifth one I’ve put on. Weather permitting, I ride it every day, even in the winter when it’s 30-degrees.” That’s a grand total of over 46,000 miles now, so this is no garage queen.

Javier is proud of his paintjob and he took a somewhat unusual path to the final finished DuPont Candy Black Cherry paint. “I had everything powdercoated by Conrad Estrada at Images ‘n Iron in Las Cruces, New Mexico (www.imagesniron.com), I even had the fenders and tanks powdercoated inside and out. At first I was actually just going leave them powdercoated, but it didn’t have the shine and didn’t stand out like a paintjob would. The fenders and tank were painted by a guy named Jaime who did a really nice job,” said Javier. “Painters have told me they don’t mind the metal being powdercoated ‘cause it acts like a primer. I’ve never had a problem with chipping or peeling or anything. The black cherry color was based on a stock Harley color, but Javier put his own twist to it. “When I got the paint mixed, I told them to add one more shade of black in it so it wouldn’t be just the same as Harley’s,” he said. “At night it looks black, but during the day you can really see the cherry in it.”

One aspect of the bike that gets Javier excited is the Rick Doss headlight and he said, “The headlight was another reason I chose this kit because it had the teardrop look I like. You know, the Indian look and being a hot rodder, the ’39 Ford had a teardrop headlight ―I’m big into ’39 Fords. What’s really cool is all the spotlights match too.”

Being a hot rodder and a bike builder, Javier does not go by the axiom that a project is never done. Yeah he threw out the RevTech 5-speed and put in an Ultima six, added crash bars, swapped out the pegs for modified passenger floorboards, rewired the bike, and more, but he’s only got a couple of changes left and he’s done. “There’s a set of wheels I’ve been looking at called Kool Kats that look like an old style car wheel and I want to put some beach bars on it, Basically that might be it, I really like the way it looks right now ,” said Javier. “It gets to a point where you can add too much, you need to stop. There’s a point where you finish it, then take care of it. I’ll probably keep this bike because it is the first bike I ever built, it’s got sentimental value.”