Hey, I’m not flaming on V-Rods or their owners in any way, but unfortunately the Harley-Davidson Revolution engine VRSCA just never caught on like The Motor Company hoped it would. From the 2001 introduction to the present day, there have been some decent improvements, but not much has changed. It’s just been the same single platform served warmed over year after year. As a trike, though, there’s something about it that just looks right.
Same goes for the good looking V-Rod based Klock Werks FXRV bagger we previously featured on Barnett’s Magazine Online. It was not only a looker, but a very nice real world bagger too with just the right amount of comfortable sportiness and a good passel of power when your inner hooligan child just has to rear itself. Other riders just weren’t ready for a bat wing fairing bike to romp and stomp and it surely did. I know because we had a sister ship to the Klock Werks bagger and anybody and everybody who rode it raved about it.
So, again, this is not a Motor Company prototype of any consequence, but a V-Rod Series trike built by Hannigan Motorsports in Murray, Kentucky. There really is a lot to like about a hot rod trike and that’s exactly what they were going after here before recently adding the bat wing fairing for its new owner. It was a sleek little devil in orange and black before the fairing install and the stock swept-back look of a V-Rod fit right in with the low and sporty trike rear end that all stayed lower than the seat. Now with the new bat wing unit in place, it’s got light and sporty touring running through its synthetic oil veins.
The Hannigan V-Rod trike kit is a pretty interesting unit just by itself featuring a fully-independent rear end with a sway bar serving up a nice combo of comfort and handling. Live-axle trikes are possibly a little simpler to begin with, but they have their limitations that being fully-independent rears don’t have to contend with. Hannigan’s dual disc brakes out back stop reasonably sized wheels and radial tires (195/55×16) that work better than humungous rear tires you often see on trike conversions. Here a good looking set of Performance Machine Contrast-Cut Heathen wheels both front and rear add some custom panache that looks like it should have come that way in the first place. Up front the way more than adequate stock V-Rod brakes barely break a sweat hauling the extra 300 pounds total that the conversion entails.
Probably the reason why I like this conversion so much is that there’s no excess body flab sitting on the back end like somebody backed a V-Rod into a travel trailer. It’s super clean and sexy for a trike and coming from me that says a lot. Other than vintage and Old School chopper stuff, trikes are none of my business, but this one sure looks interesting. I’d definitely give it a whirl if offered just to see what the V-Rod’s power would be like in this concoction. Yes, there is a storage compartment in the “trunk” area, but it holds a whopping 2.5 cubic-feet of space so pack light, really light. But that’s completely okay with me as I so love the “naked” hot-rod trike look.
As you can see, it’s all color matching too as that’s one of the services Hannigan offers and by the look of it, they know what they’re doing. Keeping the traditional corporate colors keeps things all in the family. One quite nice touch was re-covering the seat to the paint scheme so that it blended right into the bodywork with not an awkward transition in sight. That one touch makes this whole look really hang together yet gives it a true custom flow from one end of the build to the other.
I don’t know if it happened before or after it was sold, but there’s a bit of custom pinstriping on it now. On the newly installed fairing you might notice the name “Dyane” painted just below the windshield trim. That would be Dyane Landry of the coastal community of Bathurst, New Brunswick, whom I would assume asked for and got the protectiveness of the bat wing along with a slew of speakers mounted behind it and an audio system it lacked before. If you are in the area and want to check it out for yourself, just motor on over to Dyane’s Fish & Chip Take-Out in Bathurst. It’s often sitting there in the parking lot until the chip shop closes and Dyane hops on and forgets all the work-day blues with one twist of the throttle. By the way, the trunkette would be perfect for some fish & chips take-home.