Josh Soto claims that whenever he builds a bike, he can always picture the finished build in his head before he starts working on it. Despite that fact, while The Snake may have already taken shape in Soto’s mind, it didn’t get its name right away. As Josh tells it, “Pipes are one of the toughest things to do on a bike that’s gonna be different. Everything’s been done. Everyone looks at the pipes. Even people who don’t know anything about bikes look straight at the pipes. So that’s what The Snake’s pipes are all about, trying to be get a reaction where people go, ‘Wow, look at those pipes! That’s different!’ The rear pipe was TIG welded together out of six pieces of stainless steel and the front pipe was made out of five. When I designed them, I wasn’t thinking, I want them to look like a snake in my head. I just wanted them to flow, and when it was done it just looked like a snake crawling through my bike.”

Josh’s finely-tuned eye for detail seems to have been born from both nature and nurture, “My Dad’s a doctor and as a hobby he builds hot rods like ’32 Fords and he built a ’50 Chevy pickup, and bikes as well, knuckleheads and Triumphs,” he said. “To this day every minute of his spare time that’s what he’s doing. So as a kid I was always hanging out with my dad in the garage. We had grinders and welders and drill presses, and pretty much everything just shy of a machine shop. I wasn’t doctor material but I took a liking to hot rods and bikes practically from birth. A lot of people tell me I was born in the wrong era. I drive old cars, I like old bikes, and if I wasn’t concerned about selling anything it would just be all old stuff for me. You can have your own ideas, but if you want to sell stuff you have to look at what’s out there, go with the trend, and just roll with it. I’m building a bike the way I want it, but I’m still trying to intrigue my customers.”

Josh has a healthy appreciation for more than just one style of build, and fabricates everything from wide tailed choppers to skinny tire bobbers out of his Oceanside, California, based H-D service shop. These days he’s even developing his own line of signature parts too. Since he was building this particular bike for himself he wanted something that was in between the two extremes. “It kind of has a bigger tire and a little bit of a rake, but with like a bobber style, if you will. That was my initial approach and mindset starting this build,” he said. “I didn’t want to go super big on the rear tire, like a 300, but I didn’t want to go 130 either, so it’s got a 200 rear tire. I didn’t want a real long front end, but I didn’t want a stubby one either, so I settled on a 38-degree rake. Then on the downtubes I stretched it 6 inches to give it more of a chopper look. It’s a hardtail so I mounted the seat like a bobber style, but with an adjustable air shock under it. The bike is actually electric start but I put the kicker on there to give it an Old School look. Then I was trying to bring both the single downtube and the wishbone styles together in the frame design. When I’ve entered it into shows I’ve classified it as a modern bobber.”

According to Josh, he’s been running a lot of RevTech engines from Custom Chrome in his builds. He’s been happy with the power they produce, and the quality of the chrome, and believes that their warrantees are better than any other OEM. Since he didn’t feel that he needed a ton of power to move The Snake, he went with the 88 ci. mill and a 5-speed transmission.

On occasion, Josh likes to go to car dealerships to research colors. “It’s a nice sample over a big huge surface area. Plus if you wanna do some touch up painting later, it makes things a lot easier,” he said. He first saw ‘Aegean Blue’ on a field trip to a Mercedes dealership, fell in love with it, got the paint number from the dealer, and had Zeak’s Custom Paint hook it up for him. “It didn’t need any graphics or anything,” he said. “For me the color just did it all.”