Admittedly more of a design guy than a builder, Kevin had become friends with Tom and drew for him the chopper he had in mind. “I’d always liked bikes,” Kevin said. “Growing up as a kid one of my friends was friends with Dave Perewitz and I thought custom bikes were pretty cool. When I wanted to build my own bikes I had a certain style in mind.” Kevin left the details up to Tom, who chose everything from the Old School headlight and Brembo hand and foot controls to the engine. “The 113 S&S motor is fast, too fast for a lot of people,” Tom said. “I believe that 113 is the perfect-size motor with less vibration and all power through the gears.”
Forced to pick a favorite aspect of the bike, Tom chose the way it handles. “That bike at 120mph was a no-hander on the highway,” he said. “It’s a rigid bike and for it to be that balanced we’re very happy with that bike.”
Kevin is a stickler for lean and clean. Part of his job is to equip and set up operating rooms in hospitals, and he wanted a chopper that would reflect his surgical precision to detail that he could take around to medical trade shows and help him draw a crowd. White, being the traditional color of healthcare products and medical-grade packaging, was for him an obvious choice and he wanted a white and chrome bike. “No one was fond of a white bike,” Kevin said, laughing. “The whole concept of a bobber was ‘it’s gotta be black.’ But I was pretty adamant about it being white.” For Tom, a longtime builder and staple in Southern biker culture, a white bike was, well, unheard of. “I kept saying, ‘White? White? WHITE?!” But Tom’s also a business man with a full-service bike shop, so the customer got his wish, even nixing Tom’s request to at least add some skulls on it. “He said no to the skulls, and then he told me he was in the medical industry and wanted everything ‘lean and clean just like me’ and I said, ‘no problem.’ ”
Using Pearl White, Tom painted it himself with help from his in-house painter. “Once in awhile I grab a project and paint it, and me and my friend Rick painted Super Clean,” he said.
Kevin hasn’t put many miles on the bike himself, he left the break-in to Tom, who won Best Bobber at Cyclepalooza Custom Bike Show in Juniper, Florida; and was First Runner-up at Peterson’s Annual Key West Poker Run.
Builder: Tom Keller, Thug Custom Cycles
Tom Keller started Thug Custom Cycles in Plantation, Florida, about five years ago. It’s a full service shop where his crew has mad skills in custom bike work that runs the gamut from fat tire 300 kits for Harleys to one-off parts and ground up customs with a penchant for “blower bikes.” His work caught the attention of Kevin Blaser, of Fall River, Massachusetts, at a Hard Rock Casino bike night in Fort Lauderdale. As Tom remembers it, “He saw a bike that I’d just finished up for a friend of mine, a little black and gray dirtbike-looking bike. Kevin was so interested in that bike, and the funny part is that it was black and gray with skulls on it, and he said ‘That’s what I want, that’s exactly what I want…but I want it pearl white.’ And I go, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not that bike anymore.’ ”
With a special interest in customer service, Tom went ahead and created “Whitey” as its known around Thug Custom. “It’s the only white bike I’ve ever made and since I built it, it’s kind of made a mark down in the Miami area. People say to me, ‘You’re the guy that has that white bike’ and I tell them, ‘No, I’m the guy who made it.’ I’ve never made a white bike because they’re very hard to sell, but the way the whole thing came out was just beautiful. When people see it, it just pops out and people have to walk up to it, girls and guys, and they just say damn.”
Tom is working on a second bike for Kevin that is “a crazy drag bike.” He said, “This is really nice because a lot of times you end up building one bike for one person and sometimes the relationship can fall apart, but I tend to keep good relationships with my customers, it’s important to me, I back up everything we do, and they always come back. It’s cool.”
Check out Tom and Thug Customs Cycles online at www.thugcustomcycles.com, or give him a call at 954-581-1801.
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