Andreas’ Thunderbike Harley-Davidson dealership in Hamminkeln, Germany is not your average dealership with a few accessorized bikes and maybe a production custom or two lying around. It’s home to the 2006 and 2008 European Championship winners with a second (2006) and fifth place (2008) in the AMD World Championship along with a slew of other awards too numerous to mention. Not too shabby Andreas!

The platform for Bad King started out as a good old baseline 2008 FLHR, but not for long. Engine-wise, Andreas left the H-D internals alone while he replaced the exhaust with a set of black duals by Hooker Headers and a stylized Thunderbike air cleaner. Oh, there was one other change from the standard chrome-laden Twin Cam, a major engine blackout with the numerous bolt heads and cylinder fin edges providing a bit of raw metallic contrast. Sparkle is apparently not part of Andreas’ definition of bad.

Continuing that lack-of-sparkle theme are a set of Thunderbike’s own (designed-and-built by Thunderbike) slender-spoke wheels with a 23” up front and an 18” out back. They’re paired with a set of Thunderbike’s wheel-matching rotors, front and rear, to give the stock H-D calipers something new to bite on. The FL front fender was modified to fit the bigger wheel and ends up with a much sportier profile. The King of Choppers and now possibly baggers too, Arlen Ness, supplied the rear fender and saddlebag extensions. Sitting behind those bags is a set of way-bad-and-lowered, high-tech Bitubo spring shocks (featuring adjustments for pre-load, compression, and rebound damping) that replaced the stock air units. Andreas dropped the fork to match and a stance with a bad attitude keeps everything on the down-low.

Making a good king bad requires other attitude adjustments and a set of Thunderbike-fabricated bad-boy apes goes a long way in bringing out the inner bad boy. Thunderbike built a set of floorboards that uniquely caters to both driver and passenger in one Mad Max-worthy fashion statement with just the right touch of danger. Taking it all the way to the dark side, Ingo Kruse of Kruse Design (www.kruse-design.de) finished the transformation with a satin black top coat on just about everything he could find from tip to toe along with a stealthy, but subtle flame job that really puts the bad in Bad King ― but in a really good bad way.

With all the changes Thunderbike’s custom division made, Andreas got the bad ass ride he was looking for in a touring bike that can still cross Germany from East to West without losing the good attributes that led him to a Road King in the first place. Be sure to check out Thunderbike’s website (www.thunderbike.de and click on the little British flag for English translation for all of us one-language freaks) and get ready to see a huge gallery of custom bikes from mild to absatootly wild that will blow your mind. Stay tuned to Barnett’s website as we will be showcasing a lot more of them in the near future and if they don’t blow your mind, here’s the website you should be reading (http://bakingbecca.blogspot.com/).

YouTube Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAYtkxMuYjg&feature=endscreen&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-KntfT3-lw