Skull & Crossed Pistols Custom Twin Cam

THIS WHOLE bike pretty much started with just the engine, a near perfect Twin Cam motor from a friend’s smashed up Softail. Then I went and bought the DNA frame from Geelong Harley-Davidson; they’d imported it from the States and it’s got the greatest rake you can have legally.

From there, I went with the 240 back-end and then it was a long slow process of getting bits and pieces as I could afford them. A lot of it was original Softail parts to start with, like the guards, then I got a different style tank and a cheap black paint job to start with. There wasn’t much by way of chrome pretty bits on it then.

I took it to Trev at South Coast Customs. He helped me put it together and organised getting it all engineered and registered. It’s registered as an individually constructed vehicle. After he’d done that I got the idea of changing a few things so I added a bit more to the back guard and changed the front guard and the tank, and got the new forward controls; I saw them in Trev’s workshop and liked the chunky look.

Trev shaped both the guards and the tank. Originally I was going to keep the guards short and show more of the tyre but when I changed the tank, I added more to the guard and went with that look. I wanted a longer front guard and took a scallop out of the back of it and added a point at the front and stuff like that.

I went to Ray Drever for the paint. I was thinking of green but we talked about it and I decided on the new Commodore purple they call Morpheus.

After Ray painted it purple I told him the sort of airbrush design I had in mind and he told me about a friend of his, Michael from Custom Image in Geelong who was excellent at that.

Bubsy, a friend who’s done a few of my tattoos, drew up a skull with crossed pistols and I gave that to Michael who added more to it like the smoke and then the joint in his mouth as a finishing touch.

Ray did the purple and cleaned up the frame really well; when it was black it wasn’t a ripper paint job and he had to sandblast it right back and totally redo it, then he put the dollar signs in the neck of the frame.

Once it was purple, it started looking really good and I started getting other ideas like different triple trees, six-inch-over down-tubes, the chopper headlight, the discs, the pulley, the digital speedo, the flames on the forks, and other little bits here and there.

I’ve always liked these Vance & Hines pipes; they look good, they sound good, they perform well.

It’s pretty much a stock Twin Cam motor, all serviced and checked over by Gunner from Wild Rhino; he’s a really good mechanic here in Geelong.

I plan to keep this for a long time; it’s been going on for a few years and I only expect to change a few minor things. Later on I might do a few things with Gunner to jazz up the motor a bit but at the moment I’m pretty happy that it’s all really good and it’s reliable. I’ve got a mate who’s good with stainless steel so I might get a few sharp pointy bits here and there, maybe underneath the triple trees. You can go on forever spending money but I’m pretty happy with it the way it is at the moment.

Every chance I get, I’m on it. I love it. It’s really comfortable to ride and a really great feel; you just lean back and there’s a good rake on it and it’s really smooth with the Twin Cam motor and responsive too. You hop off this and onto a Fat Boy or something and it just feels like you’re sitting up a lot higher; there’s a really good feel to this one.

I love the paint job from Ray and Michael; it just blew me away and it probably kicked me off to do it up better than I was probably going to; it just inspired me even more.

The last bike I had had a fantastic paint job, (featured in Ozbike #322) but for me it was probably a bit over the top whereas this is clean and the pictures stand out.

I’d like to thank James and Trevor from South Coast Customs, Ray Drever, Michael from Custom Image Paints, and Gunner from Wild Rhino.

custom Harley Twin Cam 1

Pics by Chris Randells; words by Mick

Show More

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button