By: Shawn Cox
I started my Bike build project in 2015 after buying a new stock Harley that my wife didn’t want me tearing down to build a custom bike. I was working with a new builder in town from Arizona who was bringing the big wheel craze into town. After seeing a couple of 23-26 and even a 30 roll out of his shop I knew I wanted to build one. I started watching insurance auctions looking for a bike to start with since I didn’t want to tear down my road glide.
I found a road king that looks to have been wrecked and missing all the parts I was going to replace. I picked it up to find the entire frame and motor was trashed. I was now out some cash and had nothing to work with. I reached out to Chassis Design in CA. and started ordering a custom frame to start my build. They sent out the wrong frame and when I finally got around to mocking it up, I found that the neck was welded wrong and trees wouldn’t fit correctly. After finding out the company had sold and the previous company owner gave me the run around for 6 month I resolved the issue with its current owner who was a great guy to work with and finally got my frame back set up for a 32 inch wheel.
So now I have all the parts including a Competition KIllas rear end from TOL in Las Vegas NV and a 3rd child on the way. Then again, I put my project on hold again for 6-8 months.
I had recently ran across another local shop called Notorious Concepts in Parker who installed a upgraded sound system on my Fat Tire Road Glide. They had done some clean work and I watched some bikes roll out of the shop and decided to work with them on this build. As all bikes start out, I wanted a simple bike 1 color that I could twist around on and have some fun. Well that’s as simple as it got….
As we stood around the shop looking at the bike as it progressed, we started looking at other bikes coming from Dirty bird in Arizona and DA Performance in the Mid-West simple wasn’t good enough any longer. I wanted to play with the big boys and build a showstopper. We started Dimond cutting the fins on a custom S&S 124 ci motor built by Mr. Tom Shoupe a great guy with a rep of building consistent power and good motors. We clear coated the motor and started sending everything else to Lee at Pristine Powder Coating to be done in candy apple green.
When it came time to pick out floorboards and controls, I found a new player in the parts game named Vitty Designs from Italy on Facebook. Mateo was doing things a bit different and caught my eye with his style and details. He also gave an option for brass and gold plating… Once those parts arrived, I was hooked. I thought I need the motor and other parts to match. I sent all my parts out to be chrome and asked what the cost would be to gold certain parts while out for chrome. I about fell on the floor, So I went online and did some research and found a way I could do my own gold plating for way cheaper. I called all my friend to donate any stock parts they would part from to practice on until I finally got it down. So, we began gold plating parts on my bike until we had just enough to bring out the bling and stand out. About that time, we took all the paint sets to Jarod @ Motorsport Concepts to have the paint done. Working with the Mad Scientist Randy Gustafson was the best. He took some conversations with Will, Jarod and myself and took my paint to the next level. I had seen Randy around for years in the car scene but never had anything worth his talent. He took some Fb photos of bikes I liked and added his own touch and as you can see knock it out of the park with the knurling matching gold leaf and hand painted stripes and candy paint.
A lot of people like to talk about this bike. They comment on the paint, the size of the wheel or how it lays frame on the ground, YOU CAN’T RIDE THAT BIKE!!
I sit back and laugh at some of the comments and try to educate them on how lay frames work and what air ride is and how we used a swing arm as our air tank among other unique custom thing that have been done. I ride this bike down dirt country washboards to get to the highway in Elbert county and they are in disbelief.
Do I ride this bike on long trips? No, I have a Road Glide with a 180-18 fat tire that I also ride on longer runs so yes this is a head turning fun around town bike that’s made to catch your attention and have some fun at shows. The first real ride I did with my wife after getting it finally registered and insured, I was being filmed by a couple in a brand-new bright orange Lambo. That made me feel good a 250K car and he liked my bike enough to film it out his window while driving down road. I was drooling on their car while they filmed me wanna trade?
We showed the bike in a booth at the 2019 Colorado Motorcycle Expo for Notorious Concepts and Motorsport Concepts. To date since finishing the bike we have won 2 back to back best of shows with the most recent one being the 2020 Colorado Motorcycle Expo.
We look forward to a long summer of riding enjoying this 32-inch Road King #KingofDenver