Harley-Davidson is an icon of American culture and the most popular marque for custom builders. Shortly after the company was founded in 1903 in Milwaukee, customizers started bobbing, chopping and dirt tracking the famous V-twins.
After WW2 Harley motorcycles were at the center of the bobber craze, and kept their lead as Californian bikers turned to choppers in the late 1950s. The 45-degree engines have their own nicknames and folklore: from flatheads, knuckleheads, panheads and shovelheads to today’s Evolution and Milwaukee-Eight motors.
The Sportster is the basis for more Harley-Davidson customs than any other model. Originally fitted with an ‘Ironhead’ motor, it turned 60 years old in 2017. It’s probably the single most customized motorcycle on the planet, and certainly has the largest supply of aftermarket parts.
The Harley-Davidson Street Bob is one of the most stripped-down big cruisers that The Motor Co. sells. With trimmed bodywork, little to no passenger accommodations and the tiniest speedo we’ve ever seen on a factory bike, there’s very little to remove if you’re customizing one. Which is exactly why Winston Yeh of Rough Crafts in…
Read more »
During his first decade of building custom bikes as One Way Machine, Julian von Oheimb worked exclusively on older Harley-Davidsons. Then, about a year ago, a customer asked him to apply his signature touch to a modern Milwaukee Eight-powered Softail. Julian obliged—and even though the platform demanded a fresh approach, he still knocked it out…
Read more »
Black. Menacing. Muscular. Three words that describe the quintessential Rough Crafts custom build. This long and lean Harley-Davidson Softail Breakout, nicknamed ‘Asphalt Glider,’ is Winston Yeh’s latest creation—and it checks those boxes harder than anything else that he’s built so far. Don’t get us wrong; Winston’s Taipei, Taiwan-based shop has turned out some bright builds…
Read more »
Copper Chopper wowed us earlier this month with an impossibly elegant SR400 bobber, built from scratch and laden with tasty handcrafted bits. It was Alexey and Igor’s first commissioned build since taking their shop from sideline gig to full-time business. Before that, they’d simply build a bike according to their own taste, sell it and…
Read more »
You’ll find no shortage of custom Harleys on builder Kento Oketani’s home streets of Long Beach. But you won’t find anything quite…
Read more »
A sleek frame, a mechanical aesthetic, a distinct lack of plastic and a lot of polished metal. This Harley-Davidson Ironhead Sportster café…
Read more »
There’s usually a little trepidation when we hear from a custom builder that we don’t know. Is their work any good, or…
Read more »
If we had a stock Harley-Davidson Sportster and a hankering for a top-shelf street tracker, we’d probably call Richard Pollock. Better known…
Read more »
The 2016-model Dyna Low Rider S was the last hurrah for Harley-Davidson’s beloved Dyna. The Motor Co. was on the cusp of…
Read more »
Meet the new LiveWire S2 Del Mar—a bike so hotly anticipated, the first 100 sold out in 18 minutes. Then peruse a…
Read more »
If there’s a bike that symbolizes the uneasy relationship between Harley-Davidson and sporting performance, it’s the VR1000. Developed in the late 80s…
Read more »
With the release of the Nightster, the decades-old Harley-Davidson Sportster has now fully passed the torch on to the next generation. But…
Read more »