I’ve always wanted a visually balanced bike so when you looked at it from the side neither the front nor the back looked “heavier” than the other. The bikes I had seen for years that met that qualification had a springer and a swing arm mounted rear fender, so I knew I needed to start there. I sort of knew I didn’t want just another black bike either so when it came to the paint I wanted to try something I hadn’t done before but olive green has sort of become a thing for me and my projects so that was the base I used to work up from when I did the faux-tina paintjob. Garage built to me always means doing more with less and keeping the costs down. This usually means reusing, customizing, or modifying existing parts and that happened a lot with this bike and I knew that going in so I was always looking for simple ways to customize things on the bike like the chrome parts.
Since buying my first motorcycle I’ve always wanted a classic looking stripped-down bobber. When I sold my 08 Nightster I began looking for a clean, solid, and well-priced softail of any variety from which I could finally build the bike I really wanted. The Heritage I bought was the perfect bike at a great price and after selling off the take-off parts I ended up spending almost exactly what I sold the Nightster for. There were enough chrome dome-top rivets on this bike to make it to the moon and back, so I told my wife I had no choice but to beat the “old-man” out of the bike!
The swing arm mounted fender started life as a dented 2014 Heritage FRONT fender. Dent repair, custom mounting locations and brackets, and a slightly reshaped wheel opening and bam, it is now a wicked custom rear fender. I used cardboard to copy the shape and diameter of the white wall rear tire and then put this on the axle with the fender in place to get the correct smooth arch for the rear fender opening on both sides. Then metal worked the new cut edge slowly to get a smooth edge. The final product came out better than I could have ever hoped and looks killer on the bike. The dent repair was… less successful however with the paint job I went with I don’t think you could find it even in person! The stock Harley swing arm has two tabs on the bottom that normally hold a plastic fender insert thing and I was able to reshape them carefully with a BFH to be reused as fender mounts and then busted my bench vice while bending up the custom top fender mount. In the end it was totally worth it because it all turnout our really great.
The final package, all the little details I built, the custom hand applied “faux-tina” paint job, the custom fender, and the rebar Sissy bar I built with the help of my dad and his oxy torch, and the reused 100th Anniversary tank badges are some of the things I’m most proud of. This bike was a lot of “garage-built ingenuity” in it. Repurposing or customizing everything from the damaged front fender I used to build the new rear fender, using scotch-brite to scuff all the “old-man” chrome into a nickel-like finish, to the rebar sissy bar, and the headlight housing that’s history is a complete mystery!But really, when I took this bike on a 1300 mile ride with my brother, dad, brother-in-law, and uncle and having it perform perfectly the whole time, minus a small oil leak, is ultimately the thing I’m most proud of.
People seem to really love the paint job and the rear end of the bike gets a lot of attention from the rebar sissy bar to the swing arm mounted fender. The reapplied Harley-Davidson 100th Anniversary tank badges get some good laughs when layered over the faux-tina paint job too! As a leather worker it is also really nice to see the attention the custom leather elements attract. When people see the vanity plate and recognize the name ‘Battle Cat’ you can see the He-Man fans come to life which is also fun.
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