The computer world gave us the expression "garbage in/garbage out." Well, when it comes to building motorcycles, the inverse is certainly just as true. Start with the good stuff, and it's a lot easier to end up with something good. If you're lucky enough to be able to begin with a cherry-picked pile of the best stuff out there, it's almost impossible not to end up with something pretty special. And if you happen to have world-class fabrication skills and a true artist's touch, you are looking at a straight line to a slam-dunk of greatness. When Drag Specialties' Tom Motzko and Tank Ewsichek from Ohio's Tuff Cycle decided to collaborate, the result was nothing short of spectacular.
Tank tells us it all started with him knocking on Tom Motzko's door several times a year. "I used to go to Daytona and Sturgis and Laughlin, and I always made a point of stopping by their [Drag Specialties'] rig because it's a nice setup. I just kept pestering him for like four or five years, going, 'Hey, man, lemme build you guys a bike.' I told him, 'If you don't like it, you ain't gotta pay for it,' so I figured that was what got his attention. And I've been working for him ever since." So far, Tank has built five show bikes for Tom from the ground up and has painted several more.
This one was a bit of a departure for Tom's team at Drag Specialties, as they decided to break the Fat Book (Drag's catalog) cover's single-bike tradition. "We were on a catalog cover deadline to get two very different sort of 'soup to nuts' bikes done in time for that," Tom Motzko told us. "We have an old bobber-style bike, and then we have this pretty zoomy state-of-the-art rocket built on an Independent Cycles chassis. And in order to get these two bikes done on schedule, Brian Klock was working feverishly on his, and Tank was very happy to jump in and help us make our deadline."
Tank began by setting up the roller: frame, temporary frontend, Legend Air Suspension, swingarm, wheels, and tires. At this point there were a million ways to go-literally hundreds of parts to choose from in the catalog. He had to look no further than the PM Torque wheels, which at that point were prototypes, for guidance. "That's a good way to make a good hot rod-start with the wheels. I mean, I've seen some real cool motorcycles but then thought, 'Wow, why'd they put those rims on there?' But these are flowy-lookin' with points, and so we just started going through the Fat Book to see what else had sharp edges like that."
He picked up some Arlen Ness controls that fit the bill and found a set of Accutronix trees that, to his eye, also had the right mix of flow and edge. These topped the long order list that was faxed off to Tom, and while he was waiting for the Men In Brown to show up with boxes, Tank got into the metal. Tank's goal is to make bikes that appear to be moving even when they're idle, and there's nothing to interrupt the eye as your gaze flows across the bike. He said, "For me, it's kind of an artist thing. I take a length of welding rod and bend it to get the arc I want, then use some poster board maybe, just to get an idea of how it could be."