It seems that whenever we talk to people about the inspiration behind building their bikes, usually the answer is "to build a clean bike with as much hidden as possible." Although people achieve this goal, others are way off the mark, with brake lines and throttle cables dangling all over the place. However, when we came across this long, low, blue custom while out at Sturgis, the bike was so devoid of clutter it looked as though it wasn't even completed.
We were hanging out at the Legend's Top 50 show at the Legend Air Ride facility when this dropped and stretched machine stopped us in our tracks. For about 10 minutes, our eyes peered through every crevice, trying to follow the wiring-we even lay down on the concrete to check out how the stainless-steel hard oil lines ran under the transmission. It was while we were lying on the ground that the builder, Reece Good of Ultra Craft Customs, located in Gardner, MO, walked up. After brushing the dirt off our shirts, we shook hands and introduced ourselves. For the next 20 minutes we sat and talked with Reece about his shop and the bikes he'd built, particularly this one.
"This bike was built for a guy named Dave Carrel," Reece said. "Dave and I met several years back through some mutual friends. Dave mentioned he was interested in having a custom bike built and asked if I'd be willing to take on the project. I ended up building him a gold Softail chopper. Actually, that bike ended up on the cover of one of your other publications, Hot Rod Bikes. Then, a few years later, Dave was back at the shop and was ready for another ground-up custom, and this is it."
As Reece continued to talk, we kept admiring the bike's sleek lines and eventually told him that we were interested in shooting it for a feature. Reece was very pleased but said that Dave would be even happier. He said Dave wanted to come out to Sturgis but couldn't get away from work, so Reece suggested we give Dave a call to tell him the good news. As we made our way to the photo shoot, we called Dave at work to tell him the news and get some more info on the bike.
"What? You want to feature my bike in HOT BIKE? That's awesome. I wish I could be there to watch the photo shoot," he said.
After waiting several minutes for the excitement to wear off, we asked Dave about his bike.
"It sounds as if you've already talked with Reece, so you probably know about the other bike he built that made it onto the cover," he said. "Well, after several years of riding that one, I was ready for another one. I had helped out a little bit with the construction of the first bike, but with this one I wanted to be more involved with the design and building. So I contacted Reece and told him I wanted to design a bike, have him do all the fabrication and mockup, and I would prep it for paint and do the final assembly and wiring.
"When this project first began, my objective was to have one of the cleanest, most detailed bikes around that could be a daily rider," Dave went on. "I wanted to try and hide anything and everything that could be hidden. And if there was a line that couldn't be hidden, I wanted it to be a stainless-steel hard line. The project started with a Softail frame that was built to my specs by Racing Innovations. The frame featured 5 inches of stretch in the backbone, the seat pocket was dropped 2 inches, and the neck was raked to 38 degrees. There are a lot of trick things Reece did with this bike that you'd never really notice unless they were pointed out to you. For example, Reece machined the inside of the swingarm, stuffed the Legend Air Ride pump and valve assembly inside the swingarm, and then fabricated a cover panel to hide it all.