In a day and age when builders strive for fabricating no two choppers that are alike, one characteristic is generally the same across the board: a 21-inch front wheel. There is, however, no common dimension for a rear wheel, since the industry fluctuates among the likes of skinny, big, and real big-lots of variety, you know. The bike on these pages, called "Quicksilver," goes back to the old 21-incher and how that dimension can be used on bobbers as well.
Quicksilver may suggest a bike that's fast, but its name wasn't chosen on that basis alone. And the name wasn't picked based on the bike's gray and silver colors. So what's going on here? Quicksilver came to be because it was built just two weeks after its concept was formulated. Well, that's speedy, to say the least.
Quicksilver's concept (at least the idea for the rear wheel) started brewing in Sturgis when this bike's builder, Andreas Bergerforth of Hamminkeln, Germany, and the crew at Thunderbike were there earning the AMD Vice World Championship for their bike "Spectacular." Sturgis was the place where they first got a taste of our wide-tire craze, and they immediately took a liking to that robust rear.
Coming from a car background, where Andreas was a first-class fan of big rims and wheels, it's no wonder he dug the same on bikes. In fact, when he first laid eyes on the 260mm tire in Sturgis, his wildest dreams seemed to take shape as he started building this bike in his head. Andreas had heard through the grapevine that this particular rear-wheel dimension would be available from Metzeler some time in the future, but he never could have imagined that it would look this good.
Once they made the hop, skip, and jump from Sturgis back to Germany, Andreas and the crew got started with plans to build a bike based on that new wheel from Metzeler. But they ran into a small glitch in their plans: It would take some time before this rubber sausage qualified for the European-and especially the German-markets, so Andreas and his crew had to wait until the German Intermot-Messe people and the Metzeler folks told them when this tire would be available. For Andreas and the crew, this came as both good and bad news. The shop was in the middle of building three different bikes for the Custom Bike Show in December, and it was only a few weeks away. Even if that Metzeler tire had come in, they didn't plan on having a bike built with it on time for the bike show. There was simply too much other work to do. But then again, where there's a will, there's a way, and the Thunderbike crew was used to making nearly impossible deadlines happen.