writer: J. Ken Conte
photographer: Kona Chang
It seems these days everyone calls themselves a fabricator, and most can do a fairly good job with the right tools and a lot of body filler. Only a few custom bike builders out there have either had lots of schooling and mastered it or have been born into the trade. Tony Baustert is of the latter. His family had a HVAC company when he was growing up, and he was always going on service calls with his dad, learning the intricacies of working with sheetmetal. Granted, it was in a much different environment, dealing with duct work instead of high-end custom motorcycles, but it was Tony's start.
From the family business he quickly outgrew the idea of fabricating flat work and went on to be a fabricator for an aircraft repair facility. He built one-off parts for airplanes and on the weekends would do side projects for his friends and anyone that asked. Word got around and Tony seemed to be working around the clock, and in 2000 decided he needed to open his own fabrication shop and focus on custom motorcycle fabrication. The choice for the name was obvious: T-Fab Customs. He shared shop space with R&B Customs in Oklahoma City, and it seemed to work out well. Tony could pump out one-off custom fabricated parts, and Greg and Steve at R&B could help him with the final assembly and wiring.
Several years passed, and Tony kept building one-off customs and parts. With the help from his friends at R&B he would crank out about six full customs and make tons of gas tanks, fenders, and other parts. Tony had perfected his fabrication skills and was now hindered only by his imagination. He had a vision for a bike in his head that just would not go away. He kept looking for the right customer to build it for, but couldn't find one. He was the typical tortured artist, thinking about the bike constantly, and as time went on he would come up with more ideas, which slowly became a sort of laundry list for this dream bike. The opportunity came up to compete in a local build-off, and he knew it was time to start the MotoGP-inspired Nicky Hayden tribute bike. It wasn't going to be blatantly obvious that this was a tribute bike or MotoGP inspired, though-one would have to be on the inside of the motorsports world to get the subtle intricacies.
 | 
Custom 2-into-1 exhaust exits above the rear tire. |  |