In its stock form the Fat Boy Lo was a pleasure to ride; the seating position was comfortable due to the seat pocket and location of your feet as they rest on the floorboards. I would've liked to have forwards on the bike but the half-moon floorboards are nice and comfortable. The seat height and the handlebar height put your shoulders in a relaxed and very comfortable position adding to the ease of riding this bike. Even though the bike has been lowered the suspension was still smooth and absorbed all the bumps with ease and we didn't experience any bottoming out. As we were on the throttle running through the hillsides, we were reminded why it's called the Lo by the way we were scraping the bottom of the floorboards, good thing they are inexpensive to replace (around $50 a set).
This got us thinking about what we would do different if we were given a Lo and a P&A catalog to run wild with. What we came up with is what you see here. We still wanted to keep the dark and mysterious look, but change up the bike by adding a few things like apes and paint to give it more of the HOT BIKE personality. Like most guys we can't leave well enough alone. The worst part of this was we didn't get to keep it long enough-the factory liked what we did and wanted it back way too soon.
We started with one of the most noticeable things, which was the paint, this set is called "Souless" which has a deep rich red candy base with a ton of skulls throughout the sheetmetal from the front fender to the rear. However, we heard that this paint set did not go over that well and it may get phased out, we hope this is not true, it's a real good looking paint set hard to believe such an aggressive design came from the Motor Company. Atop the tank is a set of flush mount caps with LED fuel indictor on the left side cap. In addition all the stock rubber for the foot pegs, brake pedal, shifter, and passenger pegs were swapped out for the new Black Tribal design. Also the primary cover and the cam covers were replaced with the Black Finned design, and the stock air cleaner was replaced with the new Screamin' Eagle Ventilator Air Cleaner with rain sock. All of these things work well to complement each other, and everywhere we stopped someone was asking about the bike. Most Harley guys could not believe it when we told them everything you see here is from the P&A catalog.
Working our way to the front of the bike, the one thing we have been working on forever was to get the Harley team to build a set of apes that were taller than 12 inches. After years of begging we finally got our wish, a set of beefy 16 inch tall, 1-1/4 inch thick Ape Hangers were built and powdercoated black for us, (at least we like to think so). Now anyone who wants a set can get them. Once we had the controls and mirror bolted on the bars the bike changed its attitude, it looked more aggrieve. This is one thing we see a lot of in So Cal, guys riding around deep in the seat reaching for the sky. The bike turned out real nice and has sparked a lot of ideas for the next H-D project bike we get to work on. Hopefully we will get to keep that one longer.
Ape Hangin'
Now we know what some of you are thinking 16-inch apes aren't that tall. But for the big wigs at H-D that is reaching for the stars. As we know H-D is pretty conservative when it comes to its parts and bike designs. So we were very pleased to see them push their comfort zone with these 16-inch apes. And for some of you asking how do you ride a bike with apes, we let our resident ape hanger fan Ernie, respond. "I can tell you that for me it feels better to sit upright with my hands higher to help keep my back straight and a bit forward, than to have the bars low which can make me slouch in the seat. I always get asked about my arms getting tired or if my hands fall asleep. This is not a problem for me this is just the way I like to ride. If you are not used to apes, it may take some time to get used to, but at least half the guys I know that try apes love them.