When it comes to finishing off a custom motorcycle project, there are plenty of tricks a bike builder or painter can employ to hide the minute and even large imperfections that may have arisen from not taking the time to weld, shape, or finish off the sheetmetal properly. Large amounts of bondo/body filler, metalflake, and layers upon layers of paint and clearcoat are a couple of tricks that come to mind. However, when a builder decides to go au natural, well…he better have his shit together and be on top of his metal shaping game, otherwise he’ll get laughed right off the block.
Satya Kraus, owner of Kraus Motor Co., has his shit together, and this bike is proof. Raw and exposed for all to see, Satya let his work speak for itself and this once-stock ’00 Dyna speaks volumes with its simple yet industrial style. Looking something like a modern day Road Warrior killing machine, the bike begs you to hop in the saddle and say “F@&k it, let’s ride!”
“My customer, Nick Erickson, had seen a Dyna that I had built for myself a couple years ago, and he really liked it,” Satya tells us. “He asked if I would build him one with similar styling; aggressive and made to ride hard. My Dyna had an aggressive supermoto style to it. With Nick’s bike I wanted to do something that would still appeal to Harley riders since one of Nick’s favorite bikes is his FXR. Thinking along the lines of minimal and to the point, we stripped a stock ’00 FXDX down to the frame and motor. We threw out the stock frontend, bars, controls, wheels, and brakes…basically all the crap that sucked. We pretty much tossed everything except the frame, motor, and trans. We even scrapped the heavy closed wet primary.”
-
Satya topped off the aluminum gas tank with a large Moto gas cap from his parts line.
-
Satya kept the control clean and simple as you can see in the handmade shifter lever.
-
The aluminum guards come in “handy” when banging through California traffic.
With basically a clean slate to start with, Satya and his team made a few mods to the frame which included cutting off the battery box mounts and the electrics box on the left side and trimming the rear fender horns down to less than half their stock length. They then formed and shaped a new battery box and mounted it between the nubby fender horns.
To help hide the battery box and give the Dyna a svelte mid-section, they crafted some aluminum side panels that perfectly followed the stock frame curves and housed all the stock electronics in the triangle under the seat. They also built an aluminum tail section that rests on the new battery box, then embedded the taillight and blinkers in a strip across the back of the fender tip. To give the bike more definition, the fender section has some contour and bodylines incorporated into it, which were then carried through into the shape of the tank.
Enjoyed this Post? Subscribe to our RSS Feed, or use your favorite social media to recommend us to friends and colleagues!