Describe yourself in three words?
Honest, hardworking, loyal.

Working as The Painter at West Coast Choppers (WCC), Pete “Hot Dog” Finlan had seen plenty of bikes roll through the shop’s webbed gates and into the waiting hands of salivating customers. While it was tough to watch a paintjob that he’d just spent days, maybe even weeks on, roll out onto the sand-swept streets of Long Beach, California, working at the prolific chopper shop allowed him the unique ability to “test” out the various WCC style of builds the shop turned out. “I sat on a lot of bikes we built at WCC and decided on this style of bike for myself,” Hot Dog comments.

Editor’s Note: There are several custom motorcycle builders in the industry whose style is so distinct you could walk up to a row of motorcycles and immediately spot one of their bikes. Whether it’s one of Dave Perewitz’s signature flamed paintjobs, the wild metal melting of Ron Finch, or the smooth raked and stretched lines of Eddie Trotta, certain builders have developed a signature that can be applied to any style of bike. Russell Mitchell is absolutely one of those builders. Choppers, bobbers, trikes, it doesn’t matter. Russell can apply his blacked-out, chunky tire, minimalist Exile Cycles’ theme to any bike project and the result will be a badass and highly recognizable bike.

There are two questions we repeatedly get asked. The first is, “How can I get my bike featured in the magazine?” Which is usually then followed by “How can I get my bike on the cover?” While we wish there was an easy answer to both these questions, it really comes down to what we are looking for at the time, what style of bike is popular, or what kind of bikes we are in need of. As for the cover well, since we only have 12 main cover bikes a year, we have to be very discerning and select a bike that we think will appeal to a large audience. Building a sharp-looking bike that is equal parts performance and custom with a mix of off-the-shelf and unique one-off components, and doing it all out of your garage for less than the cost of a slightly used Harley on Craigslist, is definitely one way to get our attention and make the cover. Which is exactly what Greg Sefcik, owner of Overkill Inc. outside of Madison, Wisconsin, did.

Staring at this custom bagger built by John Shope of Sinister Industries (SI) made me flash back to the very first bike of John’s we ever featured. It ran in the December 2006 issue and the bike was a radical black and copper high-neck, drop-seat, S&S Shovelhead chopper with a wild exhaust and tons of attitude.

A few issues back, we introduced you to Harley’s H-D1 program and a new Sportster Custom to which it had been applied. We followed the bike from the assembly line to the dyno room. This time, we’re taking it to the street.

Email your submissions to: Hot.Bike@sorc.com Or snail mail to: HB Reader’s Showcase 1733 Alton Parkway, Suite 100, Irvine, CA 92606. Please include hi-res jpegs, your name, hometown, email, phone #, bike year/model, engine size, frame, wheels, sheetmetal, painter, custom accessories, and anything else interesting about your bike.

Pumping up a stock 60-or-so horsepower Harley-Davidson to 80-, 90-, or 100-plus ponies with torque to match, with those basic Stage 1 mods and a cam swap, opens up a whole new world of motorcycling. But all that newfound power won’t mean much if it doesn’t get where it belongs, to the rear wheel. A high-performance engine needs a high-performance clutch, and bagger bikes, usually packed heavy and ridden two-up, would be well served with a clutch upgrade, too. Regardless of the engine’s state of tune.

Describe yourself in three words?
Forward-thinking, convincing, and boundary-pusher.

Editor’s note: Every so often we encounter a bike you’d never know started life as a stock Harley-Davidson. Such was the case with Mike Ludovico’s ’99 Softail. Building bikes out of his cramped garage in San Mateo, California, it’s clear that his passion and know-how helped him create something so intricate and unique. Being that Mike pretty much built the entire bike, we’ll let the story come straight from him.

I never thought I’d be down with this bagger thing. I was convinced they were for old men. But when you get your girl on the back of one she never wants to ride on the back of a chopper again. And then you quickly get spoiled by the comfort and ridability.” These were the comments Joe Martin of Martin Bros. Bikes made when we asked him how he made the transition from wild choppers and pro-street-style bikes to the raked and slammed bagger you see here.

Many bike builders have been called artists, and they are in some sense, but there are other builders that are masters of their trade that have a knack for incorporating their eye for the unusual into other media as well. Michael Schreiber, owner of South Bay Customs in El Segundo, California, has a taste for more than just art of the wheeled and motored type.

Email your submissions to: Hot.Bike@sorc.com Or snail mail to: HB Reader’s Showcase 1733 Alton Parkway, Suite 100, Irvine, CA 92606. Please include hi-res jpegs, your name, hometown, email, phone #, bike year/model, engine size, frame, wheels, sheetmetal, painter, custom accessories, and anything else interesting about your bike.

Describe yourself in three words?
Husband, father, boss.

Reading through the spec sheet and background info that Caleb Owens, owner of Cro Customs Inc. in Culver City, California, provided for this amazing Panhead, the first thing that came into my mind were the lyrics to Johnny Cash’s “One Piece at a Time.”

There’s an old saying that’s spun around the motorcycling community that goes, “It’s not if you go down it’s when.” Basically we are all going to take a spill, minor or major, at your own fault or the negligence of someone else sometime or another. Unfortunately, Jeff Hemm owner of Tazmo Customs in Southern California found this out the hard way back in 2008 when he was in a motorcycle accident that caused $7,500 worth of damage to his 2003 Anniversary Edition Softail Heritage.

We’re never satisfied. It’s just human nature. No matter what we have or what we achieve, we’re always looking to one-up it soon after. We tell ourselves that we’re content, we’re fulfilled, dare I say…“done” with a project. Yeah, right. Well, the same goes for my buddy Scott Hoepker and his ’05 Night Train.

Brian Sims of San Diego wanted to build a custom motorcycle unlike any other out there. Sure, you’ve heard that cliché before, but because not many people start with a Buell engine platform that would eventually end up in a custom rigid one-off frame, Brian is close to accomplishing that very feat.

Most people dread the end of summer with thoughts of returning back to work from vacation or heading back to school. For journalists in the American V-twin world the end of summer means the culmination of a year’s worth of anticipation is about to come to a head as Harley-Davidson holds its annual new model year press launch. And for 2012 we were presented with some of our favorite words: new models and more power.

Black and White Delight
Jeff Bohlmann lives in the hometown of Harley-Davidson, so he’s pretty proud of what he’s done to his once-stock Deluxe. After ditching his V-Rod, Jeff picked up the Deluxe brand new in 2006 and proceeded to deck it out with 16-inch apes from Hill Country Customs, Harley chromed lower legs, a Corbin seat, H-D flush-mount caps and full-length center console, and a Küryakyn Ergo Guard that helped protect the bike from damage when some A-hole pushed the bike over. To make the long haul easier he added a Klock Werks extended rear fender and a set of Calvary Touring Hard Bags. Jeff says he plans on letting the Samson Ceramic True Dual really rumble by bumping up the displacement to 103 or 110ci.

Last time we spoke about the benefits of a dyno tune on a fuel-injected Harley and how in the hands of an experienced tech, the results can be nothing short of phenomenal. All true. On a carbureted H-D, though, the importance of that dyno and a savvy tech behind it becomes even more important.

While the Rocker wasn’t necessarily the most popular model that Harley-Davidson has released during its tenure, a supercharged Rocker is a completely different story. Since the recent release of the 2012 Harleys, it’s evident that the Rocker didn’t stick with consumers, hence Harley dropping the polarizing bike from the lineup. However, when ProCharger was looking for a good test mule for its new supercharger kit, “We wanted to show our latest product on Harley-Davidson’s latest product, the 2008 Softail Rocker,” says Walt Sipp, product manager at ProCharger. When it was released in 2008, Walt and ProCharger liked the Rocker because it was kind of the underdog of the Harley cruiser platform. So why not make the Rocker into something completely cool?

A few issues back we talked about that next performance move after a basic Stage 1 setup, how following up a free-flowing intake and exhaust with a little more cam makes good sense (“Grinds For Grunt!” Hot Bike August 2011). And for a daily-ridden street bike “a little more” was the operative phrase; going too big with the cam selection, the guys at Speed’s Performance Plus (SPP) warned, can be a step in the wrong direction. “For an otherwise stock 88-inch motor, a 510 grind is plenty,” Speed’s Jamie Hanson advised. “And for the 96-inchers, it’s a 525. Both work fine with the stock heads and valve springs, have lots of low- and mid-range pull, and coupled with everything else done, they’ll bring another 10 horsepower to the game and 10 more lb-ft of torque.” All that’s certainly welcome, but that’s just the icing on the cake according to Jamie. While swapping cams might be the next logical performance move for a lot of riders, it’s also an opportunity to strengthen up and bulletproof a couple seriously vulnerable areas in a late-model Harley Twin Cam engine.

Victory Motorcycles likes to go against the grain. It’s never dull when model-launch season rolls around. This past August, the motorcycling press was flown to Park City, Utah, for more or less a “rolling” release of Victory’s 2012 motorcycles en route to Sturgis, South Dakota, for the 71st Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. What better way to get up close and personal with something than to spend four consecutive days traversing the twisties of Utah and Colorado, and then ending up carving through the Black Hills of South Dakota?

Describe yourself in three words?
Dedicated. Technical. Optimist.