Murdered out and ready for mayhem. This Street Bob has had a bit of a transformation from mundane to murdered out.
Murdered out and ready for mayhem. This Street Bob has had a bit of a transformation from
As of late, the "Outlaw" or "Club Bike" seems to be the rage, and for good reason. They are function over form, easy to care for and most of all fun as hell to ride. Though new to some, this style of bike has been around for quite some time. The look of the murdered-out Dyna actually originated on the FXR chassis and it has been freely accepted that certain clubs situated in and around California's Bay Area were the first to run loud, blacked-out Harleys with high-rise T-bars, extended-travel suspension, mid controls, and quarter fairings. This look, which now has been adopted by the mainstream, does not garner red and blue lights and hands in cuffs anymore. Now most of the attention these "thug" bikes get is the usual, "Hey bro, nice scoot," comments at the local watering hole.
After the newness wore off of our '10 Harley Davidson FXDB ($13,374), we took a long look at our Street Bob and decided that we had enough of the "bobber" look and decided to get down and dirty. Since the bike was already halfway to the dark side with its lack of chrome and Denim Black paint, we decided to take it up a few more notches to full-on "outlawclubthug" bike. After scouring the internet and stacks of catalogs here are the parts we used to turn this bike from Bob to mob at a total price of about $18,818 ($5,444 in parts).
This is how the FXDB looked before we started in on it.
Once the bike was converted to the "outlaw" style, after a few miles on the odometer we found it much easier to ride over the stock situation. The T-bars were in the perfect "arms out" position for comfort on short or long rides. The narrower handlebar width made lane splitting effortless and coupled with the footpegs, we found it was downright comfortable to ride standing up like a dirt bike over dips and railroad tracks. The upgraded suspension made the bike handle more like a sportbike and less like a cruiser even with the increased stance. The fairing, although good-looking, provided a place to store items and took some of the wind shear off of us at higher speeds.
Though this bike possesses the "in style," it is safe to say that this fashion of bike was the end product of 30 years of outlaw evolution and was definitely worth looking past its current popularity. By delving into the mechanics of why this style of bike came to fruition and is still prevalent today, we took an already good bike and made it better by all accounts. Even if it does look like the bikes we see on TV Tuesday nights.