Slabtown Cycleworks
EL FABULOSO
EL FABULOSO
2001 Harley Davidson Sportster 1200XL
One skull two skulls three skulls more!
This bike started life as a slightly tattered 1200 Sportster. Purchased and shuttled to the secret Icon design lab under cover of darkness. It submitted to it’s impending fate. Major surgery was performed on the questionable frame with the most precision of Sawzall work. The stock tins, as heavy and unsightly as a Jenny Craig ad, were tossed in favor of not so heavy but still unsightly KTM dirt bike plastic and a Buell headlamp. The bent front forks were sh*tcanned to be replaced with a blinged pair of GP Suspension fortified Buell legs. Thankfully Harley, much like King George, builds all its components around the magical dimension of one royal inch. So, snip-snip, wedge-slap, strip-snap, and one Harley frame and one Buell front end were joined together in beautiful matrimony. The wheel sets are powder coated Excel wide rims built around the stock Sportster hubs. The Satanic ritual of assembling this cacophony of eighty custom built spokes and mismatched wheel components was left to the dark wizards of Portland Wheel & Tire. A visit to the dimly lit cavern of a shop that is Portland Wheel & Tire is not an experience for the faint of heart. Having the built and mounted wheels in hand, an overseas call was placed to JMC Swingarms in England. $800 and four months of constant badgering saw the aforementioned custom oversized swingarm arrive via airpost, and it almost fit. Thankfully there is no measurement short enough, no tolerance too small, that a determined hand and a 4” Angle Grinder can't fix. And so it was: Swingarm into frame, wheels into swingarm, and we were within a mile of home. The drive train was completed and aligned via a precariously mounted offset countershaft sprocket. The engine modifications (flat slide carb, 2-1 pipes, ram air intake. etc.) were kept to respectable level as to not completely wow out the drive train. Having no friends at the local Harley dealership, we felt it would be best not to twist the aforementioned unsupported countershaft into a pretzel (a very heavy and expensive pretzel). The final stages of the build consisted of paint and graphics applied in a somewhat shady manner by a somewhat shady painter. It was decided that if one skull is good then eight skulls would be fantastic. So eight skulls it was, plus three coats of clear for good measure. That’s eleven things on the tank. Which is not the theme of the bike, but a nice number none the less. On the tenth month it was done, and Icon rested, and it was good.