After reporting on the custom scene for over ten years, it takes a lot to stop us dead in our tracks. But this incredible Harley custom from Smoked Garage is one of the most radical builds we’ve seen in the past decade.
It was commissioned by the organizers of the huge Suryanation Motorland event in Jakarta, one of the biggest custom shows in the East. The brief was simple: blow the collective socks off the thousands of visitors.
The Smoked Garage guys are no strangers to these pages: their custom Royal Enfield Himalayan was a massive hit a year ago. The company has two bases: one in Brisbane, Australia, and one just west of Denpasar city in Bali.
The Bali outpost is where founder Nicko Eigert built this bike, calling in help from his 15-strong team of crack fabricators and mechanics.
“We had a phone call from Suryanation asking if we wanted to build an ‘iconic motorcycle’,” says Nicko. “We had to show what we thought such a bike should look like in 2019, so we designed a ‘neo board tracker’—and they agreed to the concept.”
The show was just three months away, but Nicko had enough manpower to get the job done.
The chosen donor was a 2001-spec Harley-Davidson Softail. But not much is left of this all-American bike—essentially just the ‘Twin Cam 88’ 1450cc engine, which pumps out a solid 88 pound-feet of torque in stock form.
Now fed by a ramjet-style air filter, it’s slotted into a completely custom frame bent out of chromoly steel tubing, with the top tube running above the two-piece, one-off aluminum tank.
The curved frame cradle looks suitably futuristic, as does the hardtail setup. The wheels run on ingenious hollow hubs, which have allowed Smoked to get an unusual ‘Tron bike’ look.
A compact, hand-made 2-into-1 exhaust system snakes around the engine, within the perimeter of the frame, as if not to attract attention.
The wheels are lit by an LED system; with more time, it would be possible to program these to show what speed the bike is moving at, or change according to its cornering angle.
Everything on ‘Spirit’ is custom-made, down to the 26-inch wheel rims shod with Shinko 777 cruiser rubber. The discs, attached to the hubs, are around 20 inches in diameter, with two at the front and one at the back. The front calipers are custom made.
The enclosed front suspension is a simple girder setup, with a part-hidden Fox monoshock for damping. Since the bike is a hardtail, Nicko’s team added a linkage-based suspension system to the one-off seat—which works perfectly with the retro-futuristic vibe.
The clip-ons are one offs, and fitted with Brembo controls and hardware. The grips are Smoked Garage’s own proprietary items, and the foot controls were specially made for the bike.
The Indonesian custom industry is famed for its skills, but this is something else entirely. And believe it or not, it’s rideable too.
“It’s actually quite comfortable, considering the length of the bike and the weight,” says Nicko wryly. “It does love to go in a straight line…”
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