Ever since Harley-Davidson went quiet on the future of the seemingly ill-fated Bronx streetfighter, we’ve been waiting for The Motor Co. to build something truly spicy with their 150-horsepower Revolution Max engine. The new Sportster S is a step in the right direction, but it’s held back by confused styling, a hefty visual weight, and cruiser-like ergonomics. Perhaps the answer lies within the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 instead.
The Harley Pan America made waves in the adventure motorcycle market when it launched, but it’s turned out to be more versatile than we initially thought. Custom Pan Americas have started crawling out of the woodwork, and it turns out there’s a pretty wild motorcycle hiding under all of that bodywork.
Here to prove that point is Chris Scholtka, the man behind Motocrew. The German firefighter-slash-custom motorcycle builder has just worked his magic on the Pan Am, turning it into a gnarly flat tracker. But we reckon it’d work just as well as a street bike—provided you put the front brake back on.
The project was conceived while Chris was kicking back with Lars Würdemann, a suspension engineer at the German adventure accessories company Touratech. They were discussing the potential of a custom build to showcase Touratech’s suspension offerings, and trying to settle on what motorcycle to use for the project.
“After some talking and some whisky,” Chris tells us, “we invited Martin Wickert—Touratech’s chief marketing officer—to the conversation. He allowed us to grab an Harley Pan America from the Touratech development department. The bike had ridden to Norway and back to test some Touratech parts.”
A couple of months later, the Pan America arrived at Chris’ workshop in Cottbus. After racking his brains for a while, he settled on the idea of building a flat track race bike. So he contacted some friends from Germany’s Krowdrace flat track racing series to wrap his head around the regulations.
“We needed 19” rims, an emergency engine stop, and, of course, no front brake,” he says. “For some insider info, I involved an old friend from my motocross days, Kai Haase. A pro freestyle motocrosser and the first rider to ever do a nose bonk front flip on an FMX bike, he’s a multi-talented bike nerd.”
“He gave me some facts about the suspension and seat position. With that information and a few hours on YouTube, I had enough knowledge of what was important for this project.”
Chris sketched out some ideas, then tore the Pan America down and started figuring out how to execute his concept. Once he’d fabricated an all-new subframe, he quickly realized that the 21.2 l [5.6 gal] fuel tank would have to go. “I wanted to build a sporty flat track bike—not a big adventure elephant,” he quips.
First, he built a smaller aluminum reservoir to hold around 9 l [2.4 gal] of fuel. Then he took the Pan America’s original tank covers, cut them up, and used the pieces to build the new bodywork. The result is a slimmer tank that still retains some of the original aesthetic.
Next, Chris ditched the Pan Am’s airbox in favor of a new 3D-printed intake. It’s fed by a chunky K&N air filter that pokes out in front of the tank. It also sucks a lot more air, so Chris turned to the Harley tuning specialists at Don Performance to work out a custom engine mapping.
That also allowed him to ditch the bike’s lambda sensors, and to run exhaust headers with a lot more girth. Chris tacked a new exhaust system together out of 90 pie-cut pieces, terminating in an off-the-shelf motocross-style muffler. The bike now makes 9.9 more horsepower and 12 Nm more torque, and weighs 32 kilos [70.5 lbs] less.
The rest of the bodywork consists of the modified number plate and rear fender from a Husqvarna FC450, and a pair of yellow plexiglass side covers. Chris fitted a small LED light up front and repurposed the original Harley taillight at the back.
The side covers are translucent for a reason—they offer a peek at the bike’s custom Touratech suspension. The remote-reservoir rear shock features an easily accessible dial to set its preload by hand, along with a progressive spring, and rebound and compression adjusters. The front forks look stock, but they’ve been shortened and rebuilt with all-new Touratech internals.
The bike now rolls on 19” wheels, built for the project by Haan Wheels with Excel rims, custom spokes, Harley hubs, and Shinko tires. Bumping the Pan America’s rear wheel size up was easier said than done; Chris had to play with the chain length and relocate the voltage regulator, for starters.
Up front, he swapped out the bars and grips for new Renthal parts and installed the requisite kill switch and leash. The build also sports the first Motogadget dash that can communicate directly with the Harley’s onboard software. That means that Chris can use the bike’s full electronic feature set, including its rider modes, without the penalty of a big TFT screen. “The bike stood at Motogadget’s headquarters in Berlin for a week to develop it,” he tells us.
Finishing the build in spectacular style is a frenetic livery by Pablo Custom Painting in Gelsenkirchen; a regular Motocrew collaborator. Polsterwerk in Berlin added a seat cover to match. The whole thing looks fast and frantic, with custom H-D badges adorning the new tank panels.
Chris has taken the Pan America to Touratech’s booth at EICMA to show it off this week. But it won’t stay on the show circuit for long, because he plans to enter it in the Krowdrace series next year.
We did ask Chris if he ever plans to run the Pan X on the street, but he doesn’t think the exhaust will satisfy the local TÜV inspector. And as is customary with builds of this ilk, we’re also left wondering; is Harley-Davidson paying attention?
Touratech | Motocrew Instagram | Images by Illume
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