Editor’s Note: Jason volunteered the following description of his killer Buell based bobber, but it doesn’t cover our Girl of Bikernet, Jennifer Spencer, the hottie shot by Jerry Southworth. This bike and Jennifer were originally featured on the cover and inside a sizzling issue of Biker magazine. After cropping these shots, I wish… Goddamn I wish she was close. I’ve actually saved a handful of Jennifer shots, taken against another background, for another piece, maybe a fiction, or maybe a fantasy. They’re too hot to waste.
Enjoy Jason’s feature. I apologize for no shots of the other side of the bike, but goddamn she’s fine.
I’m going to come clean right out of the gates here… I’m a Sportster fan. Unfortunately, we live in a world where the Sporty is looked down upon, pegged as a girl bike and called silly names like “Skirtster” by some people. Anyway, to each their own, I like ‘em.
So, when the idea of building a Sportster bobber refused to leave my mind, I decided it may as well be a big twin killer. If you’re going to do something, you may as well go all the way. There’s no sense renting a room for a handshake, if you know what I mean. My best option was a no brainer when it came to finding a high horsepower H-D unit case. I immediately started searching for Buell X1 motors for sale. It wasn’t too big of a problem to find one… it seems that people really like to crash these things!
The plan was for a little bobber. Nothing earth shattering, just a classic rigid/springer combo. However, I wanted as much Buell as possible. No shortcuts on this bike. No dumping the injection for an S&S carb. No using Sportster tranny sprocket covers to mount controls and master cylinders. No chain drive conversions and drag pipes. I guess I’m saying that I wanted a Buell with very little suspension? What the hell… it made sense at the time.
A Paughco frame with 41 degrees of rake and no stretch was chosen along with a DNA springer and 16’s front and rear. The spring legs on the DNA springer were axed and replaced with a set of wishbone style legs that we built to set the front end apart from pure DNA stolen from Paughco. I decided on using a peanut tank but had to cut the shallow tunnel out, as I wanted the tank to sit low and hug the motor. Since it was getting cut up anyway, I decided to run a stock Buell speedo recessed into the tank. The stock Buell gas cap was utilized because it allowed for a large enough hole in the top of the tank get the fuel pump in (hopefully never out of) the tank. I opted for a trailer fender in the rear to mimic the flat top of the peanut tank and fender struts were built wishbone style to match the springer front legs.
Handlebars were fabbed and included a “dash” of sorts that tucks in between the springs and house idiot lights and the starter and horn buttons. I chose a Bates style solo seat mounted on a mountain bike shock. There were no “kits” available at this time. I built the seat support and the shock mounts and utilized the lower shock mount to double as a fender mount as well. As far as foot controls go, it would have been easy to run forward controls on this bike, but I prefer mids. I used a set of late model Sportster mid-controls and built frame blocks to bolt them to. Setting the pegs was one of the most frustrating parts of this build… go figure.
The rear brake linkage was built to include a cam piece to allow for the transversely mounted Buell master cylinder. Brakes, front and rear, came courtesy of a mystery Softail donor. The same mystery donor supplied the hand controls as well. Never look a gift horse… The rear brakes had the stock mount modified to allow for an under-slung setup. The front brake sits in custom brake anchor I built out of 1/2-inch chunk of aluminum.
I found an aluminum oil tank and built heat shields out of the bottom of a stainless steel bowl my dad bought at a yard sale for a quarter. A side mount battery box was fabbed up and houses the ignition switch and odometer reset switch as well. On the other side of the bike, I decided to utilize the stock Buell belt idler pulley. It takes some length out of the belt and looks way cool to see the idler pulley rotating the opposite direction as everything else. A quick heal guard was built to separate me from the tranny pulley.
We used an H-D turn signal for the taillight and fabbed the taillight mount and license plate bracket out of aluminum. An ECM mount was built out of the same material and mounted low on the seat post where it would be visible and accessible but not stick out like a sore thumb. The crankcase breathers were run through the frame down tubes and exit through a filter at the bottom. The stock Buell fuses and relay box were used and mounted under the seat along with the data port for fuel injection troubleshooting and tuning.
For exhaust, we used most of the Buell head pipes and fabbed the rest in-house. Pipes ended up being one of the most time-consuming parts to build. Baffles were installed to add a little backpressure and to keep neighbors and the local police presence happy. The front cylinder motor mount was fabbed to include a tach mount as well.
Wiring was a little complicated but went over without a hitch… mostly. The clutch, side stand and bank angle sensors were all bypassed, everything else was necessary. The wiring was done to match the stock X1 wiring diagram for ease of troubleshooting and diagnostics. I decided to run a race ECM instead of the stock Buell computer. I chose the race unit for the increased tuneablilty… the higher rev limit and increase power was a side benefit.
Everything that could be powdered was coated in red and satin black. I had Todd Kirby at TK Customs mix paint to match the red powder and the tins were shot the red/black and white and included our star logo on the tank. The big white walls on the Avon Gangsters fit in nicely on this little hot rod.
Is it the big twin killer I started out building? That has yet to be tested and, in the end, it doesn’t really matter. I can tell you that it’s a very, very fast bike with an abundance of power on tap. The most important thing about this bike and any bike, in my opinion, is if it is fun to ride. The Dirty Gertie will put a smile on your face and a stain in your shorts… a complete success.
As always, I’d like to thank my partners, Greg and Jared, as well as B, Kiwi, Fat Chad and the rest of our crew. I think that building a bike should be as much about the good times during the build as it is about the finished product itself.
–Jason Summers
Bonneville Motorcycle Co.
801.272.0493 .
www.bonnevillemotorcycleco.com
