Building a custom bike

Story by Bill Kresnak
Photos by Bill Andrews

What exactly goes into building a show-winning, custom motorcycle, anyway?

We wanted to find out, so we went to Bruce Mullins and his team at The Skunkworx Custom Cycle in Columbus, Ohio, to follow a custom bike being built from the ground up.

"One thing I've learned in this business," Mullins laughs (left). "It ain't custom unless it's damn near impossible to do."

We picked Skunkworx because the boys there are no slouches. They've built a number of award-winning bikes and even get orders for their customs from overseas.

In case you don't know, the label "Skunk Works" is associated with the Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Program, which works on super-secret beyond-state-of-the-art aircraft and other projects. The U-2 and SR-71 spy planes came out of the Skunk Works, as did the F117A Stealth fighter.

In general terms, a Skunk Works team is a group of experts working together outside the confines of a normal business bureaucracy to create something quickly that is usually experimental, unique, and awesome.

Bruce's team can, and does, do just that. The team includes Bruce, who is a master fabricator, painter and bike builder, bike-builder Jim Davis (right), and three others.

There are a lot of custom bikes on the road these days, and sometimes you can tell what shop a particular bike came from because, well, all the bikes that come out of that shop look the same.

Not so at Skunkworx. Bruce and his boys don't limit themselves to one style of custom.

The team's award-winning bikes include a custom Harley-Davidson V-Rod, an old-school 1949 Panhead chopper, and a low-and-mean street rod. Those bikes all won awards at prestigious bike shows last year.


A space-alien-themed V-Rod tank (above) and the power cruiser built for Jim Davis (below). Photos courtesy of Skunkworx

The 2002 V-Rod took a lot of fabrication and paint to create a space-alien-themed machine. The V-Rod took 1st Place in the EasyRiders Category at the EasyRiders Show in Louisville, Kentucky, last year.

The 1949 Panhead old-school chopper, meanwhile, took 1st Place honors in the Best Specialty Category at the prestigious EasyRiders Invitational show in Columbus, Ohio, last year. The Panhead also earned 1st in a variety of other contests.

And then there's the long, low and mean custom power cruiser built for Davis that took 1st Place EasyRiders Category Best of Show in Louisville, Kentucky last year.

Skunkworx learned a lot in building the Davis bike, and decided to do another, similar custom, only better.

That's the bike we're going to follow from beginning to end.

Stay tuned.

Following the build:

© 2003, American Motorcyclist Association