Growing up in the Black Hills of South Dakota made annual visits to Sturgis a must for Mike Marquart. And, even though he now lives in North Carolina, he still has to go each year. He hasn't missed a single run to the Black Hills in more than 16 years, but the thought of riding the same old bike again wasn't very appealing. Mike needed a new bike, but he was only about a month away from the next Sturgis rally and hadn't even started to think about what he could build. Something needed to be done, and there was very little time left to get the ball rolling.
Being a regional sales representative for Custom Chrome, Mike had just the right connections necessary to bring everything together. The only thing that would take some serious work was finding a local shop that could get things ready quickly.
One of Mike's regular stops on his sales route just happens to be Redneck Engineering in Liberty, South Carolina. Vince Doll, of Redneck, had often told Mike that whenever he was ready to get serious about starting a new bike, Vince and his guys wanted the first crack at handling the job for him. Mike had seen nothing but the finest customs emerge from Redneck during the time he's served them, and he knew that they would do a great job building his next bike. Mike planned to do most of the assembly and mock-up as his schedule permitted, but Redneck would handle all the early fabrication and design work.
Since time was scarce, Mike dropped off a CCI Hard-Core Chopper kit at Redneck. The kit had just about everything they needed to build a basic bike with the exception of all the little trick items Redneck and their associates would wind up custom-fabricating to make the bike stand out. After sitting on one of Redneck's Get-N-High rolling chassis, Mike decided to use a Redneck frame instead of the one in the kit since it fit his dimensions perfectly. The Get-N-High was the exact height from the ground to the seat that Mike wanted; his hands were a natural reach out to the bars, and it just felt right. Vince traded Mike straight across for the CCI frame and sold it to another lucky customer within a couple of days.
To complete the Get-N-High chassis, Redneck custom-built a frontend using Harley Deuce, CCI, and Redneck Engineering components. When they finished, they had 10-inch-over forks riding in Redneck's own smooth-top triple trees. A21-inch CCI front wheel was attached to allow the frontend to roll around, and it goes well with the 18-inch solid CCI rear wheel, complete with a massive 250-series tire. Braking at both ends of the bike is accomplished with RevTech calipers and rotors; Avon rubber was the final component used to complete the rolling stock.
Since the CCI chopper kit came with a completely assembled and tested RevTech 100-inch motor, the drivetrain work was much easier than the rest of the bike. Linking the included RevTech six-speed trans with a BDL 3-inch open beltdrive was the last thing necessary before Mike could break out the measuring tools and check everything for alignment.
As the project progressed, Mike found himself replacing a few more items in the CCI kit with some goodies that caught his eye at Redneck. A stretched Redneck King Sporty tank with a pop-up fuel fill was added to the design. Then a Redneck oil tank became part of the package, followed by a Yaffe front fender and a Redneck rear fender. Although the basic kit was still mostly CCI, there were enough changes to the kit's parts list to make it look far different than it did at the beginning.
Once he was satisfied with the basic look of the bike and was sure that all the driveline components were properly aligned, Mike and the Redneck crew took everything apart in preparation for paint. Vince loaded up the Redneck company truck and took everything over to East Side Choppers (formerly East Coast Designs) in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where Billy Hudson molded every joint and smoothed every weld. Billy then laid down some very nice candy tangerine and gold flames over the top of a few basecoats of shimmering silver. Billy was so thrilled with the way the paintjob turned out that he called Mike down to look at it before it had cured enough for the final color-sanding and buffing.
There were only a handful of days left to finish the bike before Sturgis, and Mike knew he would need a lot of help to get the bike done on time. He gathered up a few friends, loaded them into his car, and drove them to Redneck where they worked late into the next couple of nights to get the job done. While Robbie of Fastway Cycles bolted on the Redneck bars and the Dalton Designs hand controls, Ben and Glen of Ben's V-Twins and Terry of Ohara Automotive dove in and handled everything else. After the East Side Choppers license plate frame was added, the Danny Gray seat laid in place, and the last bolt on the Billet Concepts forward controls was tightened, there was just enough time for a quick shakedown run before the bike was off to South Dakota.
Mike had the time of his life at Sturgis this past year and says it's the best one he can ever remember attending. He's just lucky he has a host of talented friends at his disposal who helped make it all happen on time.