It is safe to say that Performance Machine is one of the most well-known names in the custom wheel and brake industry. They earned that position with extremely high and consistent quality products that professional and home bike builders can count on. With such a big market share, you would expect that P.M. is a huge operation with hundreds of people working in their research and development department. Well, that would be wrong. In reality, there are just a few people that fill up the R&D department. The most well-known being Peter Vecvanags - the Aristotle of the place.
If you have followed the progression of wild customs from P.M. over the years, most seem to come through Peter's hands. Even the bikes he doesn't actually build, he has a certain involvement in, lending his Greek philosopher style of genius - sometimes mistaken for madness - to making subtle changes that improve the entire project. However, in the case of this chopper, it was Peter's way or no way. He knew what he wanted to build, how he wanted it to look, and nothing was going to stop him - more on that as you read further.
Peter decided that he was going to ride a rigid, but there was no sense having a ton of vibration to go along with it, so he started the project by ordering a Paul Yaffe frame set up for a balanced Twin Cam motor. The chassis has 4 inches of downtube stretch and a neck that measures in at 40 degrees. As Peter looked the frame over, he began the plan for his new machine, and his first decision was to make it almost all orange and black. A call to Perse had a black-anodized fork assembly on its way in no time. The tubes are 8 inches over and the trees add 5 degrees of rake to the stance, but the really slick part of the fork assembly is the hidden brake line Peter had done by a company in Europe.
To roll the bike around, Peter's biggest challenge was which set of P.M. wheels to use. He settled on the Vader design and went with a 21-inch front and an 18x5.5-inch rear. To slow his creation down, a small two-piston P.M. caliper squeezes a 13-inch rotor up front, with a drive-side conversion four-piston unit in the rear with Avon tires adding the necessary road abrasion.
Powering the sparsely appointed chopper would be a 95ci Harley-Davidson Twin Cam balanced motor. Peter pulled it apart to have Daytec do some serious powdercoating and then went to work on building some power. Kendall Johnson took care of setting up the heads and matching the Headquarters cams to his porting. Peter installed a Crane ignition and a set of Altered Images exhaust pipes. He held off on the carb while he figured out how he would mount the Weber he had in mind, and turned his attention to the P.M./Little John Buttera primary drive and H-D transmission case filled with a JIM'S six-speed.
Peter took a trip to Russ Wernimont's high desert facility to talk about skin for the project. Russ jumped right in and took on the challenge, and in record time, he had fabricated a gas tank and strutless rear fender. It took about the same time for Peter to create the custom oil tank. Once it was all placed on the bike, Peter knew he couldn't avoid the carb issue any longer.
With the tank mounted high on the backbone and the stretch in the downtubes, there was a considerable gap created. It would be perfect for the Weber intake, if the frame tubes weren't in the way. Well, since it was being built in Peter's world, he simply cut the downtubes and built the dual-throats into the frame. A few cleverly hidden reinforcements later, he was ready to tear things down and get them over to Damon's for some color. Inspired by the clean and simple approach Peter was taking, Damon's started out with a single Candy Tangerine paintjob. But since inspiration takes many forms, they decided to top it off with old-school traditional pinstripes on the tank and fender.
Matt Hotch built the handlebars for Peter to mount P.M. controls on, and Headwinds created the headlight that shows the way. A Yaffe taillight, a Corbin seat, and modified P.M. controls rounded out Peter's requirements for the new project. In just four months, Peter had shown the world why he is who he is in the P.M. shop - a genius surrounded by madness.