Productive Rage

You're tired of trying to make custom parts fit together... again. It's gone well beyond frustrating, now it's just straight pissing you off. The cuss words are flying and so are the tools. You're close to shoving the damn bike off the rack and forgetting it even existed, but deep down, you're really not ready to give up quite yet. Anyone who's tried to build something from scratch can relate to that scenario and, therefore, to Mark Daley of Thunderstruck Custom Bikes in Medford, Oregon. There's a unique kind of angry that comes from trying to build a custom bike. Mark likes to call the final product of his frustration Rage.

Mark wanted to build a bike that was, in his words, "Wicked yet elegant. Intricate but not complicated. It had to have a smooth, soft, and simple look." With goals like those, Mark was headed for some lessons in anger management. But considering how often he is complimented on the attention to detail in his ride, his test in patience was worth it.

Deciding that he wanted to concentrate more on the bodywork and metal fabrication of his personal ride, Mark left the performance end of his chopper up to the pros at Patrick Racing. Mark cracked open Patrick's box and was inspired to create his own set of custom pipes to go along with what he was about to unleash. Nigel Patrick sent over a pre-assembled 113ci Evo complete with S&S cases, Xotic pans rocker boxes, Patrick round cylinders, a Carl's Speed Typhoon carburetor, and a Velocity Stack air cleaner. Add to that an '03 polished Baker six-speed tranny, a Scorpion clutch, a Compu-Fire ignition, and a Billet 4-U primary, and Mark had the wicked to go along with his elegant bike plans.

Back in the Thunderstruck shop, the build got off to a peaceful start with an '03 Daytec frame with 48 degrees of rake, 5 inches of stretch in the downtubes, and 3 inches in the backbone. For the smooth element of the ride, Mark went with Custom Cycles Creations lower legs, 12-over tubes from Forking By Frank joined with SJP triple-trees. A 21-inch PM Vintage wheel surrounded by a Dunlop 80/90-21 gave the front suspension the elegant appearance he had envisioned. So far, all seemed good. Mark planned to go with a Legend Air rear suspension and a 17-inch PM Vintage wheel out back along with a Pirelli Dragon 200-series tire.

And that was about where the nice and peaceful part of the building process ended. You see, Mark wanted to go with a Softail setup with a molded rear fender and seat that hugged the bike regardless of being up or down. He just couldn't stand the ugly aesthetics of the space created when the Air Ride is lifted. Enter head-scratching, pacing, frustration, and finally some really cool ideas. First off, Mark decided to route anything he could think of through the frame: wires to the ignition coil, plug wires, brake lines, and throttle cables. To prep the frame to hide it all, he drilled the frame and molded it. Then, he fabricated a top-dagger engine-mount and rear fender with a frenched-in seat from Bitch'n Seat Co. Get this, the frenched-in seat moves within the fender so the rider never has that gap between the seat and fender when he parks his ass on it. Pretty clever, huh? Mark also constructed a custom belly pan on the bottom of an Independent gas tank to hide the coils, tank mounts, and wires.

He then went on to customize hundreds of tiny pieces -- all the little off-the-wall fittings, brackets, spacers, hard oil lines, and fuel lines hidden in the frame to maintain that smooth look. Yeah, like we said, Mark was out to test his patience and more. Another innovation that came out of Mark's frustrations was a customized set of Yaffe bars made shorter and narrowed to fit the bike. He cut and built brake lines to go along with PM calipers and rotors, and an internal throttle.

The rest of the elegance was taken care of with PM hand and foot controls as well as footpegs, a Headwinds headlight, and a Yaffe taillight and license mount.

After the last bits and pieces had been fabricated and Mark was satisfied he had hidden every last extra he could, Mark found himself a little spent. All the chopper needed was a pristine paintjob, and by that point, Mark was more than happy to hand the bike off to Dennis Epple at ACE. Dennis gave the newly named Rage, a slick application of satin silver and some candy blue, purple, and silver graphics. Kim Smith at Orange County Plating handled the chrome plating and polishing.

Now that Mark is no longer seeing red, he's out enjoying the results of his anger. It's exactly what he wanted, a wicked, yet elegant, smooth, badass-looking ride. Good thing he survived the frustrations and came out a happy man. Looks like he passed his anger management classes.