2004 Metry Custom Chopper - After Hours Bike

When most people think about why they'd want to build a bike, most start with a plan of a full build. But what do you do if it started with one part, the gas tank? Well Preston Fairchild was that guy. He always had a passion for anything mechanical. For the past five years he had a dream of building a custom-built chopper of his own. He knew if he was going to do this he would have to set goals and short-term sacrifices, but never had the time or money to start this build till he found himself in the helping hands of the Trosclairs, the owners of Metry Custom Cycle. In early 2000 he met Ivy Trosaclair Sr. and Ivy Jr. at the Steel Pony Express in New Orleans. Preston wanted to start a bike but wasn't sure how. So every night after he got done with his 10-hour-a-day job cutting tools and making molds for injection plastic, he found himself at the shop helping out with anything he could just to trade out time for parts and help with his bike.

The thing he didn't have was bike parts to start with, so one night Ivy Jr. was telling Preston that he needed to start his build with something like the frame or a tank. So the next day Preston showed up with the gas tank and started by setting it high atop a frame that was sitting on a lift. It was the same setup that he wanted to build, so as a mock up, it worked just fine. But as soon as they set it in place it was obvious that it was not going to work, so Ivy handed Preston the cutting wheel and talked him into making a custom tank, but he was worried about meeting his goals by changing the game plan in mid stream. So to save time he used the bottom, tunnel, and the pop-up gas cap, but cut everything else off and hand beat the metal into submission. The tank had to be made before the rest of the sheetmetal could be done if everything else was to follow the same lines. It was at that time that he got a frame from Frame Works, with 42 degrees at the neck and 6 inches up, along with 4 more added to the backbone. Then he blended all the sheetmetal to flow into the rear fender to give it a sleek and sexy look.

After the sheetmetal was complete, they custom built a set of handlebars with an internal throttle, checked to fit a 96ci S&S motor and Baker six-speed trans, and slapped a set of DNA spoke wheels between the framerails and the 12-inch-over H-D frontend. It then went off to body shop, where they smoothed the body. It took a couple more late night's for Ivy Sr. to lay down some killer flames and the beautiful candy green paintjob. Then it was a race to assemble the bike so it would be complete just in time for the bike to be loaded up and shipped out to Daytona. The goal was to put the bike in as many show as they could to show the hard work that a first-timer could do, and the shop was happy to help. The only worry was that the seat was the last thing to get done. It was so late that it had to be shipped out overnight rush so that it could show up at the same time as the bike, where it took Second place at the Harley-Davidson ride-in show. Not bad for a first time out.