When you think of ways to show your love for someone, building a bike may not be the first thing to come to mind, but Franois Henley did just that. How he got there is a long story, so we'll cut to the chase. Franois J. Henley works in San Jose, California, as the CEO and cofounder of Silicon Genesis Corporation (SiGen). In the spring of 2003, Franois and a friend decided to convince their wives to let them get Harleys for weekend warrior outings. Franois' wife Krista was cool with the new Anniversary Heritage Springer, so it seemed that this was all that was needed to have a blast with his friends and rediscover his love of bikes. It was not long, however, until he started putting on every chrome part the H-D catalog had to offer, even buying the race tuner software to modify the big twin fuel injection software to get every pony out of that engine. The bike ran great, but it was apparent that he reached a point where he needed more. There were two circumstances that started Franois into exploring the seemingly tremendous undertaking of building a custom bike.
The first was that Krista's uncle, Ken Kay from Hamilton, Ontario, happens to be a skilled car and motorcycle painter, having won tons of awards for best paint. Having somebody of his stature offering his time in realizing a unique bike paintjob made the prospect of building a bike almost manageable. The second was that after seeing all the chopper shows on TV, Franois' wife said, "If those guys could build choppers, Franois certainly could!" It was as simple as that.
Early on, Franois had decided to dedicate the bike to his father, a World War II Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, and to tie in the chopper's paintjob to the nose art from his father's plane seemed like a creative way to honor his father. Since this bike was also to be dedicated to all World War II Allied air services, Franois thought both the RAF and U.S. insignias should be present.
His father, J.F. Henley, was commissioned a flight lieutenant (pilot) on August 28, 1942. He flew B-24J bombers over the Atlantic in the #10 Bomber Reconnaissance Squadron, known as "The North Atlantic Squadron," from early 1944 to the end of 1945. Just to give you a small idea of the kind of thing Franois' dad was doing during the war, his squadron patrolled the Atlantic, flying recon and dropping depth charges on German U-boats.
Jump ahead to the year 2004. J.F. Henley was given the Order of Canada Citizens' Award by the Governor General for his achievements and service to his country and humanity at large. This award would come into play as the bike-build was getting planned out. This was about the time that Franois had come up with the idea of building the chopper, and with everyone out there putting crazy themes into the builds, he just wanted to show how incredibly proud he was of his dad.
Franois did a lot of research on all the kit bikes out there; he wanted to have a good starting point. He quickly arrived at some design decisions. One was to use a fat rear tire; another was to use a big engine, since he figured the bike really should be different than his Harley or else why do it? In the end he went with a Big Bear Choppers (BBC) Devil's Advocate frame but used the Merc springer instead of the standard fork. He felt the bike's extreme looks and length would serve well as the foundation for the build. A key consideration was BBC's ability to register the bike with California's DMV and help in getting reasonable insurance.
Franois visited BBC in early April of 2004 and placed his order for the frame. To assure this bike had primal power, Franois selected an S&S 124ci engine, a HiTech 4-inch Dominator open primary, and a six-speed Baker right-side-drive transmission. He decided to get a long pointed gas tank for more surface area to paint. With these and other goodies, he started to focus on completing the paint design.
By the time the kit was in his Aptos residence, Franois had already hired on Ken as his painter for the how-tos on getting the sheetmetal chromed while somehow blending in his dad's medals and bomber nose art on the bike. Before the paint concept could be further developed, Franois needed to finalize the bike chrome and paint design he wanted to use.
Franois felt that a chrome bike would really stand out and have an aircraft look about it. Ken convinced him that the paint would work on chrome with a new process that he believed he had mastered sufficiently to try on this bike. The reason to chrome and then partially paint the chrome was to tie in the chromed frame to the paint. That way, the bike design would flow much better. Ken felt this was especially true if he used chrome paint instead of real chrome for the painted parts, as they just wouldn't look right. Ken wasn't sure how the paint/chrome interface would be handled, but he was confident that he would figure it out once the paint was in front of him. Ken finished the chrome and put down an old-school, large metalflake Candy Apple Red base.
Franois saw the gas tank and finished oil bag in late December. His father's Order of Canada emblem looked great on the oil bag. Not only was the girl beautiful and the background stunning, the use of red and blue striping to develop the paint/chrome interface and the old-style font on the name "Frenesi" made the bike look unique and special.
Ken took the rear fender rather personally. He wanted the girl on it to have Krista's face and the background to contain a clear rendering of Franois' father's particular B-24J bomber complete with serial numbers and specific designations. He repainted Krista's face more than a dozen times before getting it right. No doubt Ken had really captured Krista's face and body - but her chest was supersized in true chopper fashion.
The bike came together well and was ready for final wiring in late December of 2004. There came an opportunity for his parents to come to California and see the bike, a belated 60th wedding anniversary present. J.F. was obviously very proud of the theme and impressed by his son's dedication. For both J.F. and Franois, Frenesi became a symbol of the valued bond between father and son.