It's hard to live in an area that has great year-round riding weather and not have a bike to ride. Unfor-tunately for Jeff Tafralis, that's the situation he found himself in when he moved from Montreal, Canada, to Palm Springs, California. He Had To sell his old '49 Harley so he could afford the new house, but as soon as he moved in he was already saving up for a bike that would be as cool as his '49. After living in town for a few months, Jeff discovered that Mitch Bergeron Customs was located within the city limits. He visited Mitch's shop as soon as he could and was impressed with his work. Jeff started stopping by the shop more often, asked a lot of questions when he was there, and watched Mitch hand-craft parts, and he began to consider having Mitch build him a bike. Then he found out that Mitch was from Montreal-and Jeff knew that Mitch had to build his next bike.
Jeff wanted something with typical chopper geometry and style lines easily recognized as something other than stock. So Mitch custom-built him a chopper frame with 5 inches added to the downtubes, 3 inches added to the backbone, and 40 degrees of neck rake. An LA Rollers frontend was bolted to the neck with 6-degree triple-trees, bringing the combined total rake degrees to 46. RC Components Vegas Wheels, along with matching rotors and pulley, were secured to both ends of the bike. Stopping power is assured with two HHI four-piston calipers. Avon rubber was wrapped around each wheel, with a narrow 21-inch in the front and a fat 250mmx18-inch for the rear.
Driveline components were next, and, according to Jeff, only flashy parts would do. A full polished 100ci Ultima was bolted between the framerails. A custom intake manifold was modified to hold a 40mm chromed Weber carb with a pair of custom velocity stacks to get the air/fuel mixture just right. Exiting gases are expelled by custom Mitch Bergeron stainless-steel exhaust pipes. A Primo 3-inch open belt drive was bolted to the motor and has "Candy-Ass" airbrushed on the outer surface (ask Jeff what it means). It transfers power from the motor to an Accessories Unlimited six-speed transmission.
As mentioned earlier in this article, Mitch hand-makes many parts of each bike, but his favorite parts to fabricate are made from sheetmetal. For instance, the gas tank, handlebars, oil tank, and fender struts were made from scratch, by hand. Of course, he put his own personal touches on almost every other part of the bike, including the front and rear fenders.
After the bike was completely mocked up, Mitch sent the frame to be powdercoated red and sent the sheetmetal to Bill Willes to be painted to match. Another must-have for the bike's future owner was graphics by another Canadian whom Mitch uses all the time, Fitto. Once the clearcoat over the graphics dried, Mitch reassembled the bike and had Rocky Felix hand-make a black leather seat with Mitch's shop-logo skull carved into it, officially finishing off the bike.
Of course, Jeff was excited as hell when the bike was finished, and it was no surprise to him how great it turned out. He had been to the shop a couple of times a week all the way through the eight months it took to build the bike, and the two became good friends. Jeff still frequents the shop on a regular basis and is often found sitting at the booth with Mitch at many bike shows. If you see him, keep in mind that Jeff is an ex-football player, and the only one who can call him or his bike "candy-ass" is Mitch.