here’s certainly no shortage of stretched out or slammed down Softails and rigids rolling on those giant 250, 280, 300 and 330 rear tires, and lately there are lots of the bobbers, cut-downs and retro rides, too. Now make room for one more custom Harley look. This one. Call it “Harley Sport,” call it “Drag Race Derived,” call it “Pure Performance.” It doesn’t matter, because names don’t define a bike like this. This is a V-twin custom that’s about more than just its name, its look and its stance. This is a bike built to get a job done.      Kendall Johnson’s FatBook Special is like no other Drag Specialties bike before it. In the next issue we’ll have the full story with all the details, the blow-by-blow, part-by-part build up. But for right now just take a good, long look at this thing. As always, it’s a custom motorcycle straight from the catalog, most everything sourced directly through Drag Specialties. Debuted at the V-Twin Expo in Cincinnati, it created quite a stir. As you’d imagine.      “Fact is, we’re doing quite a few bikes like this lately,” Kendall says. “They’re bikes geared more towards a race look, and this one happens to fit right in the parameters set down for that S&S 124 Challenge program for the AHDRA.” But while it might look like a drag bike this latest FatBook Flier is extremely streetable. Kendall can hardly keep himself off the thing. “Besides hauling butt it rides and handles perfectly,” he says. “It feels more like a modern sport bike then a custom Harley, and in my opinion this is the way things are heading.” Maybe so, and this one’s heading there with a real sportbike vibe working for it, too, right down to that abbreviated Suzuki Hayabusa fairing and those clean, no-frills lines behind it.      Kendall started all this with a Chopper Guys FXR chassis, fitting it with an S&S 124-inch Twin Cam motor. Keeping everything catalog-legal, he didn’t dig inside this engine and really make it scream. “We left this one completely alone,” he says, “mounting it as delivered.” Maintaining that simple, anyone-can-do-it theme Kendall chose a Baker 5-speed transmission to send that out-of-the-box S&S power back to a 200 rear, plenty of tire, he figures, for a motorcycle that’s going to carve the corners with finesse. And to make sure that happens Kendall coupled that Chopper Guys FXR base with some serious suspension, like an inverted Ohlins fork, a performance piece well known to the sportbike crowd but rarely seen in the V-twin world. This is a serious motorcycle.      And it was a gas to build. “I’ve always loved these FXR-style bikes,” Kendall says. “I think they ride and handle better than anything that’s ever been produced in the V-twin world.” The second generation “Killer Klown” got his hand into this one, too, pretty much designing the bike himself and doing a lot of the work on it. Zach Johnson brought a younger rider’s sensibility to the project, building a 21st century Harley for 21st century riders.      This is a whole new direction for custom bikes, one that’s gathering momentum fast. Next issue we’ll take this one apart piece by piece to see what makes it tick. Right now just take a look, maybe a look at the future…

Kendall Johnson with his “FatBook Flier.”

Drag Specialties Magazine
Volume 13 #3


Parts Magazine Index