Superstition «. a belief or beliefs justified neither by reason nor evidence nor by any religious canon.

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When I build a bike, I want to have the picture of how it will look in my head before I turn my first wrench. I usually have at least a rough draft of the final product before I even start. Some call this vision, others call this a "theme." There has been some debate as to what the term "theme" actually means when speak­ing of custom built bikes. There are those in our sub-culture who shun the term "theme" as restrictive and conforming; anti-chop if you will. Extreme "theme" bikes show up as comic book craziness or aquarium based street machines. A direct blow to the grass-roots ideals worshiped in these pages. To me, the term "theme" serves as a general template I use to keep a bike flowing and make all parts compli­ment the final outcome.

When I first got this 1971 Triumph TR-6, it was a weather-beaten, dirty, spray-paint­ed death trap. The first thing I did was to strip everything off the bike and assess the condition of the frame. The stock TR-6 front section had the center-tube (2nd top tube) removed. The rear section is a rigid bolt on. The bondo surrounding the neck had some serious cracks in it. Upon removing the bondo, there were parts of die neck that were so thin and rusty, you could literally stick a finger into it and check to see if there were Timken bearings or ball bearings.

The neck was re-worked and strength­ened with steel. I liked the bolt-on look for this bike so instead of welding the two sections together and molding it, 1 kept them separate and got chrome fasteners to add a little sparkle and shine in key spots. Sometimes things need to be broken up instead of smoothed out.

I decided to go with a bobber type bike and leave the rake and stretch stock. I

removed the extended narrow-glide front end and wide 12" apes and replaced them with the funky girder and 16" Custom Chrome narrow apes you see here.

1 chose to go with a green 60's Schwinn Stingray bicycle-style with a "lucky" twist. You see there's a lot of superstitious chopper riders that believe green bikes are unlucky. Anticipating a lot of criticism regarding the color, I had dice airbrushed on the tank and the banner "lucky" air-brushed behind the seat. In addition, the key is attached to a green rabbit's foot. Ghost flames and metal flakes highlight the color. It creates a paradox that confuses the shit out of the superstitious riders.

The rest of the bike was designed to be as simple and uncluttered as possible. White-walls, white grips, a white seat with green stitched flames and a white bicycle-style kicker pedal accent the paint and keep in step with the bicycle look.