Mean Green Harley-Davidson Machine

THIS mean green machine is the latest creation from Bullets. He built it for one of his mates, Chris, who just wants to drag race. Nonetheless, it still had to be street-rideable.

CHRIS: I’ve had bikes since a little kid. I started with dirt bikes, then as I got older, my passion grew so I got a Harley-Davidson Buell X1 Lightning before I got my Harley-Davidson Dyna Glide. I’ve been slowly customising the Dyna for the last eight years and now it’s awesome.

BULLETS: Chris loved the bike we did for the television show (Australian Biker Build Off) so we got the Dyna, cut the top half off the frame and re-did it like the television bike. It’s got the same tank but we’ve changed it around a lot too.

Chris is right into drag-racing and races himself so we put in the big race motor and the race fuel injection, but because it’s his only bike, it’s a race and street bike.

There was quite a fair bit of compromising, like it’s not as low as we originally had it because it’s a bit hard to ride around the street when you’ve only got two inches of ground clearance.

CHRIS: It’s at that stage where you could spend a little more money and get it going a lot better, but then you couldn’t ride it on the road at all. We’ve gone as far as you can go.

BULLETS: The engine is probably a little bit much for the street but the bike rides nice on normal roads. It doesn’t like the little country roads but it loves the freeways.

CHRIS: I got the back guard and the battery box moulded as one piece into the frame. That was done by my mate Blake in his garage, but apart from that, the rest is carbon-fibre.

BULLETS: We used a carbon-fibre tank; one of our 250 swing-arms that we do for the Dynas; Performance Machine wheels, brakes and controls. We extensively modified a Buell front-end and I made a set of triple trees from scratch.

CHRIS: All the internals in the Buell front-end are gold-valved the same as you’d have in a CR450 dirt bike, so if you’re spending a bit of time on the back wheel, you’re not going to bottom the frame out when you come down. It’s like two thousand dollars worth of springs just in the front; it’s really got the best of everything suspension wise.

BULLETS: It has the best of everything right down to the military spec aircraft wire we used in the wiring harness. A normal wiring harness is about 25 to 30 mm in diameter on a normal Dyna, but once you put the fuel injection in, especially with the race stuff, you end up with nearly double the size so you can’t fit it all into the frame. To fix that I’ve just started using the military spec aircraft wire. It’s far more expensive than the automotive stuff but it saves a lot of space and now the whole wiring harness has ended up about 10 mm in diameter, which meant we could hide it away.

CHRIS: I had another tail-light on it but I didn’t like the look of it so we’ve got little single LED tail-lights. Just about everything on it is a one-off thing.

Blake did the paint job as well. It was my idea; I’d seen other bikes with similar paint. I really liked Joe Martin, the spray painter in America that’s on the biker build-off shows. His stuff is really out there and different so I was influenced from one of his jobs. Blake threw it on the Dyna exactly how I wanted it.

BULLETS: The bike’s probably taken two years to complete once we actually got started. It was a fairy trick looking custom bike in its own right before we stripped it down and did this. This is its third incarnation but it doesn’t look anything like the bike it was. It’s gone from a stock to a pretty trick looking custom bike to something different again. From all chrome, bright paint and low to all black and loud.

CHRIS: The missus hates it because she can’t get on it. She loves coming on the bike with me but she can’t get on this one. I guess that just means I’ll have to get a second bike.

I built it to drag-race, not show it. The first time I ran it the screw came out of the chain guide and went through the clutch basket and the front sprocket, which delayed it. I’m chompin’ at the bit to get out there.

Darryl Farnham from Farnham Fabrications made my front guard out of aluminium and helped with the LED lights. Bad Arse Trim Co did the seats as well.

Emma & Kristy

EMMA: We haven’t done much modelling; this is actually our first photo shoot. But we do promotional work for Promotional Models Australia and we’ve also been Jim Beam girls.

KRISTY: We’re sisters, a year apart. We’re from Sydney. I work in a hotel at Homebush Bay and I’m studying a Bachelor of Business and Commerce at University.

EMMA: I work at a pub too and study Occupational Therapy at University as well as work for the Department of Ageing and Disability.

KRISTY: I like motorbikes so this was fun today. I couldn’t tell you anything about them but I can tell you what looks good.

We love traveling too; so far we’ve gone to Thailand, Italy, the Greek Islands, Paris, and Amsterdam. Next year we’re going to do a study exchange program in California. We’re going for a big trip once we’ve finally finished University which will be wild.

Photos by Wall 2 Wall