FXDR

Harley-Davidson Ice-Cool Brother Is a Mean Green FXDR

by Daniel Patrascu from https://www.autoevolution.com Few motorcycle builders out there have enough products in their portfolio as to feel comfortable to reference older builds as soon as new ones pop up. Thunderbike is one of them, with the Germans having released into the wild over the past 25 years literally hundreds of custom bikes, all of them based on or heavily related to Harley-Davidson two-wheelers. Back in 2019, Thunderbike built a special machine for Harley’s Battle of the Kings competition. It was called Roar, and came as a heavily modified FXDR sporting tons of custom parts, a Stage 3 tuning kit to increase the Screamin’ Eagle engine’s displacement to 117ci and give it more power, and a devilish, dragster-like appearance enhanced by the orange-black-silver paint scheme used on it. Thunderbike’s most recent project is dubbed Ice-Cool Brother. Not exactly a cool name for a Harley custom bike, but it does send across the message Thunderbike wants sent: this could be the brother of the Roar, and because its painted grey-green, it’s Ice-Cool. Childish reasoning, we know, but the machine itself is far from that. Commissioned by one of the garage’s customers, it comes with a lower stance owed to fork modifications, breathes easier thanks to a new air filter kit, and packs a bigger punch thanks to the fitting of a Stage II torque kit. Thanks to the changes made, Thunderbike says there’s a 5 percent increase in torque right from the start, and at 4,500 rpm it even squeezes 14 percent more than before. You can find the entire list of modifications made to the bike at this link. What you’ll not find is the final build price for the Ice-Cool Brother, but after some digging (Thunderbike lists most of the parts used in the project) we came up […]

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Harley-Davidson FXDR Turns Into Silver Rocket in the Hands of Thunderbike

by Daniel Patrascu from https://www.autoevolution.com We’ve seen over the years custom motorcycle builds being compared to anything you could imagine, but rarely so with something like a spaceship. Yet this is exactly how German custom shop Thunderbike describes its latest Harley-Davidson FXDR project. The Softail conversion, drawing a lot of inspiration from another build called Silverforce, is the latest product coming from one of the world’s most active Harley garages. It has been assembled in the shape displayed in the gallery above at the request of a customer, of course, and no corners were cut, neither visual nor performance-related. As usual with any Thunderbike machine, this one too sports a host of changes compared to the stock incarnation. Thunderbike has a habit of detailing all the parts that go into their builds, and in this case the list is over 20-items long. Changes include the addition of custom body parts – like fenders, seat shell, cover kits, footrest, grips and so on – but also mechanical alterations to make it meaner – lowered stance, fork conversion and above all, a Screamin ‘Eagle Stage II Torque Kit for the 144ci engine fitted on the two-wheeler. All these custom parts and modifications were made to fit together just right, and sprayed over with shades of silver, white, black and red by the shop’s usual painting partner, Kruse Design. What resulted is a bike that “looks as if it has come straight from a rocket base,” if there are bikes on rocket bases, or one that has “an appearance like a spaceship- fast and clean, without frills and gimmicks.” We are not being told how much the entire conversion cost to make, but a quick look at the parts listed as used on the bike puts the sum at over 5,000 euros ($6,000),

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Harley-Davidson Roar Packs Screamin’ Eagle Stage 3 Kit, Is a Quarter Mile Devil

by Daniel Patrascu from https://www.autoevolution.com During our Harley-Davidson month event back in April, we talked at length about this year’s Harley King of Kings competition, and over the course of a couple of weeks we got to see 15 incredible builds from across the world. But the bike maker’s customizing competition has been around for a while now, and stunning creations have been made in the previous years as well. The motorcycle in the gallery above is one of the older bikes entered in the Battle of the Kings in 2019 – that’s how the competition was called last year. It is the work of German garage Thunderbike, it is based on the FXDR 114, and is supposed to be “a deep and evil dragster conversion.” The official name of the bike is Roar, probably because that’s the sound it should be making thanks to the fitting of a Stage 3 tuning kit that increased the Screamin’ Eagle engine’s displacement to 117ci, but also added around 40 percent more power over the stock output. Because bikes taking part in this type of Harley build-off competitions need to be styled in a unique manner as well, Thunderbike did that by adding hardware from their rather large inventory. In all, 21 custom Thunderbike parts were fitted on the two-wheeler, accompanied by 9 custom Harley parts that are not usually deployed from the factory on the FXDR. To make a more fierce dragster out of the build, Thunderbike also lowered the height of the chassis by 50 mm and added a 260 mm rear tire to better make the connection to the road. As for the paint job, that is the work of Thunderbike’s usual partner in this field, Ingo Kruse, and is a mix of black, orange and white that makes the

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Harley-Davidson Silverforce Is the FXDR Milwaukee Never Imagined

by Daniel Patrascu from https://www.autoevolution.com Try as you might, there are slim chances you’ll find something in the long list of Harley motorcycle models that’s not customizable. No matter the class, model or variant of the bike, a shop somewhere more than likely has a thing or two in mind that could change the stock look into something more exciting. Take the FXDR for instance, one of the many versions available in the bike maker’s Softail lineup. The close- to-$19K motorcycle is not an unpleasant look on the roads in stock form, but that’s mostly because of the customizing potential the motorcycle has. A potential some custom garages like Germany-based Thunderbike have no problem in seeing. The Europeans are a force to be reckoned with on the global custom Harley front, and they are even awarded official recognition from Milwaukee from time to time. Their chopperized 1995 Sportster called Emperor, for instance, was one of the main builds of the bike maker’s King of Kings competition this year. The FXDR-based build here serves another purpose: to advertise the garage’s own custom parts, and how much they can change the appearance of a stock two-wheeler. As it happened countless times with their builds, this one too is a moving display of imagination. A long list of custom hardware (from elements as tiny as the turn signals to more prominent ones like the huge wheels) transformed the bike into a lower, meaner and more eye-pleasing machine. As usual, Thunderbike toyed with the stance of the ride by fitting an Air Ride suspension over two large wheels, sized 21 inches at the front and 18 inches at the rear. The custom paint, mostly gray, has been generously spread on the custom fenders and tank, and together with the silvery-look of the Kesstech exhaust

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Harley-Davidson GT One Is a Special Breed of FXDR

by Daniel Patrascu from https://www.autoevolution.com/ Generally, the GT moniker is reserved for a particular breed of cars, built specifically to offer performance, thrills, and looks to die for, even on long distance drives. But it is used on motorcycles as well to advertise the machines’ capability of handling long trips and high speeds simultaneously. There are a great number of bike builders that use the GT name for their models.Yamaha does it for the Tracer, BMW has a number of GTs too, and so does KTM. But not Harley. At least not officially, because there is a Softail FXDR out there that is called exactly that. Of course, the bike is no longer the FXDR you get at the local Harley dealer, but a customized piece of work handled by a German garage called Thunderbike. As many of their other builds, the GT One, as they call it, is the result of serious work that ended in the replacement of many original parts with custom-made ones, all for the sake of doing something Europeans are generally not used to seeing. There’s a long list of modifications made and custom parts added. The list includes new wheels, grips and exhaust system, but also a unique paintwork handled by a group called Kruse Design. Most importantly, despite having much larger wheel than stock (23 and 21 inches), the bike makes no compromise when it comes to suspension, which is essential for long-distance travels. Thunderbike says that by using a completely new triple tree, no restrictions had to be made in this respect when the new wheels were fitted. The Harley-Davidson GT One was shown for the first time at the end of last year. It is part of a family of Thunderbike builds that includes other high-profile projects, like the RS Lambo

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Thunderbike Harley-Davidson Invader Is the FXDR Done Right

by Daniel Patrascu from https://www.autoevolution.com There is no doubt Harley-Davidson is one of the biggest names in the motorcycle industry, but that doesn’t stop a lot of fans from thinking the Milwaukee-based company could do much more that it currently does. Over the past two years, troubled Harley announced plans to massively overhaul its portfolio by launching a number of new, exciting motorcycles, all with the goal of increasing its customer pool to unprecedented levels. That sounds great, but when our eyes fall upon custom Harley builds, we can’t help but wonder why the bike maker’s creations aren’t as visually exciting as some of these the third-party modified machines. Case in point the FXDR we have in the gallery above. Named Invader, it is the brainchild of a Germany-based Harley custom shop by the name of Thunderbike. As with all the other Thunderbike builds we’ve talked about over the past few days, this one too sports a lot of modifications, mostly limited to the bike’s body and ranging from grips to upholstery and fenders. But it is the paint job perhaps that catches the eye the most. Done by a group called Kruse Design, the paint job blends the frosted neon yellow on some parts of the bike with black appointments here and there and the racing decor on the wheels. The Invader is actually based on another custom build made by the Germans, one called Roar. Aside for the obvious change in colors, changes compared to the Roar are the new rear wheel and a modified swingwarm that can now accommodate a pulley brake. There are no modifications made to the FXDR’s engine – the Invader is thus powered by the stock Milwaukee-Eight 114 V-Twin engine. Thunderbike is a German custom shop that started life in the 1980s as

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