Rock & Roll
ROCK & ROLL
LOUD MUSIC, LOUD PAINT AND loud exhausts are forever wed, lauded in recordings by rock-and-roll bands from The Beach Boys to Bush. Hot-rods inspire songs, and are inspired by songs. But while the lowered roadsters in the ZZ Top videos epitomize cool, even the Bearded Ones themselves prefer cruising on two wheels to four. There's something about settling into a solo seat and reaching out
to a set of handlebars that’s akin to squatting on a drum stool and banging the tom-toms, while the engine lays down a bass-drum beat in six-eight time. Rock and roll on wheels.
For custom bike-builder Denny Berg, who created the trio of hot-rod bikes shown on the following pages, there’s no denying rock and roll’s influence.
“When I build a motorcycle, I listen to a certain type of music,” he says. “Music sets the stage.”
So, with the stage set and the band in position, let’s dim the lights Sr and introduce three motorcycles fit for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Cobra kicks out the jams with a trio of custom cruisers
BRIAN CATTERSON
Valkyrie Super Six
What’s got two fat tires, six straightpipes, 100 horsepower and is more outlandish than the Kiss Reunion Tour? Cobra’s Super Six, that’s what.
As on three previous occasions (all documented in Cycle World), Cobra Engineering’s Ken Boyko contracted Berg to build a fleet of show-stopping cruisers for the annual Dealernews aftermarket convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. But while there’s no denying that the three bikes, which took four months to complete at a cost of approximately $150,000, were meant to draw attention to Cobra’s Boulevard line of cruiser accessories, they aren’t just rolling showcases, because very few parts actually derive from the company’s catalog. Instead, as Boyko points out, “Our intent has always been to show the public that they can build really cool custom motorcycles out of Japanese cruisers.”
While the Valkyrie is cartoonish in stock trim, the Super Six is a veritable caricature of its former self. Visually, the engine dominates-more so even than
before, because Berg downsized
the cycle parts to make the engine appear larger. “Back in the ’60s, a lot of builders built Corvair-powered Indians and BMWs, and I really liked that look,” Berg says. “It was the ultimate musclebikenothing but motor.” First order of business was lowering the chassis, achieved by reducing fork length 3 inches and bolting on a pair of 2.5-inch-shorter Works Performance shocks. The fender rails were then cut to make the swingarm appear stretched, and an Avon front tire with shorter sidewalls joined a 200mm-wide rear Avon on the polished stock wheels, imparting a muscular look.
Nothing, however, exudes as much machismo as the six straight-through pipes, shooting skyward three on a side like a Top Fuel dragster. But ironically, the trick exhaust system, handmade by Boyko’s business partner Tim McCool, almost didn’t happen. Says Boyko, “We started out with six pipes intertwined under the engine, ending in a single slash-cut. One day, Tim called me from the R&D department and said, ‘You’ve got to come down here and see this.’ He had three sections of pipe just taped onto the side of the bike. I took one look and said, ‘Build ’em-they’re bitchin!”’
Seeing the pipes, Berg got the idea for the faux injectors, meant to evoke the Hillbom systems on old hot-rods. He found these in Mikuni Super BN 34mm carburetors made for a Yamaha Wave Runner, topped off with chromed velocity stacks made by McCool.
The 100-horse flat-Six’s internals were left undisturbed, while Berg’s efforts went into cosmetics. Chrome was stripped off, and the underlying aluminum either polished or sprayed gray with Hammertone paint, giving a ball-peened appearance. A blacked-out custom radiator completed the hot-rod engine treatment.
Adding to the Valkyrie’s long, low look is the open area beneath the seat, which came about after the battery and electrics were relocated under the gas tank. The tank itself was stretched, and the stock tachometer bolted to the tank’s forward edge “because it looks good.”
Leading the way is a chromed Shadow ACE headlight, while bringing up the rear is a Drag Specialties billet cateye taillight that bolts to the left swingarm end. The seat, Tshaped handlebar, pegs and fenders are by Cobra, and Berg fashioned the aluminum foot controls. The brake rotors and pads came from Braking (which Berg pronounces “Brake King”), and were plumbed using steel-braided lines.
As if the acres of gleaming metal weren’t eye-catching enough, Damon’s Creations in Brea, California, painted the cycle parts a brilliant shade of yellow that’s impossible to ignore.
Berg’s musical influences while building the stripped Six were no less attention-getting. Resisting the temptation to blare Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” Berg says he “cranked Metallica’s new Load CD up to 11.” Compared to that, the unmuffled* exhaust doesn’t seem loud at all.
Royal Star Eleganza
“Wow, nice bike!” Berg exclaimed upon seeing CW s studio photos of the Cobra Royal Star. “It’s funny, I throw these things together and somehow I never quite see them completed.”
That’s a pity, because the Royal Star Berg built is a truly beautiful motorcycle.
“The stock Royal Star had some nice lines, but they were in the wrong places,” Berg allows. “For this bike, I was thinking 1930s Bugatti, but hightech with carbon-fiber. The paint scheme (Lexus Champagne, sprayed by Damon’s) is 1930s art-deco.” Musically, Berg listened to Enya, whose New Age vocalizations echoed the Eleganza’s exquisite French curves.
Berg began the Royal Star’s transformation by removing the ridges from the stock fenders and taking molds of the smoothed pieces. These, Cobra
used as patterns, producing exact duplicates in carbon-fiber. Berg then frenched twin Drag Specialties taillights into the rear fender, which was mounted directly to the swingarm, closer to the tire than before.
As he had done on the Valkyrie,
Berg cleaned up the area beneath the seat by relocating the electrics to under the fuel tank. The battery, however, had to stay. “There just wasn’t anywhere else to put it,” he complains.
The tank-top instrument nacelle was duplicated in carbon-fiber, while the tank itself was reshaped, the stock gas cap tunneled-in flush, and a strip of carbon-fiber laid on top, under a layer of clear-coat.
“They used to do that with pot leaves on choppers in the ’70s,” Berg recalls. “I did it with a real spider once.”
Berg pitched the Royal Star’s plastic headstock “molding” into the nearest
dumpster, and replaced it with 18gauge real steel. And he also fashioned the metal sidecovers, which evoke the floating grills seen on luxury cars in the 1940s and ’50s. Borrowing another old hot-rodder’s trick-one that has carried over to today’s sports cars and pickup tmcks-the Royal Star’s chassis was “slammed” to the ground using new swingarm linkage plates, a Cobra forklowering kit and low-profile Pirelli tires.
The 80-spoke, 17-inch wheels were made especially for Berg by Hallcraft, while the six-piston brake calipers were sourced from the YZF750R parts book. The rotors and pads came from Braking.
Berg made the handlebar himself, routing the necessary wiring inside and hiding the starter and horn buttons in the bar ends using microswitches mounted on washers.
Berg also made the steel-braided brake lines and the forward-mounted foot controls, while McCool built the 2 'A-inch staggered-dual exhausts and Cobra provided the headlight visor, seat, pegs and axle covers.
Engine-wise, the V-Four received transplanted V-Max cams and valve plus ’70s-vintage Mikuni
Solex pumper carbs topped off with a set of McCooFs velocity stacks.
A V-Max ring and pinion also were employed, because the one-toothsmaller pinion allows better acceleration-albeit at the expense of speedometer accuracy. A Pro One black box gives a different ignition curve and a higher rev limit.
Externally, the engine cases were stripped and polished, and the cylinder head fins were trimmed and polished so that the engine “looked more like a motor than an air compressor.”
“The original concept was to turn each bike into a sort of two-wheeled Lexus,” Boyko explains. “As we got into it, though, we thought maybe we were screwing up by going with the same motif on all three. The Royal Star is the only one that stuck to the original nlan.”
You’ve got to love it when a plan comes together.
Vulcan Green Streak
“The Kawi was the easiest of the three,” Berg says of the Cobra Vulcan Green Streak, which started life as an ordinary Kawasaki 1500 Classic. “The coolest parts are the fork, the wheels and the front brakes, which came off a ZX-7RR. It’s noteworthy because we machined the Ninja rear wheel and Vulcan hub and welded them together. I love challenges like that!”
“We’d always talked about putting roadrace stuff on a cruiser,” Boyko adds. “Neither one of us wanted to build another V-Twin hot-rod like the ACE Digger (CW, March, 1996), but the Vulcan is kind of that way.”
Unlike the other two bikes, Berg began the Vulcan project by extending the Vulcan’s Ninja fork 1 inch. He then shortened the springs to make them stiffer, and machined a larger steering stem to tie everything together. Braking rotors took up residence between the polished six-piston Ninja front and single-piston Vulcan rear calipers, and Metzeler tires were spooned onto the polished Ninja rims.
The Vulcan’s front-end treatment consists of a Headwinds billet-aluminum headlight and a Ness flat-track handlebar, onto which Berg installed Ness billet grips, polished stock levers and hom and starter buttons from a 1929 Harley-Davidson. As on the Royal Star, the wiring runs inside the handlebar. Berg made the steel-braided brake lines; the steel-braided cables are by Motion Pro.
Because the Ninja rear wheel was wider than the Vulcan’s, Berg had to trim off the rear frame rails. He then bolted on a Cobra gray leather seat, fiberglass fender and license-plate bracket, plus “the same taillight that’s used on the new ExcelsiorHenderson.” Progressive Suspension billet-aluminum shocks completed the rear-end overhaul.
Visually, Berg liked the Vulcan’s overall look, but there were some parts he just couldn’t fathom.
“A lot of stuff I saw and said,
‘Why’d they do that?’ ”
The worst offender was the rectifier, which Berg relocated from out in the breeze onto the swingarm,
“where it should have been in the first place.” Berg also disliked the stock tank-top instrument nacelle, so he removed it and frenched-in a Drag Specialties speedometer and a Goodridge flush-mount filler cap. As on the other two bikes, a Pingle petcock supplies fuel, this time to a Mikuni HSR 42mm Harley carb mounted to the stock manifold and fitted with the requisite McCool pol-
ished-aluminum velocity stack.
McCool also made the chromed 2-into-l exhaust. Seamless-looking, it is in fact tapered from the collector all the way back, “using millions of individual cones,” exaggerates Boyko.
The engine is an interesting mix of Vulcan 1500D and earlier 1500A parts. Inside the D-model cases are an Amodel crank, flywheel and balancer, which together weigh 10 pounds less than their newer equivalents. The fourspeed gearbox was similarly mixed and matched, with close ratios from first to third-“I wanted it to just slam off the line,” says Berg-and an overdrive fourth. Lastly, Berg opted for A-model engine sidecovers, because they looked better, weighed less and let the pipe tuck in tighter.
Performance mods to the big VTwin include Webcam camshafts, a polished crank and cylinder heads that were skimmed and ported by Boyko’s brother, Teddy. New oil lines, sparkplug wires and a choke knob relocated to the left side of the carb, like a Harley, completed the work.
“With the Vulcan, we were going for classic American lines,” Berg declares. “The color was Ken’s call; he saw it on a car one day and just freaked out. Damon’s painted it green, which Kawasaki liked a lot.”
While he was building the Vulcan, Berg said he listened to rock-and-roll oldies, which is the musical genre that Boyko prefers. How fitting, then, that Boyko is planning to take these rockand-roll motorcycles to the nation’s largest hot-rod gathering, Hot August Nights in Reno, Nevada.
And after that? Boyko hasn’t decided yet. With the Dealernews show moving to the mecca of speed, Indianapolis, next year, he’s thinking
fast-as in a CBR1100XXor ZX-11based cruiser.
Now, that’s a hot-rod bike that’s certain to rock and roll!
