The Knuckster Deception
The Knuckster Deception
Homage to a Highboy
DAVID EDWARDS
FORGIVE YOURSELF. YOU aren’t the first person fooled by this motorcycle, nor will you be the last. Even experts are left pulling their chins by what at first appears to be a very well executed 1940s Harley Knucklehead done up in California bobber style.
Or is it?
Case in point: An Orange County Harley-Davidson dealer circles the bike, parked at a local hot-rod hangout and drawing a crowd. After a pause for reflection, he approaches the owner with two questions. The first is typical. “Okay,” he says, “what is it?”
For the answer we have to go back to late 2004. Ken Boyko and Denny Berg, a.k.a. Cobra USA’s Special Projects Division, are pondering what to build for the upcoming Indianapolis Dealer Expo, biggest show in the motorcycle aftermarket. Over the past decade, Cobra (www.cobrausa.com) has become known for its Indy showstoppers, more akin to concept bikes than the usual catalog queens. Boyko & Berg have collaborated on 20 or more machines, everything from an Indian Chief replica that Kawasaki turned into the Drifter to a carbon-fiber take on Harley board-trackers that wowed viewers at the Guggenheim Museum’s “Art of the Motorcycle” exhibit in Las Vegas.
Engine choice for the 2005 bike was easy. Cobra was rolling out a new line of Sportster exhausts and Berg knew where a 91-inch S&S Buell-style motor sat on a pallet, unsold for several years and available at a good price. Displacing 149 lcc, fed by a Super G carburetor and working through a Baker six-speed gearset, the mill is good for about 100 horsepower-or about three times what a back-in-the-day bob-job jockey had to work with.
The decision to build a bobber literally fell into Boyko’s lap-or at least his mailbox. An eclectic collector of bikes (Suzuki RE-5 Rotary to Bill Bell Baja Thumper) and musclecars (he and 15-year-old son Dustin are fabbing a ’68 COPO Camaro replica), Ken picked up his copy of Goodtimes Gazette, put out by the Goodguys Rod & Custom Association. There on the cover was all the inspiration Boyko needed, maybe the cleanest Deuce Highboy hot-rod ever constructed. Owned by Roger Ritzow and built by Troy Trepanier’s Rad Rods shop in Illinois, the $300,000plus jewel of a ’32 Ford had just been named Street Rod of the Year. Should have been the decade.
“The second I saw that car, I was on the phone to Denny‘Can we build a bike like this?’ It was just so simple, so understated,” says Boyko.
Berg jumped at the chance to build what he saw as a “lakester,” paying homage to the Mojave dry-lakes racers of the immediate post-WWII era.
“I had this collection of ideas banging around in my head that I had to get rid of,” he says.
But first came a courtesy call to Ritzow and Trepanier seeking their permission. They not only gave the project their blessing, they provided the exact code for the customblend gray-green paint. Then stayed in L.A. an extra day after the Grand National Roadster Show-where they nabbed Outstanding Paint and Outstanding Detail trophies-so the Cobra bike and their car could be photographed together on the famous Pomona NHRA dragstrip.
To fully evoke the period look, Berg had to resort to several ruses, an easy task for someone who crafts replicas of vintage black-powder firearms as a sideline. Foremost are the CCI Knucklehead-style dress-up covers, which gave the bike its “Knuckster” moniker (Knuckle cylinders atop Sportster cases, get it?). Intended for a Big Twin, they required some finagling to mate happily with the S&S top end. Situated between the covers is a home-brewed air intake.
“It’s more a bird-deflector, actually,” says Berg. “I’ve been dragging that part around since 1973—it was originally an aftermarket clutch cover for a Triumph.”
The exhaust started out as an off-the-shelf item for a Ford flathead V-Eight, mounted at the correct 10-degree down angle. Just as on the old lakester jalopies, there’s a blank-off plate and a sub-muffler that exits on the other side. And, no, the kickstart pedal doesn’t actually work, but Berg insists it’s more than mere decoration.
“It’s not a kickstarter; think of it as a ‘heat shield’,” he jokes.
With just six weeks to build the bike, Berg couldn’t risk dealing with flaky vendors, so the call went out to Paughco, which quickly delivered one of its rigid frames, a narrow springer fork, a Mustang-replica gas tank and an oil tank.
Berg had a mocked-up rolling chassis a week later, though he couldn’t resist adding a few of his own tweaks. He welded sidecar lugs and propstand mounts to the frame’s axle plates, plus an extra pair of lugs on the front downtubes, to add an air of authenticity. Mindful of the extra oomph put out by the S&S 91-incher, he beefed up the frame’s top motor mount.
The engine’s output also dictated disc brakes instead of traditional drums. Stopping is a tag-team affair, with Performance Machine calipers putting the pinch on slotted Russell rotors. Wanting to keep the handlebars as old-timey as possible, Berg hid the front master cylinder-borrowed from a GSX-R-between the frame’s downtubes.
Seat is a Corbin-Gentry repop of a 1952 Harley KR saddle, complete with periodperfect cobbled edge. Rear fender is one of the few remaining NOS English aftermarket Wassells from the 1960s, while the low-rise sissybar is pure Berg.
“A trim piece for a Kawasaki Nomad saddlebag just lying around the shop,” says Berg. “I cleaned it up, made it fit and it cost next to nothing, just like the good old days.”
Only better, of course. Not a bad metaphor for the Knuckster, come to think of it.
Oh, remember the quizzical Harley dealer? His second question was also pretty typical: “Is it for sale?” Not a chance.
