Greg on a Titan with the Wicked Apes Harley Handlebars
Bikers often ask me what is themost visible customization they can make on their Harley-Davidson.
For 20 years, I have customized Harleys, metric cruisers, and insanely wild choppers. My answer comes easy: a pair of custom handlebars beats everything hands down.
Handlebars extend the profile of the front-end, giving your bike its look.
Stock handlebars have no real personality. Everyone has the same.
Replacing plain vanilla handlebars by custom bars make your bike shine like a crazy diamond in your neighborhood, among your rider buddies, at Sturgis or at Daytona Beach.
Over the last 5 years, I created a whole line of custom handlebars for Harley-Davidson motorcycles. All of them bornin the USA with materials Made in America. All of them with completely standard fittings so they can be mounted your bike in no time. The cost of mounting kick-ass custom handlebars on your Harley comes way under a typical customization job, and you really get the look.
Check out these handlebars. Write me to let me know your opinion. Talk to your dealer. Or swing by our workshop if you are in the neighborhood.
Fact is, the least expensive and most dramatic way to transform your stock H-D into a hell of a bike is a pair of awesome custom handlebars. Guaranteed.
In this video, I show you how you can wire internally you new custom Harley handlebars.
I picked a pair of Deep Sickness® ape hangers with sharp points and turns. Their shape is typically thought to be very difficult to wire internally. The method I show you will greatly ease up your job, and reduce the total task time to about 20 minutes.
Please excuse the poor quality of the sound, we shot this one "ghetto-style" with a mini camera.
Z-bars would give any Harley the old school look of the end 60s, early 70s. My custom Reckless Bars give them a new radical spin.
Harley-Davidson Reckless Handlebars: Z-Bars with a Twist
At the time, the Z shape was less pronounced than on modern Z-bars, and the pullback more angled. In my opinion, a deep pullback helps the rider sitting in a more upright position, but strains his wrists by angling them in a rather unnatural position.
Some Z-bars are shaped like high ape hangers, which does not fit the body geometry of shorter riders. And other Z-bars are too low ('shorty'), forcing the rider to lean towards the handlebars - a position that quickly becomes uncomfortable on a long ride.
To keep in with the essence of the Z-bar while offering very good comfort to the rider, I re-engineered the Z-bar and gave them a much more aggressive, more radical bends. This is --in my humble opinion-- design evolution in progress.
The Reckless Bars offer the following benefits:
A limited pullback angle to offer a relaxing position to your wrists
The controls are angled downwards to give you better control of your front-end
Their vertical bars are arched to give the Z a very unique look
Their dimensions set most riders in a comfortable middle-of-the-road sitting position
Just like all the custom Harley-Davidson handlebars that come out of my shop, we paid extreme attention to detail:
We use DOM steel tubing, not some cheapskate, cut-corners imported metal
With a diameter of 1-1/2" and a wall thickness of .120, these bars will outlast any bike
All segments are TIG-welded for a sturdier build
Fitments are 100% Harley standard specifications for a quick and easy installation
All control fitments accept stock H-D controls
The bars come drilled for internal wiring for a cleaner look
Harley Handlebars from Hell: the Ultra Wicked Bars
I designed the Ultra Wicked Handlebars with a hellish trident design to set your horse apart from the herd.
There ain't no way in a million years you and your buddies will find these bars on any other rides. If you do, this is a cheap Chinese copy.
The Ultra Wicked Bars are pre-drilled for external wiring, and ready for internal wiring. Internal wiring gives your front-end a sleeker look: the usual clusterf### of wires is routed through the bars (switch housing, kill switch, start & run switch, turn signals, brake switch, high-low beam).
Just like my other bars, the Ultra Wicked Handlebars are made from top quality 1 1/2” DOM steel tubing. I profoundly dislike the flimsy steel of stock Harley-Davidson handlebars. Even well-known after-market part makers use 1" and 1-1/4" steel: I find their bars lack the strong look-and-feel custom handlebars should have.
In their standard version, the Ultra Wicked Bars measure 32” end-to-end, with a 6” rise. The risers can be made longer or shorter, tailored to your riding style to get you maximum comfort.
I make them available in a wide variety of custom colors to match your bike. You can also order yours chromed, powder coated, or in raw steel.
My Ultra Wicked Handlebars fit all V-Twin models, and I also make them for metric cruisers.
Specifications:
Dom tubing 1-1/2" diameter with a .120 wall thickness
Stock Harley Davidson control fitments •
TIG-welded segments
Standard fitment for easy, uncostly installation
Drilled for internal wiring for a sleek look
14" pull-back and 32" width
Come in raw steel ready for paint, powder-coated or chromed
The Flying Vengeance Handlebars give your Harley Davidson motorcycle the B2 Stealth Bomber look
I just dig these bars. The first model I designed was for my wife's chopper, a mean-looking machine with a wheelbase over 10-feet long.
My primary concerned when I designed these handlebars was to ensure she could easily maneuver a very long chopper with a 280-mm back tire. So I paid particular care to the position of the hands, the height of the integrated risers, and the size of the pullback.
I wanted her to feel comfortably seated, while accentuating the sick look of the chopper I had built for her. The Flying Vengeance Bars are the result of countless sleepless nights.
I engineered these solid handlebars for a number of Harley-Davidson models, with both stock and modified rake-and-trail. They fit these machines mint, giving them an absolutely unique profile. Like the threatening Delta wing of a B2 Stealth Bomber.
Check the care with which each segment has been TIG-welded, and look at the painstaking molding work we do. Look at the custom billet tips.
The Flying Vengeance Bars come pre-drilled for external wiring, and ready for internal wiring. They are made from top quality 1-½” DOM steel, the American type (not Taiwanese or Chinese steel). In their standard version, they measure 32” end-to-end with a 14" pullback for a comfortable riding position.
Like my other handlebars, I make them available in a wide variety of custom colors to match your bike. You can also order them chromed, powder-coated or raw.
The Flying Vengeance Bars fit all V-Twin models and metric cruisers alike.
Specifications:
DOM tubing 1 1/2" diameter with .120 wall thickness
Stock Harley control fitments
TIG-welded segments
Standard fitment for easy and uncostly installation
Drilled for internal wiring for a perfectly sleek look
Accent billet tips
14" pull-back and 32" width
Available in raw steel ready for paint, powder-coated or chromed
Ape hangers are a symbol. A symbol of brutal force, baddass power.
I don't know if ape hangers are born with Sonny Barger andthe Hell's Angels MC, but they sure as hell were a feature of the 1970s choppers. Captain America had a pair of them crooked handlebars.
The one thing I never liked in ape hangers is the thinness of the bars. If you gotta have high power bars, let them be thick for f$*# sakes!
That's whyI designed my own line of ape hangers for Harley Davidson. I just couldn't stand the flimsy look, so I thickened them with 1-1/2" of DOM-approved American iron. And to give them a unique look, I scalloped the vertical bar twice.
Check out these kick-ass apes!
Each segment is TIG-welded for complete safety. The stock Harley-Davidson controls can be easily re-installed on them because I made damn sure that every fitment would be standard.
This reduces the cost of customization to a couple of hours of installation time and the price of the ape hangers.
How else could you give your ride the big badass look of a full custom for less than 400 bucks? Just try to beat that.
Specifications:
DOM tubing 1-1/2" diameter with .120 wall thickness
American steel
Stock Harley control fitments
TIG-welded segments
Standard fitment
Drilled for internal wiring
20" tall and 32" wide
Available in raw and readyfor paint, powder-coated or chromed
Also available in multiple colors to match your bike, and pin-striping for cool
Engineering custom Harley-Davidson handlebars is one the joys of building choppers and customizing Harleys. Certain clients want one-off applications, fabrication projects which will set their choppers apart forever.
The chopper handlebars you see in the photo below were created for a friend for whom I built a chopper from the ground up. The chopper was very unique, and it got featured in Hot Bike Magazine in 2007.
I was prototyping custom Harley handlebars at the time, and came up with this idea which, later on, served as a base for the Ultra Wicked Bars. I never repeated this custom design still unique to this day.
Custom handlebars made for a custom chopper
Due to the extra long wheel-base, and ultra low seating position, I gave these handlebars a large pull-back. At the same time, to avoid the 'tiller effect' where the rider would have to lean forward to turn the handlebars all the way to either direction -- a position which extends the arm opposite the turn far out, and makes turning a dangerous business -- I scalloped the inside segments to bring the controls closer to the rider and closer to the tank.
As usual I used DOM tubing, and to fit this application I powder coated the bars. The controls are after-market, and they fit Harley-Davidson's bars so I engineered the bars to accept standard fittings. All segments are TIG-welded, and molded to give the handlebars a smooth curvy look. All the wiring is internal.
This is the prototype of the Ultra Wicked Handlebars. I built them for my own chopper.
At the time I engineered these 3-point bars I had another pair of custom handlebars mounted on my ride.
I had them for years and since I was re-designing some parts of my chopper (fenders, back tire system, turbo compression, etc.) I thought it was time to give the front-end a brand-new look.
As in all my custom handlebars, I used 1-1/2" DOM tubing and TIG-welded all the segments. I calculated the pull-back to allow me to sit with my back slightly arched. I had to pay special attention to the ease with which I would grab the controls: my chopper outputs about 200 horsepower at the back tire, and when the turbo kicks in... that's not a ride for kids.
As you can see, the bars are powder coated, and nicely molded. The risers are integrated. It was a prototype, I didn't engineer these bars to route the wiring internally. The controls are after-market H-D fittings: I mounted them right in, no modifications needed.
