Call from New York one hot Florida afternoon. His name is Tim. Short conversation. It's been three years that he's saved money to have his dream bike built. Three years looking at bikes in magazines and surfing the Internet. He followed my project on Bikernet.com and decided that he wanted to meet right away. Less than one week later, Tim is in my Florida studio. Short introduction. He owns a successful electrical company. He even obtained the green light (smile) from his lovely wife Donna to spend his money with me. In 10 minutes, we agree on a budget, on the details that will make it his bike dream a reality. I love clients who know what they want especially when they add: "But Cyril, do anything you think is right, because I trust you." Tim tells me that he has only one request. With a big smile he tells me that he wants to call his bike 'Surreal Huze'. I am so surprised. I can only repeat, "Are you sure? Don't feel obliged, etc." He continues to grin a knowing look of satisfaction. Some clients have a very special unique way of motivating me.

Tim bought my idea of chrome inserts in the gas tank. I know it's going to be a nightmare of welding/chroming/fitting/epoxing. Shaping the inserts made of three pieces of steel for each side is relatively easy. But now we need to tig-weld the three steps together, forcing the hand created piece to fit the gas tank curves. A double headache since left and right sides are always different. To make things more complicated, I also decided to add two round chrome emblems on which we will later sand blast the name of the bike.

At this stage, we made the fitting as good as possible knowing that during final molding, before going to paint, we can make final adjustments. Right away, I sent all inserts to chrome, because final fitting and epoxing must be performed before the gas tank is painted. I also wanted to create an exhaust system with the same shaped accent as swingarm's. Starting with U bends, we cut, tack welded, until the pipes followed the swingarm curve. Right away, I named them "flow pipes". It took us more than a day to form them correctly. Tig welding is delicate because before chroming, polishing must hide welds and pinholes. But it's worth the time investment because I hope this type of exhaust creation becomes popular with bike builders.

No custom would be custom without custom bars. The bike has already several Art-Deco features (swingarm, gas tank inserts and several of my parts). One of my guys was exactly Tim's size. So, I checked the correct handlebars position, rise and width, I questioned the design for the art-deco shape? It took me three days to find a single idea (so many things already done). We mocked up a shape by laying sections of tubing on the floor to form the desired shape. The difficulty was creating the v-shape I wanted (reminiscent of the rear fender) with a clean and strong weld. We must also be able to run the electrical inside the bars with a discreet exit through the riser bolts.