In the beginning there was chrome, and it was good. The first call that most custom sportbike builders make is to the chrome shop, where they send off their wheels and other easily unbolted bits for a quick chrome dip. Chrome is a bit like crack, though, and once you have a little you want more. Lots more. Pretty soon, factory coating is being stripped off of the frame and even the fuel tank in preparation for more shiny stuff. And now that the wizards of bling have figured out how to reliably plate plastic, it seems like you can't go to a bike night in po-dunk nowhere without seeing another all-chrome Hayabusa. Chrome is everywhere, and chromed out sportbikes are so, like, 2004.
BJ and Johnnie Basnett, the brothers that now run Rick's Motorcycles (www.ricksmotorcycles.com) in Plaistow, New Hampshire, have been building hot rod bikes for years now and they've seen (and built) their share of chromed-out machinery. When it came time to style their latest ride, this radical Honda CBR900RR/1100XX hybrid (more on that in a minute), the New England pair knew that they would have to see beyond chrome to make the impact they wanted to have with this bike. As an experiment, they shipped out a set of RC Components "Sheriff" wheels to be gold plated. That's right, gold-plated. We're not talking powder coating or any other cheesy treatment, but real-deal, 24-karat gold plating. Gold like "Goldmember." Gold like "The Man With The Golden Gun." Gold like Run DMC, circa 1985. Now that's bling!
If the gold plating looks extra rich on this ride, that's because it's laid down on top of a traditional show chrome plating, the only way to get the deep, lustrous look that the Rick's dudes wanted for this bike. The wheels came back from the plater looking so good that they promptly sent out the frame, swing arm and the rest of the bare-metal bits, including the French-made grips from Rizoma, for the Midas Touch. The gold treatment is hardly cheap-figure at least three times the dollar amount of regular chrome plating, BJ tells us. But it sure looks the biz, and pops off in a sea of same-old, chrome-out rides. Is it any surprise, then, that this gold-plated stunner took home the "People's Choice" trophy at last summer's huge and highly competitive Palm Beach Sportbike Build Off?
Not that this radical ride necessarily needs extra bling to pull down the votes. With all the innovative engineering and custom fabrication that went into the creation of this bike, you could cover it in Krylon and tinfoil and it would still be one of the most cleverly conceived and perfectly executed custom sportbikes that we've ever featured in Super Streetbike. Look beyond the gold plating and you might think that this is nothing more than an extra-clean 1999 CBR900RR. Well, think again. Underneath the clean, tasteful House of Kolor pearl white/candy tangerine two-tone paint scheme (applied in-house by Eric Chase), the boys from Rick's have shoehorned a super-sized 1998 CBR1100XX Blackbird motor into the nine-hundo chassis for extra thrust. Sure, they could have dropped a few grand on internal engine work to come up with an extra 25 hp, but they chose to install the upsized engine instead-there's no replacement, after all, for displacement! Never mind that it probably would have been much easier just to tweak the 900 motor. Installing the Blackbird mill turned out to be anything but a bolt-in affair. The Blackbird motor is a few inches wider than the 900, which required that the frame be split in two and widened accordingly. Also, every motor mount had to be removed and relocated, but in the end it was worth it not only for the extra power but also for the Blackbird's dual-shaft counterbalancer, which makes for an extra-smooth ride.