Usually the feature stories in this magazine are all about the custom sportbike dream. You know, the story of how passionate enthusiasts, through some combination of persistence, dedication and hard work (and, more often than not, questionable lending practices), come to build and ride the sportbike of their dreams. Not this one. This story is about how quickly that apocryphal dream can turn into a nightmare--which is mostly what happened with the bike shown here, the one that you readers voted for to win our recent Beauty and the Beast bike search.
The bike in question is a zero-mile, 2005 Yamaha R1, built to order for a cursed original owner by Patrick's Performance (www.patricksperformance.com) in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Owner number one, the original dreamer, spared absolutely no expense when it came to creating his version of the ideal sportbike. He ordered up all the hottest custom sportbike mods and accessories, including wild custom paint, an extended swingarm, a fat rear tire on trick RC Components billet rims, plenty of bling, the works--all the stuff that we want for our own dream bikes. Patrick Pawlukiewicz, the owner and chief creative mind behind Patrick's Performance, was all too happy to oblige and went right to work on making this rider's dream his reality.
And then things started falling apart. A civilian contractor by profession, owner number one soon received word that he was being shipped back to Iraq for work just before the bike was scheduled for completion. Then, to make matters worse, his girl walked out on him--and, as it turned out, she was the chief financier of this little project (remember our note about "questionable lending practices" earlier?) and guess what, she wanted her bucks back. Suddenly, owner number one's dream bike was his worst nightmare, a gleaming, candy-coated symbol of everything that had gone wrong.
Next thing you know, delivery date arrived and Pawlukiewicz dropped off the bike at owner number one's house outside of Kansas City. Needless to say, Pawlukiewicz found the new owner to be less than enthusiastic about his new ride, for obvious reasons. In fact, the next day, after Pawlukiewicz had returned to back to his Wisconsin shop, he learned that owner number one had actually traded his creation in to the local Yamaha dealer for a box-stock R1 and a few grand to keep his ex off of his back--without ever taking the custom bike for a ride! And just to complicate things even further, none of this happened before the owner entered preliminary pictures of his ride into our Beauty and the Beast bike search back in better times. And right about the same time the bike was being delivered and traded in, and perhaps lost forever, was when we got mixed up in this mess--after we counted up our final votes and called the now-former owner (and Pawlukiewicz) to tell them that our readers had fallen in love with the bike and voted it the winner of our Beauty and the Beast contest. What to do, what to do...
Luckily, Pawlukiewicz stepped up as the hero of this story and took control of the situation, making arrangements to purchase the bike back from the dealership to guarantee that it would be available for us to feature in the magazine. Besides, this decision was a no-brainer for Pawlukiewicz--he and his coworkers had literally hundreds of hours invested in conceiving and constructing the bike, and the last thing he wanted was for the bike to rot away ignored in some Kansas dealer's back room. Better to have it back in his possession where he could connect it with a new owner who would give it the love, attention--and mileage--that such a meticulously customized bike deserved.
Which brings us all back around to the bike, which--if the thousands of votes cast in our contest are any indication--is all you readers really care about anyways. As mentioned before, Pawlukiewicz started this project with a brand-new, zero-mile, 2005 R1 purchased from a local dealership and returned directly to his shop, where it was completely torn down in preparation for the extensive modifications. First came the chrome, with Pawlukiewicz shipping off the frame and subframe, forks and triple clamps, footrest brackets and dozens of other OEM pieces to Elite Finishes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for a triple dip in the shiny stuff. "I always chrome everything," Pawlukiewicz says, "never polish. Polished parts require so much maintenance, and besides, they never look as good as chrome. On a bike like this, nothing but chrome will do."
At the same time as he was preparing the hard parts for chroming, Pawlukiewicz also delivered the bodywork to Will Christman of The Sign Shop (www.airbrushcreations.com) in Racine, Wisconsin, for the standout paint work. This would turn out to be by far the most complicated portion of the project. The latest-generation R1 is an exceptionally difficult bike to paint, Christman says, because the body consists of so many small parts that are a challenge to keep aligned during painting (so that all the graphics match up when the bike is reassembled) and also because the origami styling lacks any broad, open surfaces to lay an intricate design over. Working with colors specified by the original owner (House Of Kolor silver base covered with oriental blue and cobalt blue candies), Christman started in with the sketches and came up with an intricate reversed-graphic pattern, where the positive graphics on the bottom of the bike transfer to the negative on the top and vice-versa. "My goal was to do something with lots of dimension in it," Christman says, "something that really plays with the negative space in the graphic design and something that was more than just a graphic on top of paint." The effect in person is outstanding, with the transfer from negative to positive graphics giving the paint a mesmerizing, 3D effect that makes the graphics look like they are jumping right off the paint. Especially arresting is the area over the windscreen (an aftermarket screen from Sportech), where Christman let the chromed finish of the Sportech piece peek through the paint for some extra dazzle. Christman estimates that he has invested at least 80 hours over the course of three months in painting this bike. And Pawlukiewicz says it shows: "Will did an awesome job with this one, really knocked off our socks. Pictures just don't do it justice."
With the paint and plating both in progress, Pawlukiewicz next reached out to the aftermarket to infuse the bike with plenty of street style. Step one was a new swingarm from Trac Dynamics, with a six-inch stretch and tubular underbracing, in a width sufficient to accommodate an 8.5-inch rear rim and an extra-wide tire. The rims are RC Components forged aluminum pieces in the "Sheriff" pattern, the rear one fitted with a 250mm Avon Venom tire. "I always use a 250 tire instead of a 240," Pawlukiewicz tells us, giving away a little trade secret. "Not only does it look a little wider, but the 250 also protrudes slightly past the edge of the rim and acts as a chain guard, to keep the chain from scratching up that expensive rim if it gets a little loose."
While he was wrapping up the chassis, Pawlukiewicz also sorted out the brakes, deleting the right front rotor and caliper to show off the front wheel and adding a Galfer Wave rotor and stainless line to the left side to make sure braking power didn't fall off too much. He also took a few extra hours to shave the caliper mount off the right lower fork leg before chroming. "So many builders just pop off the rotor and leave the hanger on there, which just looks unfinished to me," he says. The rear brake was dressed up with a Performance Machine Race caliper and a Patrick's Performance-logo wave-cut rotor manufactured for his shop by 3D Inc. in Zion, Illinois.
3D Inc. also manufactured the other Patrick's Performance-brand bolt-on products fitted to this bike, including the mirror block-offs, reservoir caps, gorgeous reverse-engraved upper triple clamp cover and bar ends. Other parts, like the flush-mount LED front turn signals and machined front sprocket cover, came from Greggs Customs, while the rear sprocket and gas cap are from Vortex and the adjustable kickstand and lowering links in the rear are made by Speedlink. Before assembly, a few of these choice components--specifically, the rear sprocket, front sprocket cover, mirror block-offs, clutch cover, bar ends, front brake caliper, reservoir covers and upper triple cover--were powdercoated blue by J&J Powder Coating in Zion, Illinois, to complement the bike's graphic scheme.
Speaking of complementing, Angel Eyes LED headlight rings cast off a blue hue and really make the bike stand out from the front after dark. Pawlukiewicz says that, surprisingly, installing the Angel Eyes was one of the most difficult tasks in assembling the bike! "To get those on, you have to totally disassemble the headlight buckets and then bake the headlights in an oven for eight minutes at 150 degrees to separate the lenses so that you can insert the Angel Eyes underneath [he's not making this up]. Then you have to put it all back together, taking special care not to get the lens sealant--which is like windshield sealant, in that it never appears to dry--all over everything, because it's impossible to get off. Definitely read the instructions first before you try to put these on!"
In the end, the Angel Eyes look great--as does the entire bike, good enough to rise to the top of the crop and dominate the reader voting in our first bike search and win the coveted spot on Super Streetbike's first-ever pull-out poster. Despite all the hectic moments and chaos involved in construction and beyond, Pawlukiewicz still remains excited about the bike and isn't at all unhappy to have it back in his possession--especially now that it's been validated by thousands of Super Streetbike readers as a knockout custom sportbike.
It's the kind of bike that dreams--and the occasional nightmare--are made of.