Triumph Daytona 955i - Soul Keeper

If you're a regular reader of this magazine you're no doubt already familiar with the name C&S Customs, either as one of the nation's biggest suppliers of extended swingarms or as the builders of "The Gate Crasher" (see Super Streetbike July 2005, page 52), a mind-blowing Suzuki Hayabusa-based chopper that put the Mocksville, North Carolina, shop on the map as one of the nation's premier custom sportbike constructors. The Gate Crasher remains the ultimate middle finger to all those haters out there who claim that all customized 'Busas look the same, and it was that bike that captured the attention of the producers of the forthcoming Metric Revolution custom sportbike build-off (www.metrictv.com) and earned Jason Sapp and Tommy Clark, the guys behind C&S Customs, one of the nine spots in the inaugural build-off that is expected to be televised next year.

Almost one year to the day after they first debuted The Gate Crasher at Bike Week 2005, Sapp and Clark found themselves again in Daytona Beach for Bike Week 2006, this time with a Metric TV camera crew on their tails filming their every move for the upcoming production. Impressive progress for just one year. A few days later, the C&S crew got their build-off bike (Metric Revolution builders don't choose the bikes they will customize-the donor bikes are chosen at random by the Metric TV producers and given to the builders). The pair was surprised to find that it was an uncommon Triumph Daytona 995i sportbike, a model with virtually no aftermarket parts support whatsoever. Not that this mattered to Sapp and Clark one whit. "I don't care what they gave us," Sapp says. "It could have been a tricycle, and we'd have still done the same thing, and made it bad!"

The only complicating factor in this little fairy tale is that, at the same time, the C&S Custom aftermarket swingarm business was absolutely exploding. When they agreed to build a bike for the Metric Revolution, Sapp and Clark were already sitting on orders for a lot-make that a hell of a lot-of swingarms for manufacture, to the tune of almost 600 of them in 2006. Being conscientious businessmen, the two took measures to ensure they would deliver what they'd already promised before they started any other projects, so the donor Daytona sat in a corner of the shop untouched for quite a few weeks while Sapp and Clark welded up swingarms by the dozen. If you've read our other Metric Revolution stories, you know that the builders were given a strict 180 days to complete their bikes, and we're sure that you can see where this is going

Finally, with the bulk of the long arms out the door, Sapp and Clark were at last able to sit down and start in on the Triumph. And don't think there was any head scratching over whether to build a conventional custom sportbike or one of C&S's signature sportbike choppers-Sapp knew from the start that this Brit bike would get chopped. "I'm such a chopper guy," Sapp says. "I love bikes like those built by the Martin Brothers, long and low. Jesse James too." Chopper it was, then.

Fortunately, the Metric Revolution rules were pretty wide open-builders had to use the original donor bike's motor and main frame components, but otherwise it was pretty much anything goes, allowing Sapp to set his imagination free. C&S started by pulling out the Daytona's inline three-cylinder lump of an engine and sending it off to Greg Rose at Reflections in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to be polished and prettied up. A few engine covers were chromed at the same time, and a surprising amount of effort was made to clean up and hide as much of the wiring and plumbing as possible, as well as fabricating a slimmer radiator that could be concealed between the frame rails. The Triumph engine utilizes a fairly sophisticated closed-loop fuel injection system, so this was left unmolested. In fact, the motor is basically as Triumph intended performance-wise, save for the trick one-off exhaust C&S made that exits into dual twin-tipped underseat outlets. Extra cool points for the exhaust heat shields in the old-school Triumph script, as well as the Metric Revolution-logo spinner attached the right side of the cylinder block. Sucking up to the producers can't hurt...

The frame on this beast, unbelievably, uses a bunch of the stock pieces. The main frame spars are factory Triumph pieces (maintaining the familiar dual-tube look of the Triumph frame) that were extended eight inches forward with the steerer tube relocated to provide a 55-degree rake as, oddly, Triumph doesn't supply its Daytona in such a configuration. The remainder of the main frame was fabricated from a mix of custom bent aluminum tubing and machined pieces, including the lower frame cradle that was fabbed up to give Sapp somewhere to mount the forward foot controls and custom radiator.

Swingarms are C&S's stock in trade, so you'd expect this one to be distinctive. Sapp and Clark created a tubular, single-sided, right-side-drive arm mounted to an air ride suspension and, as if that weren't wild enough, added an outboard-mounted rear brake rotor to the jackshaft for added visual impact. Hanging off the back is a positively massive, 360-series Vee-Rubber tire that's currently as big as you can go with a motorcycle tire. The intricately detailed arm was chromed by S&H plating in Nashville, Tennessee, and, yes, C&S can make one for your Daytona chopper too. What do you mean, you don't have a Daytona chopper? They can make the same one for any other sportbike as well, in that case.

To fit that 360-section back tire requires a massive back wheel, the wheel of choice in this case being an 18-inch (by 14 inches wide) Weld Racing "Thunder" model, which C&S further tricked out with a custom-made 3-D spinner and a deadly looking spiked center cap. The front wheel is a direct contrast to the rear, a tall-and-skinny 21-by-2.15 incher, and both the front and rear brake rotors are custom-cut to match the Weld wheel pattern.

Said front wheel is held in place by a set of outrageous, 10-inch-over fork legs from Pro-One, mounted to seven-degree raked triples from the same company and fitted with a fork brace to prevent flexing. The finishing touch on the front end is the front fender that began as a blank from Custom Works that Sapp and Clark cut and molded to match the styling of the rest of the bike. This is attached by chromed aluminum daggers, which were also created and machined in-house, as was the ornamental fender tip and the spiked caps at the top and bottom of the fork legs

The handlebars were also built by Sapp and hung with Arlen Ness controls, including an internal throttle assembly to hide all the unsightly lines and cables. The foot controls are the forward type made by Accutronix, and Sapp has retrofitted this bike with a foot clutch/jockey shift conversion so that the left foot pedal operates the clutch, and the big lever with the skull mounted on top on the left side is the gear shifter.

The crazy-looking gas tank was hand-hammered in-house by Sapp, and it's actually quite huge, as the Triumph (any modern sportbike, for that matter) has an awful lot of wires, hoses, computers and of course a big 'ole unsightly airbox to hide. The oval intake ducts on either side of the front of the tank route fresh air into the motor ram-air style, and the stock gauge cluster has been relocated to the top of the tank, where it cleverly conceals the fuel filler in addition to transmitting data regarding the bike's speed and revs. That tailsection should look familiar to any sportbike freak-it was lifted intact off of a late-model Yamaha R1 and is mounted to a custom subframe.

Wrapping the ride up is tasty paint from Robbie Norris at Robbie's Airbrush (www.robbiesairbursh.com) in Lincolnton, North Carolina. From a distance it looks like a generic marbleized effect in red, yellow and orange, but when you get close you see that it's actually an impossibly intricate design of flaming skulls, a pattern that inspired Sapp and Clark to dub this bike "The Soul Keeper."

Remarkably, Sapp, Clark and the rest of the C&S crew managed to wrap up this hand-built creation in just six weeks from start to finish-an amazing feat. Unfortunately, as a result of the greatly delayed start discussed at the beginning of the article, the team ultimately missed the 180-day deadline set by Metric TV producers and were levied with a points penalty that likely kept this bike from being one of the contest's three finalists (of nine), even though it universally wowed the judging panel. Build-off results aside, does missing that deadline really matter to anybody outside the TV show? Hell no-just look at this bike, an 11 1/2-foot-long sport bike/chopper hybrid, handmade from the pieces of a quirky Euro corner carver. Can you imagine anything more radical than that?

Like Jason Sapp says, "I don't care what they gave us. It could have been a tricycle, and we'd have still done the same thing, and made it bad!"