When that bike was stolen, I wondered what I would do with all the stuff that was left over in my garage: two seats, a windshield, brake pads, oil filters, assorted spare parts, a complete luggage set and two full sets of bodywork, including this tank.
So, I can finally get this done, and after much deliberation I have also decided on a color: a delicious and thirst-quenching candy lime green, mmmh........
Obviously, before getting to the pretty bit, you have to deal with the filthy guts. There are several tank treatment products out there, but generally they consist of a de-ruster, followed by an epoxy coating.
I have done this a few times before on metal and fiberglass tanks (no need for the de-ruster with fiberglass, the revolutionary new material of the future!) so I was more than ready to do this one too, however, due to a series of circumstances, someone else did it for me... and I'm glad they did!
I must acknowledge Nico for having done, by far, the best job of sealing a tank I have ever seen.
Just take a look at this photo to get a sense of how smooth and flawless it turned out. Wow. Lemme tell ya, I'm gonna enjoy looking at that every time I fill up.
They are huge, complex pieces of art, with the 'Harley-Davidson' almost in the background, leaving 'Sportster' to play the lead role, in what is an absolutely gorgeous script.
The number 5 is there to showcase a seriously important upgrade to this model, i.e. the five-speed transmission. I know of no other instance where a gearbox was deemed to be such an important feature that the manufacturer decided to put it on the tank, right next to make and model.
In a sense it's like when watch manufacturers put "23 jewels" on the dial.
I was able to find these decals as NOS, but they were dizzyingly, shamefully expensive. I get the feeling they are hard to find, and I can't imagine they'd be easy to reproduce (copyright issues aside).
Toni worked his magic so fast it made my head spin: only two days after I had left the tank with him, a raven, pitch black but with traditional hot-rod flames on his plumage landed on my balcony and delivered a small parchment scroll, then before I could even read it, it flew away, leaving a trail of night-blue metalflake dust as it flapped his wings, silhouetted against the scorching hot midday sun.
The message was inscribed in some sort of ancient runes, which I don't read, but somehow I understood them to mean "dude, your tank is ready... come by"; then the scroll caught fire and I held in my hand this dark red flame and watched it, utterly captivated as if under a spell, as it turned orange, then a strange yellow-green I had never seen before, until no sign of that message was left. Inexplicably, the fire didn't burn me at all.
When I got there he was busy shredding it on his Fender and I took a moment to appreciate the tunes and also to just look at how stunning this thing turned out:
Some of you may remember having seen this color before, it is indeed the same green as used on Witold's OIF Firebird Scrambler and it was just too good to pass up.
Toni showed me what he mixed to get this shade just right, and explained the two-part process; first a metallic green base layer, followed by a pearlescent tone halfway between green and gold yellow.
It's the sort of color that your brain tells you can't exist, yet somehow there it is. I later realized that it is in fact the same strange yellow-green I had seen when the raven delivered the Wizard's summon.
That second coat gives this color that mesmerizing golden shimmer when the light hits it just right, but it's something you can only see out of the corner of your eye; the second you try looking at it, it's gone and all you see is that fantastic metallic green. Knowing how much of that second coat to spray is of course a matter of extreme skill and artistic sensibility that I doubt can be learned. Some people just have it.
Look how beautifully this turned out:
Just as a closing thought, I have to wonder, was the raven really just Toni in raven form?!
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