Speed Merchant Street 500 “Thresher”

The Speed Merchant describe themselves as a group of like minded guys who each bring something different to the table.  Dan Begakis, Brandon Holstein, and Mark Kawakami bring their sense of style to the motorcycle industry while always keeping function at the forefront of their designs.  The Speed Merchant does their manufacturing in California, home of sunshine, silicon valley, and a huge custom motorcycle scene.

I saw pictures of this bike and knew right away I had to cover it on HDForums.  What you see is one of, if not the, first Street 500 custom.  Continuing the recent trend of lightweight, flat track style bikes, Speed Merchant built “The Thresher”.  Here is Denver Dan giving us some background and details of the build.

THE THRESHER:

SM 500 Street

In early March 2014, we were approached by Mike Davis of the Born Free Show. He asked if we’d be interested in doing something custom to a brand new Harley Davidson model. Having never seen one in person, it was very intriguing. The new Harley Davidson Street 500 is what showed up at my shop with about 3 months to get the job done. What you see below is our version of what this model could be.

I started by removing most of the stock parts from the bike. Front end, wheels, bars, rear fender, battery, rear subframe, and exhaust….. I replaced the stock wheels with some Sun Aluminum rims with SS spokes laced up to some HD hubs. The front end was replaced with a set of our SM mid glide trees made for the HD 48 Sportster. Huntington Beach Harley Davidson was kind enough to donate the front end to this build. I topped of the front end with our SM preload adjusters. To finish up the front end, I made an aluminum number plate that incorporates the overflow for the radiator and a LED driving light supplied by Lazerstar Lights. I used our radial mount brake bracket in the front and mounted a Tokico caliper to it. The bars are a custom set made in house. The controls are off a GSXR 600, and 750, topped off with some Pazzo levers. Joker Machine shipped me out one of their well designed 1/4 turn throttle set up (used mainly for speedway).

Next I decided to mount the tank in a different position. I raised the tank by about 4″ to provide a more traditional stance. To match the line of the tank I started with the tail section next. After cutting off the stock subframe, and pulling the wiring from under the seat, I started laying out the new subframe set-up. Part of the new subframe houses all of the stock wiring just under the seat. The new tailsection was shaped out of aluminum. Once the tailsection was finished, I fabricated a seat pan that was handed of to Bates Leather. They nailed it with this custom tuck and roll design.

To change the stance of the bike, I used some tall rear shocks supplied by Ohlins USA. They were kind enough to support this build. The taller shocks provided extra ground clearance and helped to enhance the stance of the bike. To round off the rear section of the bike, I decided to modify the rear swingarm by adding some extra bracing and hollowing out the square tubing…. Then I made a battery box to mount the 8 cell Anitgravity Battery just above the swingarm.

Having a new model created some challenges. Like trying to find a front sprocket to convert this bike to a chain drive. Luckily I was able to find one. I used a Super Sprox rear sprocket, with a black EK 530 chain. I made a custom aluminum front sprocket cover. Rounding out the rear end was a radial brake bracket with a Tokico caliper to match the front.

The last thing I fabricated was the custom exhaust. Cone Engineering donated there 2″ core muffler for this build. I used this and recreated the front headers to fit the bike. A full stainless system is what this bike was asking for.

The paint was handled by John Edwards of Old Tyme Custom paint. We wanted to keep it simple, but highlight the gold on the bike. Once the color was laid down by John we handed it over to Pacman Line & Letter Company to pinstripe and hand letter the Harley-Davidson. John then laid some pearl over the top of it all before clearing it.