Half-way through the project, and we find ourselves lying exhausted on the floor after showing up at Dr. Geoff Gaites' shop, Cycle Doctor, in Sunny Costa Mesa, California. Having done little more than spend ungodly amounts of eBay money on sick performance parts. We decided to start at the heart of the matter and went down and asked Geoff to take all our S&S parts and turn the old Evo into a stroked 103-inch monster. Geoff is off the graph when it comes to squeezing power out of V-twin motors. With a little finesse, Geoff completed the mill and gave us the impetus to move ahead. Still, visualizing everyone's input on how the bike should be built makes me ask myself whether we're building a bike or Mad Max's worst nightmare? Somehow, the line between the two kind of blurs. Around us lie the empty boxes of the new S&S 103-inch stroker kit, A ThunderHeader Exhaust, and Storz/Ceriani forks, and a new aluminum swingarm are now hanging on the wall, waiting for their turn on the lift. I think the nitrous bottles rolled under the workbench, and I still need to check with UPS to find out where the rims are.

You might have gathered that we're not even close to being done. In fact, we're still arguing over sheetmetal and paint and other nefarious and nebulous concepts. And, while the eBay hunt is difficult given the time we've been allotted, amazingly, the parts are there—we just need to outbid everyone else for them. But, don't worry too much. We've got a few cards up our sleeves and the assistance of several Southland professionals who are committed to turning our FXR into something beautiful as well as brutal. We're confident that we'll be that loud, snarling, and rapidly closing, black smoking object you see in your rearview mirrors on track day. Stay tuned.