Over her dead body
John Farr IV is straight about it. A skeleton-shaped motorcycle wasn't his idea.
"We don't claim to have come up with it," Farr says. "We've seen the image on T-shirts, coffee mugs, you name it. I guess it's always been kind of like a dream for a lot of people. We just made it reality."
Farr's custom cruiser is powered by a Total Performance 121 cubic-inch motor. The frame, though, is anything but off the shelf. It's a cast titanium skeleton. The backbone of the skeleton is actually the spine, while the legs extend to the hard-tail and the arms grab the fork just above the front wheel. The arms articulate with the front end when it's turned.
The first version of the bike used aluminum for the skeleton, but the aluminum wasn't strong enough to act as a stressed member of the frame, so the skeleton is built around an actual steel frame.
The titanium version is all bone.
Farr, who built the bike with his father, John Farr III, says the skeleton was based off a 5-foot, nine-inch female medical skeleton. Using a process called investment casting, Farr made a mold that could be used with the metal.
It's a complicated process, but one that Farr and his dad were able to pull off. They run the metals foundry Diversified Metals Smith in Opelika, Alabama, and had all the tools on hand. They just needed some inspiration.
There's some debate where that inspiration actually came from, though.
"The real story," says Max Manos, who works with Farr, "is that John got in a fight with his ex-wife when he told her that he wanted to build a custom cruiser. She said, 'Over my dead body,' and here we are."
© 2007, American Motorcyclist Association