FINISHED !!
Let me start by saying thanks to everyone for their compliments and support. I truly appreciate on my first build!
Second.....I am by no means a Goth dude ot a follower of the Lord of Death & Darkness or anything like that. The inspiration for this build was simply from the shape of the fender light opening. Maybe it was near Halloween or something is why I thought of this design.
When I decided to do the Grim Reaper theme, It wasa going to be gloss black, new chrome and shiny everything. But then I got to thinking that if the Grim Reaper was to ride up on a bike, it would be anything but shiny and new. Instead, it would be just the opposite. So REAPER has nastly flat black paint, rusty chrome, no cushy seat or anything nice. So basically, this is my interpretation of what Death would ride if he were a Rat Rod Bike rider....
Here it is! What's hard to see in these pics is there are rusty chains hanging in various places. It seems like when you see Death in a movie, there's always rusty old chains dragging the ground and banging on stuff. When I had the rear wheel laced at the LBS, I had them use old rusty spokes. I didnt want shiny ones to stand out from the rest of the "old". The front wheel already had the rusty spokes anyway so they needed to match.
The handlebars are bent / warped and I had almost thrown them away. But again, if the Grim Reaper rode this, it's not going to be nice.
Here's the fat rear tire. I wish I could afford one for every build, but I cant. To make it fit, I wanted to keep the stock looking lines of the frame and didn't want to splice in a different section of frame. The original crank & shell were removed and one from an OCC Chopper was put in it's place. The gusset at the top section that holds the fender was removed too. The frame was then widened to accomodate the wider hub and crank shell and a new gusset was welded in.
Another profile shot. The head and figures actually have a purpose than just decoration.
The Grim Reaper head is the headlight. I installed two 10mm ultra high brightness LEDs and a battery pack inside of it for the headlight. A small switch on the bottom turns it in & off.
The hanging lantern works too. There's a small incandescent light above the skull and two small red lights for the eyes. This is more of an accent light than a anything else.
And the taillight. I installed a bright red 10mm LED in theside the flame to act as a taillight. What you cant see unless its dark is the base of the figure has lights that change from red, purple, blue, green, etc.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Thanks again for all your kind words!
The flat black and rust really goes good together
