German custom shop and authorized Harley dealer Thunderbike is no stranger to the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building, having competed over many years and been outright winner in 2012. For 2014 the business returned to challenge for the Freestyle crown with new build ‘Unbreakable’
THUNDERBIKE founder and owner Andreas Bergerforth set out to build a bike that he describes as "functional, yet breathtaking" when he began to plan Unbreakable, his entry in the Freestyle class at the 2014 AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building. The quality of Unbreakable was in no doubt in the run-up to the World Championship as the bike had taken Best Custom and Best in Show at Arneitz in Austria and the 1st place at the European Bike Week in Faak/Austria prior to the opening of the Championship.
Bergerforth’s starting point was, naturally as he is a H-D dealer, a 110ci Screamin’ Eagle crate motor matched to a factory six-speed transmission. However, simply leaving the engine stock would not be enough to compete at World Championship level, and so the motor was dressed with custom rocker boxes, air cleaner, hidden plug leads and a one-off 2-into-1 exhaust system. Also differing from stock is the open twin belt primary drive supplied by NH Power.
With the motor on the build table, Bergerforth and his team were able to roll the wheels into place to begin planning the frame layout. The wheels in question are Thunderbike designed and machined in-house with the front being a 26 x 3.5in and the rear a 21 x 9in. Both are shod with Metzeler tires and the front carries the company’s own dual 340mm discs with a Buell perimeter rotor used at the rear. The calipers that grip the rotors are four-piston units of Thunderbike’s own design.
The perimeter of the frame is made from steel tubing, but with the exception of the engine rails, not a single piece has been left straight, every piece having had some sort of curve put into it. With the basic shape completed, steel sheet was then rolled and beaten into flowing curves to fill the spaces in the frame. The detailing was then carried on with numerous pieces of aluminum billet machined to give a slotted finish, a theme that is carried throughout Unbreakable. The seat support is a single piece of machined billet that mounts via hidden fixings to the rear of the frame, and the hand-formed rear fender mounts directly to the single-sided swingarm.
Moving to the front of the bike and Bergerforth set about creating a unique fork. The design is part Springer and part Girder design completely machined in-house at the Thunderbike workshop after been realized in CAD. Detailing on the fork includes built-in LED turn signals and an upper tree that incorporates both the handlebars and digital display. The handlebars themselves carry Thunderbike’s own controls that are matched to Rebuffini master cylinders.
Rather than simply polishing the controls or chroming them, the finish Thunderbike has chosen is nickel plating, and this is continued through the rest of the bike to complement the paintwork done by Kruse Design.
The detailing and groundbreaking work carried out by Thunderbike on Unbreakable meant that many people were expecting the bike to achieve a top ten finish, and it did just that, but the competition at the 2014 AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building was so strong that Unbreakable’s final position on the Freestyle class was sixth.
THUNDERBIKE
www.thunderbike.de
