Garage Build: Kevin Draper’s Toxic Softail

How's it going everybody? I'm Nate Beck and you're watching Fix My Hog. So today is a Garage Build episode. For those of you that don't know Garage Build is a online submission where builders from around the country can submit their choppers, bobbers and really any custom bikes they've been working on. This bike has actually been turning some heads and we have the builder on the line with us.

It is an 85 custom Softail he nicknames toxic. The builder is Kevin. Kevin, how are you doing today? Doing well, how are you doing? Not too bad.

So, do you have toxic with you? I do. Awesome, let's see it. You wanna see a picture? Yes.

So here's toxic, Nice. Custom Softail that we built. My brother Jeff and I took a couple of years to build it. Of course we had to build it up once take it apart, powder coat it, and then rebuild it again. So we kinda build it twice.

Yep! Very nice, what was your inspiration behind it? You know, I just had a bucket list. I've been riding Harleys for a long time and, I've always wanted to build one. Didn't really know how to build one.

Looked at some videos, YouTube got some advice from some different guys in the local and started building one. Nice. Was this like a frame-up build for you? I see that you have an SNS V one 11 in there. That's quite the power plant.

It is for this little small bike. I started from the frame up, and just started putting pieces together and once it was all together, we painted or took it apart powder-coated and then put it back together. But yeah, SNSV one 11. It's pretty powerful for this little small bike, but it runs really well. It's carborated Very nice, I see that copper Springer.

You wanna run us through that a little bit? I've never seen one of those actually. Yeah, I saw this from a buddy of mine Malibu motorcycles, and I actually bought it from him. So, that's just the copper spring or front end. I thought it looked cool on the bikes.

I'm always a fan of Springers. I had some heritage sprayers, Harley Davidson's in the past two of them and, really loved the Springer front end. That's what I put on the front end. Yeah, that copper I'm a big fan of mixing different styles, brass, coppers and stuff. I think it makes the bike really pop.

Is that a custom seat as well? Yeah, so I ordered this seat's handmade stitch letter out of England actually. I didn't make it, I wish I made it. But yeah I ordered it from a guy outta England and yeah it's hand-stitched. That looks killer.

Some cheap pan left. Nice, so how did you hear about Garage Build? It was just online, Dennis Kirk and they had an advertisement to submit my bike. So went ahead and submitted it for one of their contests and Garage Build came up. I thought, "yeah I'll submit it to see what people think." I've taken it to Sturgis a few times and people really like it.

Yep. It's not the normal bike. Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely turning heads. And then when you go even down to, getting white walls with the red rims and the black and the the custom paint job with the C and the Springer.

It's like you really went all out on this build and to do it on your first build, it looks absolutely fantastic Kevin. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's it was fun. Fun to build and, it took me a while, but I figured it out. So are you going on to build number 2 now?

Actually I just got through building a 56 Ford F 100 big windows. I probably have another one of these. This one's a softtail and maybe I'll build a rigid frame next. Sure, sure, nice. Well, that's an awesome bill man.

It was great chatting to you about it. If you guys wanna check out Kevin's build toxic, go onto Garage Build, check his photos out. Also, check out the rest of the awesome bikes as well. Until next time Kevin, thank you so much, and well take it easy.