Would you be surprised to learn this bike was born stock and most of it now is made up of modified stock or custom-built parts? Now divert your attention over to the frame and motor, and then come back here. This little exercise is to help explain a common misperception that Kundratic Kustom Motorcycles (KKM) owner Brian Kundratic frequently comes across with this bike. "Most people assume there's a lot of aftermarket parts on it," Brian said. He's not surprised-these parts have almost become the norm on bikes nowadays.
Brian's not trying to pit himself against "aftermarket- or catalog-built bikes" and has no major quarrels using these parts. His only complaint is "it seems nobody is messing with stock bikes anymore, and when you do, it often gets mistaken for something else."
This is coming from a guy who likes getting his hands on anything stock in his Baltimore-based shop and modifying it just a little, as you may be able to tell from the bike seen here. "You can still make a stock bike look good," according to Brian, and it appears he did just that.
Originally, the build started as a '48 Panhead that Todd and Sheryl Hoffman brought into Brian's shop about a year ago. The next thing he knew, the couple walked in shortly thereafter with a stock '92 Harley-Davidson Softail, which is the bike spread across these pages-or what's left of it. "I think the owners lost interest in the panhead," Brian said, "but all I can remember is practically doing a double take." It's hard at times for Brian to recall every detail, considering he's been pretty much running the shop on his own since 1994. Aside from building customs, most of his bread and butter comes from doing service work. Brian enjoys all of it, but he's particularly into the mechanical and metalwork side of bikes-even doing most of the in-house machining.
You may be wondering what happened to that '48 Panhead and the fate of that stock Softail. As for the pan, Brian traded the cost of it with labor towards building the Softail and he made it the shop bike. As for the Softail, the owners initially wanted just another fender. After modifying a fender that originally wouldn't fit, let's just say Brian saw a better life for the stocker. "I was given free reign at that point-OK, after some coercion-to do whatever on the bike," Brian said, "and things got a little out of control." Call us crazy this (once) stock bike got a little out of control.