It's kinda hard to find a name for this bike since it has roots in three different Harley models. Fat Heritage? Makes no sense. Glide Boy? Sounds like a lame sidekick or a bizarre lubrication product: "I never watch porn without a tube of Glide Boy." Eeeeeeew. The best name for it would be, well, whatever Sandra Martin damn well wants it to be, because it's her ride. In the time since it first hit the street as a stock 2001 Fat Boy, it's gone through one transformation into another, first as a Heritage Softail, later as a lightly customized H-D and then morphed into a luxury touring rig.
Sandra's fianc Kevin Martin owns and operates Dragonfly Cycle Concepts in Lynnwood, Washington; she's the shop's marketing manager. He'd originally bought it bone stock as a starter bike for his 18-year-old son. Two years later, Harley's 100th Anniversary bikes hit the road, and Dragonfly needed a Heritage Softail to show off their new fairing, so they converted the Boy into one. Later on, Kevin's son moved on to bigger iron, leaving this bike free for someone else to ride.
Sandra happily volunteered. It was her second motorcycle, and all she wanted was a nice cobalt blue paintjob, fishtails, apes and some speakers. At first.
"Of course, bike builds always take on a life of their own," Sandra said. "The bike starts to tell you a story instead of you forcing your vision on it." Some of the initial plans went out the window, like the 23-inch front wheel. It was too much for her, so they scaled back to a 21. Kevin's initial plan for bumping the motor to 95 inches with Screamin' Eagle pistons got some changes after his longtime buddy Sebastian suggested Screamin' Eagle heads and cams. Sandra didn't need a sprint car, but the extra power lets her cut loose more than a milder 88-inch would.
The motor wasn't the only thing that got a displacement upgrade. Sandra's bike was the inspiration for Kevin's true bolt-on 200mm kit for Softails. At the time, there weren't any 200mm conversion fender kits made to work with '06-and-later Tour-Paks and backrests, so he made it happen. Now his shop offers it as a production kit. When he converted Sandra's, he incorporated a CycleVisions Hardtailz bag kit with extended hard luggage into the rear setup. He also one-offed the frenched-in license mount, rear turns and taillight.
After the sheetmetal mock-up, Sandra and Kevin turned the bike over to Randy and Ryan Burke, who laid down some pretty funky paint. They kicked it off with a Violet Pearl base, after which Sheamus McQuade laid down the Pearl White graphics, lowrider style, subtly spraying onto the bags' bottom line and touching up the fairing and tank enough to match. The Burkes layered over Candy Cobalt, giving the bike a translucence that mutates depending on the ambient light. Candy powdercoat replaced the chrome.
Although Sandra's bike had plenty of lighting, there were still plenty of nooks and crannies left that could hold more. GlowRide proved that by filling them with LEDs. They worked all night, getting it down just in enough time that Dragonfly could show off this beauty at the V-Twin Dealer Expo in Cincinnati.
All of this info is well and good, but it still doesn't tell us the name. Sandra chose "94" because of her family's racing tradition. Her grandfather owned So-Cal Performance, and he got his sons into racing at the now-defunct Ascot Speedway in Gardena. All three became legends at that track, and Sandra's dad was the first to turn a 19-second lap at the track, running the old blue-and-white No. 94 360 sprint car built by her grandfather. "My uncle did it a bit later in the same car," she said. "My idea to hide the So-Cal Sprinter on the fairing had dual meaning for its upped Screamin' Eagle power and paying homage to my grandfather's hard work in Southern California racing. The 94 graces the derby cover for that same reason." All of which makes that a much better name than "Glide Boy."