Chaz's Homecoming Vision | 2007 Victory Vision Tour

In September 2010, Chaz Chambers and Armin Daulton, two riding friends, were sitting around talking about motorcycles. At the time, Chaz was an active duty Marine Corps Captain, and he was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan for his second tour of duty. Chaz had been riding a 2005 Victory Hammer, but had recently purchased a brand new 2009 Victory Vision Tour. Armin thought the Vision as a nice ride, but kind of plain and well, too stock looking! It wasn’t the kind of bike that would make you turn your head for a second look (unless you had never seen one before; some have compared it to a space ship from Star Trek or something out of the Jetsons). Chaz and his wife Carla loved the bike, but felt it needed something more; a bit more personal and less stock looking. All the different colors and shades of all the bike’s parts did nothing for the bike’s sleek lines. Before Chaz left the country, he talked about re-painting it. Armin just happened to be getting back into custom painting after 25 years of being out of that field and decided to step up. He told Chaz he’d paint it for him while he was gone.

The two spent the next few months drawing ideas for graphics and discussing colors via email while Chaz was deployed. Finally, they decided on a design and concept. It was not an easy paintjob, but Armin wanted to do something really special. Just painting it black wasn’t going to be enough. They both envisioned one bad machine! They decided on a concept where the paint was to look like it was black, but as the bike rides by, you see it has a tint of deep blue in it. Then when the sun really shines on it, flames would pop out—shadow flames that you can’t really see until the sun hits them. This was not an easy concept to turn into reality. It sounds simple enough, but if you know your paint, then you know it isn’t easy.

As Armin started tearing down the Vision, he soon realized what he had gotten himself into. This bike was a nightmare! Armin had never worked on a Vision before, and he no idea how it was put together. A normal bike has a tank, two fenders, a few side panels, and maybe even a fairing and hard bags (six to 10 pieces). A Victory Vision is different. All of the painted parts are panels that screw or clip onto the metal skeleton hidden beneath. As Armin finished the disassembly, he looked down at all the parts strewn around his garage and saw that he had almost 30 pieces laying all over the place (29 pieces officially!). The prep work prior to painting, which would normally take a few days, took weeks instead. Although they now realized there were 29 pieces to paint, Armin stuck to the plan and pushed on.

After choosing House of Kolors paint for the spray-gun the project started with sanding and prepping the parts, followed by primer, and then two layers of black basecoat. Two coats of Shimrin Candy Cobalt Blue with a Pearl White dust coat was sprayed on next, followed by Pearl White shadow flames. A few more coats of Shimrin Candy Cobalt Blue were shot over that to get the parts to appear darker and look like black. The final processes were laying down six coats of tinted clearcoat and then the last steps of shooting the final, show-quality clearcoats. Of course there were all of the color sanding and polishing steps during the painting process. Remember that all 29 Vision pieces needed the same process and polishing. Armin had Eight Ball Rods n Choppers shoot the final clear and they helped with questions and advice all throughout this project.

During all this, Armin and another friend, John Stine, decided to surprise Chaz and pull everything they could off the bike and get it all chromed. John knew a friend in the chroming business and sent the parts to him. Chaz had already planned to have the aluminum parts replaced with chrome ones anyway, so it fit into Armin’s plan and made sense.

Chaz came home safely on April 30, 2011. Armin and his other friends had a big bike run and party set up for Chaz’s return on the following weekend. But the bike wasn’t done yet. The paint was done, but there were some issues getting the chrome back. Miracles do happen, and that Friday evening, the day before the big bike run, Armin got the call that the chrome was ready. Chaz went to Armin’s house along with a bunch more of their friends, and they reassembled the Vision that night. That was an evening none of them will ever forget and well worth all the time and effort. Every piece was beautiful—either chromed, painted, or polished. The ghost flames are so subtle that the photos don’t do the job justice. One thing that is for sure: Chaz is one happy Marine.

On June 10, Chaz, Armin, and two other friends left on a 3,300-mile ride across the country to celebrate the end of Chaz’ service in the Marine Corps. Chaz rode his newly painted Vision. Chaz’s wife had moved to their new home in Tennessee prior to his deployment, and the trip was Chaz’s “homecoming ride.” Thanks Chaz—Semper Fidelis B