Thunderbike El Gringo • H-D Heritage Softail FLSTC Custom Motorcycle

One for the brother!

Ingo is lucky to have a brother like Udo. The two are completely Motorcycle addicted and one of them has turned his passion into a job. While the happy owner of the bike has a pipe cleaning company in Bavaria, the bikebuilder is a mechanic at Thunderbike in Hamminkeln. This chicano chopper was made in Udo’s garage, even though he had all possibilities in Thunderbike’s workshops and his boss Andreas greatly appreciates the private work of his employees.

One day Thunderbike bought a 97 Softail and Udo hung up the phone “Hey Ingo, this is your motorcycle. Transfer the coal and I’ll send you the cart. “Ingo did not hesitate to give his 100% recommendation to his brother. He spied thousands of kilometers on the Softail, got broken spokes in Tuscany and scratches in Poland and then had the idea, you could do some airbrushing …

“When you’re already talking about airbrushing then let’s get it right,” Udo told his brother and fate took its course. In the end Grandmaster Ingo Kruse elicited everything from his spray gun. As it should, the Chicano has gotten a good deal of paint and now tells its own story on every square centimeter.

Udo comes from the charming, but quite straightforward Niederrhein and the El Gringo should curve with his brother from now on through the Bavarian hills on Lake Chiemsee. Flat Chicano style – good and beautiful, but without air suspension makes that hardly any sense. At the rear, so now Thunderbike’s Air Ride is used and for the front end Udo has come up with something. The usual fork springs flew out and a hidden in the headlight compressor provides the necessary ground clearance at the touch of a button. “That was a bit tricky with the fork oil, but now it works great.”

This mega exhaust system was made by Freedom Performance and the Shark Tail is the only right conclusion to the never-ending tube. “There is another variant where the pipes are even longer, but then it tilts and does not look good,” explains Udo. He thought about every little bit of a detail and what started as “let’s do something with airbrushing” ended up in a well thought-out bike, in which even the seat is a Mexican-style saddle with conchos and leather cords.

Who builds such a thing – even in the garage – surely has more to offer? That’s right, he has. The Shovel, which he drives since 30 (in words: thirty) years, we show you in one of the next Easyriders.