Fit for a King: Satomari’s 1981 Harley Shovelhead
If you want to learn how to weld, fabricate parts, or rebuild an engine, there’s no shortage of resources out there. But good design can’t be taught. You either have impeccable taste and a sharp eye?or you don’t.
For Yusaku Sato at Satomari Motorcycle in Hiroshima, Japan, good design is instinctual. The Harley choppers that roll out of his workshop just look ‘right,’ often with a simple elegance that belies the amount of engineering that goes into them.
This exquisite 1981 Harley-Davidson FXR proves our point with ease. It’s loosely based on an earlier Satomari Shovelhead that a customer saw at the Mooneyes show. Before long, he had reached out to Sato-san and requested a custom Harley in the same vein?albeit with a few key differences. One of the client’s requests was that the bike should have a springer fork. With that in mind, Yusaku tore the bike down and began bringing his vision to life. ?My approach is to take the image that pops into my head and shape it as I want,? he says, ?so it feels like I’m coming up with a design idea in real-time.?
Yusaku started by fabricating an all-new frame and swingarm, retaining only the donor bike’s steering neck and motor mounts. The stunning twin down tube design rises to meet the custom-built springer fork, with a 2? stretch and a 2? rise in the neck. But, more importantly, the springer fork has been made narrow in a bid to keep the overall build impossibly skinny.
The rea...
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