When you get invited to take your bike to Germany to compete in the AMD World Championship of custom bike building, you know you have created something special. That?s what happened to Jordon Dickson from Union Speed & Style earlier this year. Their beautifully proportioned 1947 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead dubbed the ?SourKraut? ? a tongue in cheek name based on the local cuisine in Deutschland. Jordan and his team at Union started the build with a simple premise; to build a motorcycle that looked like it could have been a factory race bike from the late 40’s. They also wanted to stick to the Union mantra which is to manufacture and fabricate as much as possible in house using raw materials.

?I’ve always been a fan of early factory race bikes,? Jordan explains. ?There’s just something about the stripped down purpose built nature of them that I’ve always gravitated towards. One of Jordan?s favourite vintage race bikes was the Joe Petrali landspeed streamliner knucklehead. ?The frame on that bike had nice sweeping lines to it, and that’s where the inspiration for this frame came from. I wanted the frame to still look reminiscent of the original knuckleheads but have some of that sweeping elegance that the Petrali land speed bike has.?
After working out a clear design it was now time to make it happen, starting with fabricating frame. ?I started by machining out a steering neck and bending up some tubing,” Jordan explains. “The ...