There are some builders who seem to have the Midas touch: everything they create turns to gold. Aaron and Shaun Guardado are in that exclusive group, crafting beautiful racers and customs when they?re not tearing up dirt tracks?or running the Suicide Machine Company business out of Long Beach, California.
After Harley released the XG platform, the brothers were inspired to pay homage to the road-racing lineage of the famous XR750TT?and also showcase the XG750?s performance potential.

?We set out to turn the tame, street-cruising XG750 into an aggressive, lightweight hard cornering racing machine,? says Aaron. ?It?d be a no nonsense, bare bones build.?
If there?s a Harley that ever symbolizes the ?art of speed,? this is it. But the only concrete plan Aaron and Shaun had before firing up the grinders was to use a trellis-style frame.
?This style is usually associated with Ducati, and Ducati is synonymous with performance?so it was a good direction to start out in.?
A friend with a genius for engineering helped with the design, and laid out a frame with geometry numbers from both the XR750 and the Ducati 1098. ?With the modeling and dimensions outlined in SolidWorks CAD software, we could get started on the actual building of the bike,? Aaron says.

?We could have had the tubes CNC-bent and notched, and assembled it like a kit, but for this first bike we decided to manually construct it.? So Aaron and Shaun hand bent and notched each of the tubes for the frame out o...