American Iron Magazine - March 2000

"Harleys in Space?"

For Ellen, it can't be soon enough.

Harley's in space - is that the future? Affirmative, Captain. Here's a Sportster that sure looks like it's from outer space, thanks to a shop that's not even close to NASA. It's located in the thoroughly historical and earthbound state of Maryland, U.S.A. Roy Chamberlin, boss of C&C Cycles in Crofton, doesn't shrink from any challenge. From mega-wallet buster to bolt-on stocker, he'll modify anything for you, and even give you a taste of the future.

Through this bike was a small project for Roy, it was a big step forward for his customer, Ellen Goldberg. When Ellen decided she wanted to leave the pillion seat behind and graduate to a motorcycle of her own, she and husband "Doc" brought the Sporty to Roy for a little forward-thinking magic.

The space motif comes from Ellen's love for Star Wars movies. The Harley-Davidson-in-space idea came from Roy, but it was graphic artist Gene Garbowski who devised and executed the murals you see here. Buck Rogers would be proud.

Seeing this 1994 Sportster is her first bike, Ellen wasn't too keen on making it into a fire breather, so apart from a coat of wrinkle-black paint on the crankcases, mainly stock is the way the powertrain stayed. The only exception was to fit a Yost Power Tube to the stock CV carburetor, in the interests of immediate throttle response. The rest of the expenditure of the build was on cosmetics.

The seat was tastefully modified to conform to the space motif with a stitched pattern showing electrons orbiting around a nucleus of protons, the basic building block for everything in the universe.

The basic building block for this custom motorcycle was the radical Cosmic Blue paint and Gene's airbrush artwork. Together with the distant stars and pockmarked surfaces of planets that you'll see if you study the bodywork carefully, Gene came up with a few personal touches. Look closely and you'll see spacesuit-clad Ellen riding her Space Sportster on one side of the bike. On other side, she's soaring through the stratosphere with Doc on a matched pair of Space Harleys.

"How he got some of the special effects, I'll never know," says Roy. "Check out the painted oil tank. Gene came up with a finish he calls Space Gas. It looks just like a cloud of gas in its own special atmosphere."

Getting back down to earth for a moment, the Roadster fuel tank that's fitted to the Space Sportster is one of C&C Cycles's own inventions, and it gives a little of a Big Twin look to the bike. Space Harley or not, this motorcycle still takes premium unleaded, not rocket fuel. The Roadster tank is basically a bolt-on piece, requiring the welding of only one mounting bracket (the rear tab) to the frame. Once in place, the big tank extends the Sportster's range significantly – it holds a little over four gallons – and offers the security of a tank-mounted gas gauge.

Because retro-rockets haven't been devised for the bike yet, brakes were a necessity, and Russell rotors are gripped by stock Harley calipers to slow the bike down from warp speeds. The space-blue theme continues in the sapphire blue of the Arlen Ness mirrors and the blue covers, sourced from the 50's Boys, for the speedometer, tack, and gas gauge.

Some things never change, however, like the appeal of chrome. The engine's primary and timing covers – and a selection of other standout parts – took a trip up to Winnipeg, Canada, for the shiny treatment. If it seems a little strange for a shop in Maryland to be sending chrome all the way up to Canada, it's a lot closer than Mars. Seriously (or as serious as we're going to get here), Roy's shop has customers all along the East Coast, as well as over the border, too, from Canada to Honduras. To Roy, shipping parts around is nothing new.

What is new are the concepts that have to be thought up for every customer. How do you get ideas for new custom machines, for something so original that nobody had thought of it before? Roy relies on the customer for original inspiration, and his imagination fills in the blanks. "We get together and I draw out how the motorcycle is going to look," he says. "I'm not the world's greatest artist, and the colors I use are limited to Magic Markers, but I can draw a bike well enough to show what we can do." He then asks them, "What do you think?" Once the customer is happy with the concept, it's then up to Roy to build it for them.

The Space Sportster may have been a big first step into the custom world for Ellen, but for Roy Chamberlin it was lot less out in space than some of his other work. In fact, while showing one of his bikes at Daytona's Rat's Hole Show, a German visitor noticed the radical machine and invited Roy to participate in Motorshow Essen, one of Europe's biggest shows. "It's great," Roy says, "I get to go and meet some of the best guys in Europe."

Now that custom H-D's can be found all over the world, can Harleys in space be that far away? In 50 years, will we be jetting over to Mars for the first intergalactic Harley show? (And will they have McDonald's there?) Well, here are a couple of predictions that we can safely make. The Space Sportster will make it into outer space when American Iron Magazine's archives are made available galaxy-wide. At that time, whenever it is, Harley-Davidson will surely still be around, too.

So will you be able to fit year 2050 parts onto your 1950 Panhead? We kind of doubt it, but you know what? Whatever the factory makes, the customer will still be king, and builders like Roy Chamberlin will still be turning out bikes that are out of this world.

written by:

Alex Scott

photographs by:

Alberto Mojica

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