Top End Custom

Doc cruises up into the Red Centre to check out a villainous Breakout from Hidden Valley Harley-Davidson

- Doc

I own only one suit. It’s the one I got married in almost three decades ago and I wouldn’t dare to even try it on nowadays. Among other aspects of this suit is that it came off the rack from a medium price menswear store, so it’s a far cry from a top shelf item of clothing like an Armani suit.

According to fashion experts, what makes Armani so special is the ‘impeccable drape and flattering cut’ that Armani has perfected and that has always been a signature of his suits. So, without even knowing why, something about them looks ‘just right’ when even a blue-jeans-and-t-shirt bloke like me looks at them.

Now when we consider chopper-style bikes there are certain things that we expect to see, beginning with a raked out front end, high handlebars, and a low-slung rear end. All of which we see here in Mark’s much-modified 2015 Breakout. But you know, all too often modified Harley-Davidsons are overly done in one aspect or another, causing us some kind of negative response in our reaction.

For example, the bottom frame rails of a bike should be parallel to the ground when it is at ride height. Now there is no rulebook of chopper building dictated by the chopper gods. There are no written commandments such as, “thou shalt not build a bike where the bottom frame rails are not parallel to the ground on which it sits”. But there is something about non-level frame rails that jars one’s aesthetic senses, the feeling that something is ‘just not right’.