You’ve got to question the role of the tyre people in this, because if the rubberwear wasn’t there, there’d be nothing to wrap round the rim, and as the fashion for wider back ends has taken hold the tyre manufacturers have given the punters what they want with increasing widths on a couple of wheel sizes, with a 300-section promised for early 2004, which is twice the width of the recently widened stock tyre. It’s a lot of rubber.

It’s really only something that’s affected the Softails, because they are the primary base for most customs but it doesn’t mean it stops there. When we got the W&F brochure through a few months ago, tucked away at the back was a Dyna. Interesting, I thought. Have to have a chat with someone about that sometime, and then proceeded to forget all about it.

Kev French, then at Big Rock but now firmly ensconced at Sycamore down the road in Rutland, spotted it too, but he did something about it. His beloved Night Train had been "liberated" in the night, and there was an ex-Riders’ Edge 2001 Dyna Super Glide glued to the showroom floor. The Night Train wasn’t coming back, the Super Glide wasn’t going anywhere so a deal was struck.

One of the nice things about Super Glides is that they’ve got spoked wheels. We’ve got a tech feature on wheels elsewhere in this issue, but suffice to say that you can lace almost any rim size onto almost any hub quite economically, and that’s precisely what Kev set out to do. He could have bought a complete wheel from W&F, but as he’s a friend to the spoke key he went out and bought himself a couple of alloy rims, the right number of stainless spokes and set about doing it himself.

But that’s not an alloy rim, I hear you cry, and you’re right, but then this isn’t the first incarnation of the Too-Much-Supper Glide – well you think of a name that alludes to Fat, incorporates Glide and doesn’t sound like a tourer – and there’s a story behind that. Having measured everything up, Kev reckoned he could stick a 190-section tyre in without accounting for any offset at all, and that had got to be a good idea so, armed with a 51/2-inch wide, seventeen-inch rim, he laced it up and was rewarded by the right result. Pleased with himself, he thought he’d bypass the search for a rear mudguard by getting the one that W&F supply with the kit, only to discover that it came with an offset to allow the full 200-section tyre, and that made the 190-section look like it was too far to the left. Bugger!

It wasn’t the end of the world. Spending his working life in a dealer meant he knew a lot of people who’d be in the market for a 190 back end, and that first wheel now resides in the back end of another laced-wheel custom – a Softail Standard – and it slotted in just right. Then it was just the small matter of lacing up a 61/4-inch rim to another hub, complete with a 5mm offset to clear the belt, and sit correctly under the ’guard. Well, it would have been a small matter, had the rim been available but it wasn’t so he had to revert to steel. And that wouldn’t have been a massive problem in itself but for the fact that he’d already sourced the front rim and laced it up … he didn’t mention whether the Softail Standard rider fancied that, but he’s certainly got plans to replace it with another steel rim when time allows.

The additional width of the rear rim, combined with the offset, means the disk and calliper tucks neatly inside the wheel rim with just a slight trim off the calliper mount to provide the prerequisite clearance, and it all hangs together remarkably tidily within the confines of a standard swingarm. The frame didn’t escape the attentions of Mr Hacksaw, however, and everything behind the top shock mount was shaved off to accommodate the new mudguard brackets supplied with the W&F ’guard. Finishing the back end off is a Sparto tail-light providing the legally-required red glow: the aparent lack of registration plate in some pics is nothing more complicated than a UK-spec Road King number plate masquerading as a side-mount, complete with its illumination sitting down by the rear wheel spindle.

If it had just been a fat back end Kev had wanted, he would have been about finished but we already know he was committed to sorting out the front too. Simple reason really: he wasn’t struck by the narrow front end, and less so by the accompanying eyelid headlamp bracket, and thought it’d be good to stick a big wheel up there too, with a decent sized headlamp while he was about it. Obviously the stock yokes wouldn’t take the additional width it so a ZEL triple tree replaced them, clutching the original legs. The re-laced hub with its 4-inch wide, sixteen-inch rim was bolted in, wearing a relatively high-profile 130/90 tyre.

The result is a long way from the original Super Glide, but retains the tight steering head and nimble handling relative to a heavyweight Softail. Stylistically too, it demonstrates that a couple of fat wheels don’t make a Fat Boy, and it bears more than a passing resemblance to a flat-tracker. The flattish bars that look so right on the Super Glide were starting to look a little inconsequential atop the broader headset, so a pair of Ness Fat Bars added to the sense of scale, finished off with tiny Ness mirrors and Battistini C-Thru grips next to the stock switchgear. Foot controls are also C-Thru items mounted to the lugs provided for the Wide Glide – nice of Harley to leave them there – with only a blanking stub on the primary chain inspection cover hintting where the original gearshift would have exited.

Despite sharing the same external dimensions, the twin fillers of a one-piece Zodiac-sourced Wide Glide tank were considered more appropriate than the solo offering mounted centrally in the Super Glide’s wrinkle-black dash, and also provided a home for the handlebar-clamp mounted speedo. It sounds easy when you say it quickly, but that entailed welding the speedo mounting bracket into the recess provided for Wide Glide’s dash, before the rest was plated over to produce an uncluttered top. It seems to sit a little high at the back, but that is largely an optical illusion created by the lack of the dash that would slope down towards the rear, and it matches well the kicked up rear mudguard above that fat back end. The FXDX Badlander-style seat finishes the overall style nicely, and suits the custom flat-track theme that he’s got going.

Show is one thing, but if you’re going to make something that looks like a refugee from the rough stuff, it’s a good idea to give it a few extra ponies to help it along. One quick way to do that is to stick a Mikuni on in place of the stock CV – and the fact that Harley sell them with a Screamin’ Eagle ticket indicates factory approval – but the bellmouth is purely cosmetic: it should be on an S&S but a bit of fiddling soon sorted it out, and it looks the part. A tin of PJ1 "Fast Black" alludes to the Super Glide Sport and disguises well the union between gearbox and engine, aided by the polished outer covers. Getting spent gases away has been entrusted to a set of Vance & Hines Short-Shots, but reworked ones I reckon, judging by the roar they emitted when Kev fired her up after the shoot.
It’s largely as he wants it now – once he’s matched the rims up – and the only thing he might change would be to take the paint back to a simpler single colour. There’s an occupational hazard in using your own machine as a rolling demonstrator and guinea pig for goods and services, and in Kev’s case it was letting local airbrush artist, Darren from Lids and Things, loose on the metalwork with no clear idea of what he wanted. What he really didn’t want was a stars and stripes scheme, but he didn’t actually say so, so that’s what he got. Not that he’s quibbling with the quality – he’s put a lot of work their way based on the finished result – but it’s a little too colourful for his personal taste, and as it’s his bike, it will ultimately reflect his style.

From where I’m sitting, I reckon Darren’s been unconsciously absorbing Fat Boy vibes, because there is a tendency towards wrapping Old Glory around the flanks of a certain type of Fat Boy … the type that have a significantly wider than stock back end. I think I might have mentioned them earlier. Every successful formula will inevitably be copied and it’s obviously a style that has captured the popular imagination, but it’s nice to see a different spin on it because if I had a quid for every flag-wrapped over-tyred Fat Boy that I’d seen I’d have, oh … enough for a few beers.

Handy that. Landlord … ?