Danny “Motorwitch” Wilson’s 2022 Softail Standard
When (not if) the Zombie Apocalypse goes down, Danny “Motorwitch” Wilson’s 2022 Harley-Davidson Softail Standard would definitely be the mean machine I’d choose to get the hell out of dodge. This is the bike Negan would ride, with spiked bat in tow (is Walking Dead still relevant?). It looks rugged as hell, like it already mowed down about 100 brain eaters in one fell swoop. There’s also just something cool about the completely cerakoted finish of Danny’s Softail.
Danny Wilson, AKA the Motorwitch, is somewhat of a V-twin guru. He worked for years as the lead technician over at Buddy Stubbs’ Harley-Davidson in Arizona until he branched out on his own to found the Leading Edge V-twin performance engine company.
When it came to building the Softail Standard you see here, Danny basically had about three and a half months to transform it into something unique. He had to start somewhere and he knew that he wanted to do a narrowed Road Glide fairing. Justin Coleman from FXR Division and Danny had already done the infrastructure for a narrowed shark-nosed fairing before. And then this infrastructure was 1,000 times better than the last one they did, which proved to be more stable than their previous prototype. After it was mocked up, Danny got to thinking about what else he could do to make it unique. “ I was trying to think, like, what am I going to do to make this thing different, other than just making a fairing and sticking a fairing on it?” Danny says. “So I started thinking about different finishes. I haven’t seen anybody do an entire bike in Cerakote [finish].”
But choosing the right cerakote finish colors seemed to fall in line when Danny’s parents moved out to Arizona. “My parents moved to Arizona about eight, nine months ago and they had some tubs of shit from when I was a kid still living at home. My grandfather had given me this picture of a submarine that he was on, so I kind of went down the rabbit hole and started searching and I found the exact same image that he gave me, in color. So all of the colors on the bike, with the exception of that kind of blue-gray color, the black and that beat up red and that dirty white, those are all colors off of the submarine that he was on in World War II.
Turns out that subway was the USS Swordfish. And that picture that Danny found shows his dear old gramps standing on the deck of said subway in Sydney, Australia circa WWII era. Even though Danny doesn’t particularly give his custom bikes names, he felt it was appropriate to name this bike Swordfish because of the cool history and inspiration he received from his family’s past.
Outside of the overall styling and naming convention, the rest of the bike’s theme would be completely performance driven. You’ll notice the Alloy Art inverted front end, one of three prototypes developed by the performance V-twin pioneers. Danny’s inverted forks feature Race Tech tubes and internals, but the rest was made by Alloy Art. It also features a Speed Merchant swingarm, one of the coolest on the market today. In terms of power, the Swordfish has plenty. Of course a Leading Edge 131 top end was chosen, which includes a Dark Horse Crankworks cam chest and compensator. It’s making 164 horsepower and 175 foot-pounds of torque. It’s got a Baker Grudge Box in it to transfer all that added power along with a Evolution Industries clutch. To expel spent gasses, a Fuel Moto 2-into-1 exhaust completed the performance package.
In terms of that sleek looking Road Glide style fairing, Danny cut it and shaped it himself to fit the Softail frame. “I just took a stock Road Glide fairing and cut 4-1/2 inches out of the center of it, just pitched it down and then cut a bunch off the bottom to get rid of those light holes and all that dog shit on the bottom,” Danny says. “This fairing is super fucking rigid. Like, it doesn’t flex or flop or anything.”
In case you forgot, Danny was the one who pioneered the Milwaukee-Eight FXR we featured a few years ago HERE.