Kully Millage, the builder of this 1960 custom Ironhead, was still in high school when he built his first custom bike. Coming from a racing background, he wasn’t even into street bikes when he took it upon himself to complete what he describes as a “tastefully put-together catalog bike” as a tech-class project. It too, was an Ironhead Sportster, only he built that one on a Paughco frame with a Cole foster fuel tank and early Triumph rear fender, amongst many other improvements. It came out well enough that the very self-confident, talented, and creative teenager submitted photos of it to AMD, to be in their big annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in 2011, which also included the World Championship as part of the same show. Sure enough, it was accepted, and, in what later proved to be a very fateful decision, it was placed right beside Lock Baker’s bike. Kully was familiar with Lock’s work from magazines and his scouring of the internet and had actually called him six months earlier to ask about how he etched and antiqued his alloys. Lock was very friendly and without any hesitation, answered all his questions, so Kully was convinced he was a “Badass!”

Kully describes Lock as, “the most underrated bike builder of our times who has set and reset the bar in terms of craftsmanship.” They hung out a lot that week in Sturgis, and before it was over, Kully asked if he could come to Connecticut to hang out in Lock’s shop and learn from him what he could. He arrived back East that fall, thinking he may be there for a couple of weeks, but they got along well, and after realizing how much there was to learn, weeks turned into months, and months into nearly a year. Looking back, he now describes this time with Lock as more of an apprenticeship.

In the ten years that followed, Kully—operating under the name KULLYCO—developed quite a reputation for himself fabricating exhaust pipes. He made them for many different types of race and race-style bikes, offering them to both privateers and race teams. More funded race teams commissioned Kully to design custom exhausts and had him traveling on weekends to be a race tech at races around the country. This worked both ways, as he learned a lot from the engineers and team owners like Ricky Howerton and David Zanotti. Then when Indian entered flat track racing in 2017, Kully worked for them, which was certainly the best of times, as they podiumed 1, 2, and 3 two years running.

Kully still fabs exhausts, but over the last few years, he’s developed quite a successful real estate business that accounts for about fifty percent of his time and income. He does both ground-up home builds as well as flips, where he buys houses, remodels them, and puts them back on the market, but motorcycles are still his passion.

By 2021, he was ready to build another custom, which would be his third. (He also built a 1970s inspired chopper right after high school.) Kully went back to a 1960 Harley-Davidson 900cc Ironhead fitted with a Linkert Side-Bowl carburetor because he loves the sound, the aesthetic of the engine, and the culture surrounding it. He went on to say, “Most entered flat track racing importantly, knowing I was going to build a flat track inspired bike, I wanted a unit style power plant that incorporates the engine and gearbox together so that it would look closer to an XR750. I ended up with a beautiful engine that didn’t cost $20,000 as an XR would.”

This time around, however, Kully was determined to build a ground up street-tracker starting with the frame. He wanted it to be unique, and to reflect his race background, fabrication experience, as well as show the impact of those that inspire him, like his friend Lock Baker, as well as a group of Japanese builders including Tatsuya Fujii at Duas

Caras Cycles, Hideya Togashi at Hide Motorcycles, Masayuki Sugihara at Luck Motorcycles, and Hot Dock’s Keiji Kawakita.

The frame itself was made from grade five 6AL4V titanium alloy and has a 25-degree rake. Its most interesting feature is the torsion-bar spring housed inside the bottom right frame rail, as this is the heart of the torsion-bar suspension that makes this bike so unique. It is connected to the swingarm via a torsion bar arm that crosses to the left side of the bike, where it connects to the swingarm with a turnbuckle that can be adjusted to preload the tension on the torsion bar. There may be another one out there, but personally, I’ve never seen a bike with this type of suspension. You may be wondering now about the rear shock, but this, in fact, is just used as a dampener to control the speed of the movement of the suspension.

Other parts of note include the swingarm made from 4130 chromoly steel, and the exhaust, Kully’s specialty, made from 1mm titanium. The sheet metal bodywork was the biggest challenge he encountered building the bike because Kully had less experience in metal shaping, but he pulled it off by first creating it in foam and then used this as a model for the metalwork. It was all made from 5056 aluminum, which he hand-fabricated using sheet hammers, an English wheel, and dollies.

Kully turned to his skill on the computer to design the foot controls in CAD and then sent his designs off to be made on a CNC. The headlight shroud and intake were also modeled on CAD, only these were 3D printed at a local shop.

To help the bike go fast, the package sits on 19” Excel Racing Wheels fitted with Hoosier Flat Track tires and Grimeca Brakes. While it may not make it go fast, the great black and white paint scheme laid down by Jeff Gjerde makes the bike surely look fast.

Perhaps you may want some of Kully’s talent on your own bike in the form of his pre-made exhaust should you be lucky enough to have a model he supports. And if he doesn’t support your model, you can always talk to him about a custom set. Any way you slice it, Kully Millage, regardless of the fact that he hasn’t built many bikes, is clearly a young gun we all need to keep our eyes on. HB

WORDS AND PHOTOS: MICHAEL LICHTER