While I lay wide awake each and every night, staring at the ceiling, pondering the same question over and over—why didn’t a huge crate from Milwaukee get dropped off in my driveway?!—those who are more fortunate, like San Diego Customs, probably got just as much sleep in the months after those mysterious crates began dropping last September. But for different reasons, obviously, as the fortunate ones uncrated brand-new 2018 FXFBs—Harley-Davidson’s debut of its fresh Fat Bob à la Softail/M-8 platform. SDC’s Chip Kastelnik and his sidekick Mikey definitely sacrificed some slumber time as they accepted their gracious gift from The Motor Company, tore it completely apart, and proceeded to do their thing, SDC style. I rode down to San Diego (on my “vintage” FXR) one Sunday morning for some coffee and conversation with Chip to get his side of the story regarding El Gato Roberto.

First question, which is more of a statement but nevertheless requires an answer of sorts on your part: If you have any words regarding the “death of the Dyna,” now’s the chance to get them off your chest because that horse has been beaten beyond recognition—unless you feel like talking about my Dyna instead?

Hey, Rob. What’s happening, man? Good to see you, dude. To answer your question in regard to the death of the Dyna, I can say some things die at 27 and aren’t buried until 75. Benjamin Franklin said something similar to that about people a long time ago, but I’ll apply it to the Dyna. As the Harley demographic transitions from the older guy who thinks eagles and do-rags are the rage to the new era of motorcycle riders who aren’t so concerned with trinkets and tassels but are very in tune with performance and custom paint schemes, it’s going to be another time in which old things come back around again. As technology advances, manufacturing processes will advance, finishing work will provide more options than black and chrome, and H-D will be right there, offering all its new models and customization options as it has in the past, and will until single-craft space pods are readily available. As far as the actual Dyna, it may be dead, but there are a lot of them on the road, and they need to come to SDC to get some upgrades!

Tell me how this particular project all came about. Did you work directly with H-D, or through a local dealership?

Well, Rob, I’ll be happy to tell you how it all went down. It was a combo deal with H-D corporate, San Diego H-D, Quaid H-D, and San Diego Customs. We got a call from Ty at SD H-D, who was with Brandon from Quaid and a few high-ranking H-D officials who were at the dealer show at the time that H-D announced the Dyna would no longer be in production and was being replaced with the Softail models. He then explained to me that The Motor Company would like to extend us a new 2018 Softail Fat Bob to customize and see what our take on the new design would be. We said yes, thanks, a few hundred times to H-D for the chance to dig into a brand-new chassis design and see what all the hype is about and see what our perspective is.