BIKES
Jolly Roger custom bikes
July 6, 2005
Seems everyone these days is building custom choppers. Harleys are cool, but to pull some massive tail you want to be seen on a Custom Chopper. It's hard to distinguish who builds the best, most are built from Kits and can have a few different things changed here or there but seem to resemble one another. To have yours stand out you must really do something different. Imagine building your first bike and having it win almost every competition you enter it in. That's just what the boys at Jolly Roger Customs out of Milford did.

Darrian Tefft, Mario Audia and Doug Hanes (like the underware), build some cool ass bikes. What started as a small business out of Milford , Michigan , has landed them on the map of Pro Builders. The business started in 2003 when they built, Chop Rod, the long dripping red painted chopper that has been tearing up the Pro Circuit across the country. We met up with the boys from Jolly Roger at their shop in Milford while a local bar was using one of their bikes as a prop for a photo shoot for some upcoming advertisement. The owner of Red Dog Saloon, Pat Bonish said “We love the bikes and love the fact that they're built right here in Milford ”.

The bike Chop Rod has won more than a few awards since its debut at the 2004 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota , one of the biggest rallies in the world. At Sturgis last year they won the Metzeler “Best in Show” award and the “Best in Show” Penthouse Magazine Bike Award. The Metzeler award brought Chop Rod to Germany to the Intermot Bike Show. Darrian said “The bike turned heads quicker than a UFO landing in Times Square ”. “They're not used to seeing bikes like this over there due to the strict standards the government puts on the bikes” Darrian told me. Metzeler is using Chop Rod for an advertisement for their new line of tires in all the major biker magazines as is Baker Transmission. (Still waiting to see the photos from the Penthouse shoot.)

The Birch Run Bike Show in Michigan earlier this year was the next show for Jolly Roger Customs. Not one of the biggest shows in the nation, but it still brought in custom builders from across the country. Jolly Roger took home another 1 st place in the Pro Builder class at this event. Then came the Easy Rider show in Memphis , Tennessee . A 3 rd place finish in that show qualified them for the Easy Rider invitational in Columbus , Ohio where the boys took home the Editors Choice Award. A 2 nd place finish in the “Beast of the East” show in Maryland gave them a cool $5000 and another trophy for the ever growing wall in the shop. Not bad for their first bike.

Jolly Roger Customs doesn't just do full bikes either. They specialize in Custom Rolling Chassis's, Hand Built Gas Tanks, Handle Bars, Mid-Controls, Frames and Exhaust. If you already own a bike and just want to make it stand out, give them a call and set up an appointment to go over some ideas. They can turn any idea into a rolling work of art. Jolly Roger does all their work in house except paint, which if you've seen either of their bikes, I would let them source your paint job out.

Pictures don't do Jolly Roger Bikes justice; these bad boys must be seen to notice the detail put into them. Mid-controls, Gas Tanks that resemble big horns, exhaust tubes that will blow your mind let alone your buddy with the stock exhaust on his bike.

Next time you're at a festival or an event look for a crowd around some really cool bikes and more than likely it will be one of theirs. Go on to the Jolly Roger website www.jollyrogercustoms.com to check out the different things they offer or give them a call and see what they can do with your stock bike.

Scott Garner

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