A Dallas-based Yank In King Arthur’s Court

There are cruisers designed for the adolescent, the old fart and virtually everyone in between. Mike DuSold, whose Triumph-powered custom was a hit on ESPN’s “Metric Revolution,” shows there exists a growing number of bikes fabricated for the enjoyment of those who prefer the unique and/or out-of-the-box. DuSold builds bikes differently, and if you can embrace the airbrush, you can easily appreciate DuSold’s acumen with pencil, paint and welding torch.

There’s little to separate those leased shop spaces in his suburban Texas industrial strip from those around it until you step inside. Neighboring shops might boast paint booths and grinders, but none has DuSold at a bench hand-applying paint to a customer’s gas tank.

His V6-powered T-Type is in the final stages of reassembly. The Buick’s mill is boosted well beyond factory spec, but the overall look is as the product guys at GM would have intended. In short, nothing to disturb the neighbors until the hood is raised.

Other works in progress include a Shelby Mustang owned by DuSold’s dad, Steve; a ’72 GMC undergoing modification for PGA pro Hunter Mahan; and a V-Twin-propelled cruiser built for retired Dallas Maverick Shawn Bradley. Bradley’s V-Twin, fabricated by another builder and awaiting DuSold’s airbrush, is perhaps the closest the shop’s inventory comes to predictable. DuSold certainly isn’t, and the same might be said for his take on Triumph’s Rocket III.

Refugees from a windblown Chicago, DuSold, his wife, Pam, and family have been in North Texas for just over a decade. Pounding and painting metal is a DuSold tradition for some sixty years; his grandfather and father both worked in a family-owned repair shop. DuSold quickly figured out that the collision trade’s painting and patching weren’t for him. The move to Texas, and inability to transfer college credits, supplied the necessary excuse to launch into painting, customization and fabrication full-time. Today, at the age of thirty-one, DuSold Designs is capable of essentially full-custom fabrication, creating a bustling enterprise that, in tribute to his first full-tilt custom, might be best described as voodoo economics.

For those not familiar with Triumph’s venerable Rocket Ship, imagine Harley’s Road King customized by W.O. Bentley. In place of Harley’s Big Twin is a 2.3 liter DOHC triple, located longitudinally and driving, with a claimed 147 lb-ft of torque, the rear wheel via shaft drive. The mesh radiator hangs beneath the bike’s headtube, looking large enough to front one of Bentley’s Le Mans winners. Boasting the world’s largest displacement in a volume-produced motorcycle, both torque and horsepower are prodigious, and while the design spec makes for a big bike it’s always surprising how small the production version feels on the road.

In DuSold’s cruiser vocabulary, “small” is apparently never uttered. A standard-spec Rocket III was supplied by Triumph for use in a biker build-off sponsored by ESPN’s “Metric Revolution.” Given 180 days to build his creation, work began upon receipt of the standard Rocket in November 2005 and was completed in May 2006.

DuSold’s affection for the standard spec Rocket III meant keeping the original mill, trans and wiring harness, relegating essentially everything else to the Anthony Blair retirement fund. We had seen an in-the-raw iteration of the bike shortly after DuSold began construction in early ’06, but nothing prepared us for the finished concept. Despite the lumpish proportions of the Triumph’s three-cylinder centerpiece, DuSold’s unified design theme and integrated construction gives an athletic, sinewy presence to what, when originally offered by Triumph, looks like a two-wheeled take penned by the World Wrestling Federation.

The bike’s three-piece frame is fully integrated with the structure of the tank. And while the tank doesn’t constitute a structural element per se, it does add a semblance of rigidity to the overall design.

To obtain the chassis proportion and wide rear rim DuSold wanted, the Rocket’s standard driveline was junked in favor of a chain. Utilizing a small Honda drive mechanism, the rear disc is mounted on a jackshaft. The wheels, supplied by Ego Tripp, are one-piece in front and three-piece in the rear; both are fabricated to a design brief laid out by Mike and constitute an outlay (at retail) approaching the $10,000 price point of Triumph’s Speed Triple.

In a move sure to confound Benjamin Braddock, no plastic derivatives were used in the Triumph’s reconstruction, only steel and aluminum. With some 2,300 hours invested by DuSold and his crew, full retail would hover somewhere in the $150,000 area, trumping the standard Rocket’s $15,000 retail figure by a factor of ten.

Despite an overall length pushing that of the Queen Mary’s, and all-up weight approaching that of the late Queen Mum, the Trumpet is relatively docile. A 26-inch seat height keeps you within easy reach of terra firma, while a four-gallon capacity should get you to any late-night scene within easy reach of your societal resume’.

Ultimately, DuSold and his team have created a video tribute, courtesy of ESPN, to their design and fabrication artistry. A skull-bedecked gas tank may not have the historic appeal of Lawrence’s Brough Superior, but within the context of a two-wheeled evolution it seems every bit as relevant. The youthful DuSold isn’t out to reinvent the motorcycle, but he may be reinventing the perception.