Everything Mike makes fits beautifully. He even took special pains on this bike to box in the bottom of the frame's backbone to make the underside blend perfectly with the fuel tank it car¬ries. There are crisp, even seams everywhere with no unsightly gaps. And everything that should be, like the fuel tank and the oil tank, is rubber mounted to damp vibrations. As good as Mike motorcycles look, first and foremost they're runners. "I consider the looks a bonus," he says. While South Central Customs tackles it all, trucks, hot rods and motorcycles-"anything that you can't go out and buy," is how Mike puts it-the bikes make up the bulk of the business. "They're my main deal," he says. "That's what I concentrate on the most." It shows. Mike's painter, Danny Morgan, finished things off here with some nicely chosen silver paint and airbrushed graphics. The Silver Streak's been finished for just about a year, "And if you like this one," Mike says, "I have a few more that should be finished up this later year that you'll probably enjoy, as well. I'm not lacking for new designs," he goes on. "I have plenty more in my head. What I'm short on, though, is the time to get them all done!" We'd say it's worth the wait.

It's also the platform for one good-looking motorcycle. Leading off with a 12-over Paughco springer, Mike didn't miss a trick. Working towards the back of the bike, and keeping things flowing, he built his frame to give the rear wheel the illusion that it's just kind of hanging back there, "suspended, more or less," he says. But of course there are no springs involved. The bike's a rigid. All told, Mike says it took him about six months to complete all this. Most of the bikes coming out of his South Central Customs are this intricate, he says, which explains why Mike can only complete two or three of them a year. For the most part, Mike says, he works alone with his dad, that old H-D dealer, pitching in. Stylized choppers like this aren't all that Mike dreams up, either. One of the more recent bikes completed, he says, was a stretched out and slammed down pro-street hidden-shock machine, complete with a supercharger and airbags. The exact opposite of what we see here. Almost everything on a South Central bike is made in-house. "It all comes in the door as raw metal and leaves as a painted piece of a motorcycle," he says. That includes the sheet metal, which Mike says he crafts "old-school style" using little more than a shot-bag and a mallet. He did make an English wheel recently, however, "and that definitely helps," he says. "I got to use it on the last couple of bikes."

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