Rick took a new 2014 Forty-Eight and roughly a month of time in his shop to make a whole new breed of adventure bike that looks like a real motorcycle and not some plastic-laden bike designed by Dr. Seuss that can do a little bit of everything like most production dual-sport bikes. Without trying to sound totally juvenile, this bike makes me want to jump on and find the nearest dirt to wring the crap out of it while making a fair amount of noise. Oh, you know, just some hooligan dirt stuff, nothing serious except for some serious fun. Frankly, if I had a choice of any bike I’d like to be barreling around on as the world made its final turn, this would be it.

 

   What the shop lads at Rick’s have done here is leave the basic engine/frame/body platform of the Forty-Eight alone and change or modify anything else. It should be no surprise to you if you know anything about Rick’s Motorcycles that the vast majority of custom tweaks are pulled directly out of the shop’s own extensive collection of custom parts. Take the wheels for instance; they’re Rick’s Apollo 5 wheel with a big boy 130/80x17 Metzeler Karoo 3 tire up front and another 170/60x17 Karoo out back mounted on a Rick’s CNC Disc wheel. Yeah, I know, the wheels and tires look much more massive than the numbers let on but I guess that 80 aspect ratio height sure brings on the rubber up front while that 170mm tire out back with tread blocks the size of a Snickers bar looks a hell of a lot bigger than any 170 I’ve seen. Yeah, I’m not into adventure bikes (can’t begin to touch the ground from a 34/35-inch seat height, so no go), but it isn’t like I haven’t seen one before and their similarly-sized tires just don’t begin to look like this. Aggressive looking takes on a whole new meaning.

 

  For brakes, Rick stayed with the Harley OEM calipers as they work pretty damn fine as is, but he did chuck on a set of matching Apollo 5 rotors just because he could. A set of mid-controls from a Sportster Iron replaced the Forty-Eight’s forward pegs and if I have to explain why you’ve obviously never ridden a dirt bike. Okay, okay, I’ll explain. Put simply, it’d be a little hard to stand on the forward pegs when off-road conditions called for it which they will at some point. The front brake (along with the clutch) is controlled by a wicked cool set of Rick’s adjustable Good Guys levers. If you’ve never used high-quality adjustable reach levers, well you just haven’t lived as far as I’m concerned. One of the best changes you could make to any Harley, any model, even if you did nothing else, and your hands will thank you for it.

 

  Suspension-wise, Rick’s stayed with the stock Sportster fork although I don’t know if they screwed around with the internals. What they did do externally was add a much needed fork brace to keep things working in harmony. Nobody wants their fork tubes to disagree with each other over what action to take under the duress of off-road riding or even all that rubber just gripping and ripping up tarmac at speed. Slightly longer Progressive Suspension shocks keep the swingarm and wheel/tire combo under better control than the over-sprung stockers while providing a nicer ride too. A win-win all around there.

 

   As far as the engine, things stayed pretty stock internally and that’s a good thing. Externally, Rick’s did ditch the stock air cleaner for one of their own. It’s from their Good Guys collection and has a neat billet piece to it that seems to be there to protect it from a rider’s knee and also to add a good bit of style. The 2-into1 high-mount exhaust is a BSL Soundsystem (you gotta love the German sense of the obvious) that Rick’s has modified a bit to their liking. It looks suspiciously like a SuperTrapp setup with one big difference that you should click on this BSL video to see. Unlike a SuperTrapp which you can change the sound and backpressure with by adding or subtracting plates, the BSL seems to have a little Allen wrench adjustment on it so you can make sound adjustments with nothing more than a twist of a tiny wrench. Pretty cool stuff BSL. Rick’s also added a lot of their various and attractive engine covers all over the place too and that’s it for the XL 1200 engine.

 

  Where they tweaked it quite a bit is in the looks department with a chopped Rick’s Bobber fender front and rear along with new super-short struts out back. The Rick’s “windshield” mounted over the stock headlight doesn’t do a lot of shielding, but it does add a bit of spice to the mix. So does the long and wise skid plate mounted under the engine and it looks strangely cool even if you never went off road. A set of dirt bike-style cross brace handlebars spices up the other off-road spices without being over-the-top spicy. Sometimes too much spice is just that, but not in this case, it’s just right.  

 

   Rick’s wrapped it up with a paintjob that looks the dirt bike part or at least like any of the slightly worn out dirt bikes I’ve had. He chose a Mercedes Benz color (big surprise there), Parchment Beige as a base along with red and silver leaf graphics. Giving it the dirt bikey look is the artificially distressed paintjob which actually doesn’t look distressed at all, but very appropriate.

 

   Not only does this bike look like silly fun, but there isn’t much that couldn’t unfortunately be stolen (sorry Rick, but I think you intended for this to happen) and used on your own Sporty too. And, with no real cutting (other than fenders) and welding required, nothing would be irreversible. I can only bet Mark Barnett’s brain is turning its wheels big time trying to figure out how he could turn one of his old Sportys into a desert runner with a set of tires like these for the weekend. Maybe he’ll make tow and we can both go for a little touring in the desert around El Paso.