Prodigies
prodigies
It’s called the World’s Most Beautiful Motorcycle; he's called one of the world’s most talented customizers
LOOK UP THE WORD "PRODIGY" in your Funk & Wagnalls and you'll find it defined as a person, thing or act so extraordinary as to inspire wonder. in which case the Harley-Davidson custom pictured here qualifies as one of the most appropriately named motorcycles you're likely to encounter. Its maker calls it "Prodigy," and that moniker not only perfectly describes this wondrous piece of work, it also defines the man responsible for creating it.
That would be Paul Yaffe, the 35-year-old custom-bike~~ wizard from Phoenix, Arizona. Though Yaffe has been producing customs for a decade and a half only in the last few years has he emerged from relative obscunty to gain interna tional acclaim as one of the premier builders in the business~
Yaffe's stock really began soaring in January of 1998 when one of his creations, named "Cashmere," won the World's Most Beautiful Motorcycle tro phy at the Oakland Roadster Show. That's the top award bestowed upon two-wheeled entries in that annual custom car and bike competition, regarded a~ the most prestigious show of its kind held anywhere on the p1a~~;.~net. A year later, Yaffe once again captured that award with "Sliver," a long, cwvaceous cus tom that was also featured in CW's January, 2000, issue And this year Yaffe scored an unprecedented third straight Roadster Show victory with the masterpiece seer, on these pages. Not even ho.mebcy Men Ness, the legendary customizer from
PAUL DEAN
San Leandro, California, just a few miles down the road from Oakland, ever accomplished such a feat during his decades of Roadster Show competition.
Prodigy was conceived and built for Dennis Block, a familypractice dentist from Valparaiso, Indiana. He and Yaffe first met in the parking lot of a Daytona Beach hotel in 1998 while the latter was prepping Cashmere for a custom show on Main Street. Their casual conversation soon
turned to business, and by the time Yaffe departed for the show, he had agreed to build a very special custom for Block. Some 21 months and $90,000 later,
Prodigy was a rolling reality, spectacular evidence of Yaffe’s enormous talent-and, apparently, of Block’s extremely successful dental practice.
Contrary to the process favored by most custom designers, Yaffe never made any drawings of the bike; he didn’t even
doodle one of those classic pencil sketches on a cocktail napkin. From beginning to end, Prodigy was hammered and bent and machined into shape from visions that existed only in his fertile mind. Those visions underwent a few tweaks during the bike’s incubation, but they never strayed far from the original concept. From that image evolved the Gothic architecture that dominates the bike's styling theme. “It reminds me of the creature in Alien,” says Yaffe.
“all pointy and wicked and evillooking.”
Now. 90 large might seem an outrageous amount to invest in any motorcycle, show winner or not, but the closer you get to Prodigy, the more you can see where the money went. There’s not a single part of the bike, not one square inch of its copperand-chrome real estate, that hasn’t somehow had the magic wand of Paul Yaffe passed over it. Even much of the bolt-on hardware, including some of the billet pieces on the engine, are either one-offs or items available through his shop, Paul Yaffe Originals (2211 E. Indian School Road, Phoenix, AZ 85016; 602/840-4205).
In creating Prodigy, Yaffe began with a stretched-out, Nessdesigned. Softail-style frame and swingarm, then hacked the bejeezus out of it to achieve the look he envisioned. He kicked
out the already-raked steering head another 5 degrees, extended the already-longer swingarm 2 inches and dropped the alreadylowered seat 2 inches. For front suspension, he opted for simplicity, mounting a stock 41mm Harley fork gripped by gorgeous billet triple-clamps from RC Components. At the rear, he used a KT Components torsion-bar suspension but had to re-engineer much of it to fit within the tight confines of the modified rear end.
As soon as that basic chassis was ( d up
on two wheels. Yaffe stood back, studied its overall profile and determined that something wasn’t right. After much contemplation. he concluded that the rear of the frame didn't have the same graceful sweep and bad-ass attitude as the front. So he got out the Sawzall, whacked off both of the frame’s rear uprights (the tall, narrow sideplates that house the swingarm pivots) and welded them back in place with a 12-degree rake. The corresponding pieces at the front of the swingarm also had to be raked to match the re-angled frame uprights. “Raking the rear changed the whole appearance of the bike," says Yaffe. “After that, the styling flowed more naturally and the back of the bike looked like it belonged with the front.”
All ofthat frame work, as well as the fabrication of the body panels, was performed by Yaffe
and his right-hand man. a skillful
metal-bender known only as Mac Daddy. They built Prodigy’s long, sw oopy gas tank, form-fitting, sculpted fenders and cool little high-intensity dual headlights. They also crafted the clever oil tank that is integral to the frame and swoops dramatically forward over the top of the transmission. Beneath the seat, the rear part of the oil tank is molded into a battery box, and the oil filter tucks neatly into a form-fitting recess right next to the oil-filler cap.
That's typical of the ingenuity apparent throughout Prodigy.
The gas cap, for example, is a tiny, flush-mount unit at the right-front of the tank, painted with matching graphics that make it all but invisible. The forward foot controls pivot on mounts built and faired into the frame rather than simply bolted onto it. The air cleaner is a Yaffe-built one-of-a-kind shaped to match the angle of the cylinders. And just about everywhere you look, no mounting hardware whatsoever is visible.
Such immaculate detailing has become a hallmark of Yaffe customs. He often invites show judges to take his bikes apart and inspect all the hidden nooks and crannies-under the gas lank, beneath the seat, inside the fenders, on the underside of the engine and transmission. Most bike builders wouldn’t dare invite such
magnifying-glass scrutiny, but Yaffe relishes it, knowing that the craftsmanship they might discover there will equal what they find everywhere else.
With Prodigy, however, there was one area in which Yaffe seemed hopelessly perplexed: deciding the bike’s color. He originally envisioned a dark paint treatment, probably mostly black, that would complement the sinister character of the Gothic styling theme. But once 1 ;t-
metal sha real-
ity, he started thinking more along the lines of a lighter, metallic color.
After a long and arduous assessment of all the usual silver/gold-recl/blue metallics tailed to Ik íe
verge of throwing in the towel and settling for something less than avante garde. Salvation arrived in the form of Dawne Holmes, the gifted airbrush artist from nearby Prescott, Arizona, who does all of Yaffe’s graphic paintwork. Holmes suggested a very special, very expensive copper metallic DuPont lacquer she had discovered almost by accident. The instant he saw the paint, which is the color of a brand-new penny, Yaffe knew his search was over.
Holmes came to the rescue in more ways than one. The copper lacquer, which was not formulated for automotive or motorcycle use, contains much more metal powder than other metallics. Thus, when sprayed on by Wayne Adams, who does Yaffe’s basecoat/elearcoat paintwork, the heavy metallic content insisted on yielding to
the forces of gravity and collecting at
the lowest point. But w ith a bit of trial and error, Holmes found a way to apply the paint without the metallic powder sagging to the bottom.
She also gave the bike its name. As she painstakingly airbrushed the intricate graphics. Holmes had time to think. “She asked me what 1 thought about calling the bike Prodigy,” recalls Yaffe. “and the name just clicked. That’s what it's been known as ever since.”
As radical as Yaffe is in crafting his chassis, lie's pretty conservative when building engines. “1 like to use as many factory Harley pails as possible in my motors." he says, “because 1 build bikes to be ridden, not just looked at. If you pick all the right pieces and put them together properly, you can get excellent power with factory stuff and still have a very ridable and reliable bike.”
Prodigy’s 80-inch Evolution engine seems to follow that model. The exterior of the Yaffe-built powerplant is a motherlode of min or-finish billet and chrome, but most of the functional components are Motor Companyissue. The cases, cran 3 nect-
ing rods and cylinders are the originalequipment pieces, and the heads, cams, valves, high-compression pistons and 44mm CV carb are all from Harley’s Screamin’ Eagle catalog. The only non-H-D performance hardware on the engine are the angular exhaust system and V-shaped air-cleaner, both of which are Yaffe-designed and built.
Clearly, Paul Yaffe’s range of talents seems ata i. Aside
from . igner
and fabricator, he’s an expert machinist, a first-rate welder, a master mechanic and much more of a computer hacker than most of his contemporaries. He even programs the CNC milita icture
many of his aftermarket accessories. And with the help of his wife,
Allison, Yaffe has become a wily businessman who skillfully manages a company enjoying an almost vertical growth rate.
Prodigy was completed just in time to get er and
whisked from Phoenix to California for the 2000 Roadster Show. As the door to the trailer was being closed and Yaffe took one last, fond glance at the bike, he turned to Allison and said, “I can't believe I actually did this.”
A mo est self-
appra ;ted, even
though he had just won the Roadster Show for the third straight year. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to top this,” he said, still gazing at Prodigy with disbelief in his eyes. “It's the best thing I've ever done. I probably ought to get k, because
1 can’t imagine how l could possibly come up with anything better than this.”
Maybe he can't conceive of such a thing, but anyone who knows Paul Yaffe and his work certainly can. Like his latest award-winning custom, he truly deserves the name Prodigy.
