Visited a shop today to interview the owners

Wow! Since most of you don't live in Colorado (the story is being published in Thunder Roads Colorado), I'll just save myself some time and paste it here:


You probably feel the same way I do about winter. It sucks. I’d prefer to keep riding until the wheels fall off, but not badly enough to leave Colorado. A little down time is worth the incredible riding we get the rest of the year. Besides, winter’s a great time to do those things you need to do to keep the wheels from falling off, making them spin a little faster and looking good doing it. Turn that bad winter attitude into Phattitude at Phat Rides Custom Cycles in Loveland.

Visiting Phat Rides, which sits on a remote county road on the south side of Loveland, is like the biker’s version of Willy Wonka’s factory: lots of machinery for fabrication, custom built tools, parts everywhere that you don’t see everyday – or anywhere else, and a collection of custom bikes that will make you drool.

Randy Hocker and Mike Savage, two of the owners of Phat Rides, are proud of their work, and they should be. Bikes created by Randy and Mike have been featured in Hot Bike, Hot Bike Baggers, V-Twin and Iron Works magazines. Awards include the Excellence in Engineering at the Big Twin Customs Invitational, second place at the Rat’s Hole show at Daytona Bike Week, and 19th in the world at the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building in Sturgis.

A few things in the shop caught my eye. There’s a Panhead with a see-through magneto cover and a Phat Rides built springer front end that is a work of art. They also have something that looks like a huge antique sewing machine. A hundred years ago it was a “Patented Wire Stitcher” used to bind books. Randy turned it into a planishing hammer with interchangeable heads used to smooth out hand made gas tanks, fenders or any other sheet metal parts you can dream up. Another tool created at the shop is a frame jig. There is no shortage of innovation or creativity.

But Phat Rides isn’t just about custom fabrication and award winning masterpieces; they’re happy to see any American V-Twin that wants to drop in for some tender loving care. Something you don’t see in most independent shops is a DynoJet Dynamometer. Randy has attended training with DynoJet Research for the Power Commander. This is where I learned something new.

Anyone can download tuning maps from the Power Commander website. However, the maps that are preprogrammed to match your engine, exhaust and air filter are all tuned to some guy’s bike in Las Vegas. Sure, EFI is supposed to adapt to changes in altitude, but to really get it right, you need to have a map for your bike and your typical riding conditions. Randy can do that. In fact, he does a complete custom map for every range. There are over a hundred combinations of RPM and % throttle, and each one of those is dialed in specifically for your bike.

Phat Rides is a full service shop. They’re open Tuesday through Saturday from 9am to 5pm and are located on South County Road 7 in Loveland. Visit their website at phatridescc.com for a detailed map or call 970-663-4155. Stop in for a quick look around and leave inspired.

If you git a map for a PC I would think about having the bike dynoed.

I had a map, it was only for WOT. Think it might of just caused a lot of problems that I had with my 08 bike.
Thundermax is 5 times a better tuner. But that is just my suggestion.

There are about a gazillion maps on the PC site. This guy thinks Power Commander is the best, but he's also been to training at the company. I've downloaded maps from the site and uploaded them to a bike, but there was no tweaking involved. I imagine that if you don't have it fine tuned, it isn't at its full potential. That being said, maybe Thundermax works better right out of the box. I don't know. I'm carbureted and plan on staying that way.