Custom 1952 Harley-Davidson Panhead Is All About a 1970s Fuel Tank

Given how there are so few body parts (and by that we mean clean sheets of metal) on a motorcycle, fuel tanks have become a battlefield of creativity. Shops make them from scratch or adapt them from existing hardware and then go berserk trying to paint them as flashy, catchy, or filled with meaning as possible.

This year custom bike lovers had very few reasons to rejoice as the health crisis either canceled or postponed most specialized shows. Some type of salvation came from the Internet, where bike makers and builders took refuge to show their masterpieces.

Harley-Davidson’s The No Show was a shelter of this kind. Held back in June on Youtube, it was where 60 builders from 10 countries went to show their creations.

The 1952 Panhead we have here was one of those builds. Put together by North Carolina resident Luke Heafner some four years back, it was supposed to be a star of the Congregation Show in Charlotte during the summer (the show eventually took place in October).

The chopper style bike is of course a one-off, having been put together not around the frame or the engine, but around the fuel tank. At least this is what Heafner himself says about the two-wheeler.

Initially featured on an Ironhead chopper back in the early 1970s, the hand-painted fuel tank has been off the road for decades, after the motorcycle it was originally on was wrecked. Heafner got possession of it and promised its owner he would build his project around it.

Of course, being that old and having survived a crash means the tank is no longer in tip-top shape. But that’s actually the whole point behind this project, as the missing paint, the dents in the metal, and the overall aged appearance of the part makes the Panhead look stunning.

You can watch Heafner’s rundown of the motorcycle and hear the engine start in the video attached below.