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S&S Super Sidewinder-Powered Open Mind Custom Motorcycle Is a Brain Tease

Three months. That’s how long it took a German custom motorcycle garage to put this here contraption together, baptize it Open Mind, and send it on its merry way out into the wild at custom motorcycle shows.
Thunderbike Open Mind 21 photos
Photo: Thunderbike
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Of course, drawing it up required an additional three months, but for a bike built from the ground up - all the components, that is, not the engine, as that was sourced from elsewhere – that’s not half bad.

The German garage who did this is called Thunderbike, and the Open Mind is an older creation of theirs, having been completed in 2008. It uses a custom frame sprayed in no less than 28 layers of paint, an American-made S&S Super Sidewinder engine, and nearly-impossible to see screws, cables and other elements to keep it together.

The frame has been shaped to look like it’s not supporting the rear wheel in any way, at least when seen from one side, and has also been made in such a way as to give the impression that hardware like the clutch, brake, gearshift are not part of it.

Large and imposing, a 124ci S&S Super Sidewinder sits smack down in the middle of it, ready to send 120 ps of power to the road as soon as the rider wants it.

Being a show bike, it obsviously sits very low to the ground, but once it gets moving the ride height can be increased thanks to the available air suspension, both front and rear.

The entire contraption was put together years ago to showcase the “excessively large wheels“ developed by Thunderbike at the time - they are of course fitted on this build, sized 23 inches front and 21 inches rear.

The motorcycle has traveled at several motorcycle shows across the world over the years, but has since been replaced under the spotlight by newer creations.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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