Hellboy by Destiny Cycles

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Words and Pictures Reproduced with the kind permission of Blue, Abacus & Simon Everett..Back Street Heroes

At the beginning of the 2004 film, ‘Hellboy’, comes a warning: ‘There is a place, a dark place where ancient evil slumbers, waiting to be awakened’. Who would have imagined that dark place to be Pontefract?

This bike, the property of one Knocker, of the aforementioned parish of Pontefract, is as unexpected as the half-man, half-demon from which it takes its inspiration, for it was never intended to exist. The story starts just under three years ago when Knocker bought a RevTech engine, the first step towards assembling a large pile of parts that would eventually, hopefully, come to comprise a new bike. The motor was followed by a gearbox, along with sundry other bits, until Knocker’s wife, Pat, called a halt to the collection while they could still – just – get into the bedroom.

Realising that Pat was serious and that he wouldn’t be able to buy any more stuff until he’d made a start on his project, Knocker headed northwards to speak to fellow Yorkshireman, Mr Victor B Jefford of Destiny Cycles. Despite Vic’s reputation for the radical and the spectacular, Knocker’s brief for the project was for Vic to build him something ‘plain and basic’. Bless him, I think that Knocker genuinely believed that’s what he would get, despite the words ‘plain’ and ‘basic’ having been removed from the Jefford vocabulary around about 1974. But, to be fair to the Destiny Cycles’ supremo, the catalyst that transported the ordinary to the extraordinary came from elsewhere, and indeed, from an unexpected quarter.

A few weeks after that initial conversation with Vic, Knocker happened to be visiting another motorcycle establishment and, understandably full of enthusiasm, he mentioned that Vic was building him a bike. The proprietor of said motorcycle establishment’s opinion of Vic could best be described as ‘dismissive’. Now, Knocker might be a gruff Yorkshire bloke of compact build and wild pirate captain beardliness, but he’s old-fashioned in that he sets a great deal of store by good manners. (I saw this at first hand last month at the NEC when a commercial airbrush artist came over to inspect Hellboy’s astounding Percy Badbrush paintwork. Regardless of what you might actually think of a bike, it’s extremely rude – and, on many occasions, very ill-advised! – to be anything less than polite about it when speaking to the owner. After asking Knocker who had painted it, this artist, who shall remain as unknown as he deserves to

be, sniffed and arrogantly said, ‘Well, I could run him a close second’. Now chap, perhaps you could, but why say it? All you achieved is to ensure that the owner would sooner have his next motorcycle painted in Dulux gloss by rabid badgers than ever take it to you. I was personally offended enough to have to walk away – and it wasn’t even my bike! Knocker, however, kept his composure, continued smiling, and remained polite even in the face of ignorant disdain).

Another facet of Knocker’s character is that he’s generally very laid back; a gentleman quite capable of sorting out a problem by, um, forceful means, he prefers to defuse situations with a smile and a joke, and to keep everyone happy. A measure of how annoyed he was by that bike shop owner’s attitude towards Vic is that, straightaway, he drove up to the Destiny workshop and said, “Sod plain and basic, let’s go as over the top as we can!”

‘Over the top’, however, had to be balanced with building a bike that was rideable and, above all, usable. Knocker particularly liked the chunky look for which Si Harris down in Southampton has become renowned (that’s renowned for a chunky look to his bikes, not to himself, although Mr Harris is of a very manly build). So, with a large pile of 42mm cold drawn seamless tubing, Mr Jefford set to

work, forming the first bends at the beginning of June 2005. The initial inspiration and theme for the bike was agreed by all concerned to be ‘muscular’, although, for a little while, it was no more defined than that. Then, while kicking around ideas one evening, Knocker’s daughter, Marie, suggested the eponymous character from the film, ‘Hellboy’. It was an idea that sprang to life fully-fledged. Once mentioned, there could be no other figure better suited to the bike that Knocker had in mind than Hellboy, otherwise known as the demon Anung Un Rama, brought to Earth by Grigori Rasputin and Nazi occultists during the Second World War, and then rescued by Allied forces and raised by the United States Army and the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense in New Mexico (this is all absolutely true, you know).

Vic worked with Knocker on the shape of the frame, refining the lines until it resembled what the owner had in mind. Knocker’s vision of a usable bike was something he would sit in rather than on, and on which he wouldn’t have to stretch to reach the handlebars. He’d previously owned a couple of Kawasaki chops, a hardtailed Z1300 and a monoshocked Z1000, but his prime objective now was to have something that, although it might look like it owned the road, would be a pleasure rather than a chore to ride.

The frame ended up with forty-two degrees of rake at the headstock and another five in the yokes, the backbone swooping downwards to produce a comfortable riding position without resorting to ridiculously swept-back ‘bars. The massive wheels were ordered from TTS in Germany, Knocker stipulating that he wanted the spokes in a cross-laced pattern. When the box arrived at Destiny Cycles, Vic’s wife, Lin, was horrified to find that not only did the box only contain one wheel (especially as she had already signed the courier’s delivery note for two wheels without checking the parcel), but that the solitary wheel was radial-laced. It was one of those moments when everything that could go wrong, had. Vic and Lin had a dispatch note confirming they’d taken delivery of two wheels when they hadn’t; Lin was concerned that she’d made a mistake in the ordering, and thus the one wheel they had wasn’t what the customer ordered, and, in changing it, they would have to cough up for a (not inexpensive) second wheel… Fortunately, everything worked out perfectly. UPS turned up the following day with the missing wheel. TTS offered to change the wheels without a quibble as it’d been their error. But, even better, when Knocker and Marie saw the wheels,

they decided that they preferred the radial lacing pattern after all, and that they’d keep them.

The main responsibility for bringing the Hellboy theme to life would lie with Percy Badbrush. Having told him only that the idea for the paint work had been inspired by a film, Vic and Lin met Percy at Rufforth autojumble one weekend, armed with a DVD of Hellboy to give to him. They ended up going home with the DVD, Percy having said, “The idea is complete pants and I refuse to do anything daft enough to will compromise my professional integrity.” Actually, that’s a complete fib, I just made it up. They didn’t have to give

him the DVD because it transpired that Hellboy is Percy’s favourite film, and he already knew it inside out. Although he gives 100% to all his work, it must have been a particular pleasure for Percy to undertake a theme on which he was so keen, and which he was already so familiar.

He discussed the mouldings with Knocker beforehand, and there is more three-dimensional artwork on the bike than first meets the eye. The most obvious and eye-catching are the faces on the sides of the tank; on one side the cigar-chomping Hellboy, an exact recreation of the excellent Ron Perlman in the film role, and, on the other, the character Abe Sapien, Hellboy’s colleague in the BPRD and a ‘icthyo sapien’ or merman. But there are also meticulously sculpted

faces on the frame’s downtubes and between the yokes. During the course of their discussions, Knocker specified all the elements that he wanted on the bike, but then allowed Percy more or less free rein as to how they’d be incorporated.

When it was time to call on Percy to see the finished product, Knocker had – just out of pure mischief – intended to walk into the Badbrush Dezigns studio, look at the paintwork and say, “Nah, I don’t like it, you’ll have to start again…” In the event, that prank went out of the window as soon as Knocker actually saw the results of Percy’s labours. He was so amazed by the work that he

couldn’t say anything at all, let alone wind anyone up. Even after several months with the finished bike, Knocker is still somewhat in awe of how Percy managed to capture what he’d wanted so exactly and perfectly.

If Percy had provided the striking interpretation of the Hellboy theme, then that was further consolidated by Vic’s complementary touches, details that include the devil’s tail rear caliper mount and the bellmouth cover which was relief machined with the clenched fist logo of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (a symbol echoed by Outback in the seat’s stitching). The bellmouth and its cover was the work of Woody, the very talented young man who is currently producing some remarkable work for Vic. To keep the front end clean, the wiring is slotted underneath the yokes and is fed through the handlebars.

While on the subject of clean lines, one thing in particular has caused the casual (but, of course, expert) observer to loudly assert that Hellboy is just for show and isn’t ridden. That, as some of you will have spotted, is the absence of an oil tank. RevTech engines are good, but they haven’t – as yet – managed to master the trick of running without lubrication. As with some of Vic’s other bikes, he incorporated the oil tank into the rear mudguard (itself an integral part of the frame), with its filler cap located behind the engine, and yes, it did have to be pointed out to me!

What originally started off as a ‘plain and basic’ bike has come a long, long way, and Knocker admits that he spent much more money

on this project than he’d anticipated. But, in turn, it progressed from a reasonably uneventful chop to a once-in-a-lifetime bike.As Knocker himself points out, he’s an ordinary working man, and this is, in effect, his moment in the sun, because he doesn’t really expect that he will ever have another bike like this, of such show-stopping quality. And show-stopping it is, having won a very respectable amount of accolades over the last six months, from Best Paint and Visitors’ Choice at the Rock & Blues on its first outing, to its latest triumph, winning Best BSH Bike at this year’s NEC Custom Xtreme display.

But if it had never won so much as an egg-cup, I doubt that it would matter to Knocker. I can’t remember when I last met someone so utterly delighted with their bike, so in love with it that they have to pinch themselves each time they see it as a reminder that it really does belong to them. The fact that showgoers and judges have also expressed an appreciation of Hellboy is just a bonus for Knocker. And you know something? It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.

words: BLUE
photos: ABACUS and SIMON EVERETT

MAKE & MODEL:

2006 Destiny Hellboy

ENGINE:

RevTech 110 cu in with polished cases and powdercoated barrels and heads. Bellmouth by Destiny Cycles, cover by Woody. One-off stainless exhausts by Destiny Cycles.

FRAME:

One-off rigid in 42mm tube by Destiny Cycles with integral oil tank and rear mudguard.

FRONT END:

American Suspension forks with Padlock calipers, DNA disc, 240-spoke wheel by TTS, Germany. Yokes by Woody for Destiny Cycles. King Cruiser tank by Parker Fabrications. Wiring and coil mount boxes by Destiny Cycles. One-off handlebars by Destiny Cycles. Headwinds headlight.

REAR END:

240-spoke TTS wheel, American Suspension pulley, stainless steel spoked rear hub spacer by Destiny Cycles. Leather seat by Outback Motorcycles Saddles. Stainless devil’s tail rear caliper mount. LED taillight in sidemount by Woody.

PAINT & FINISHING:

Hellboy paint by Percy at Badbrush Dezigns.

THANKS TO:

“Vic and Lin at Destiny Cycles; Percy; Woody; Ged and Tammy at Outback; Steve at NB Coatings; Pat and Marie for putting up with me.”