Say what you will about the V-Rod; it has its place in motorcycling like most any other popular mass-produced make and model. Among other things, Harley-Davidson used that platform as quite a learning lesson in water-cooled V-twin technology. So where has a decade-plus of fooling around with non-air-cooled performance taken it?

The Revolution-X found itself a new home in 2014: the Street 500, an all-new direction for The Motor Company. With high-volume traffic and warmer-climate riding conditions in mind, it appears the Street was designed with the urban H-D enthusiast as its target customer. Whether that’s true or not (at least in the North American market), the new model is enough of a departure from the norm yet still retains that true Harley-Davidson V-twin aura that we’re all fans of—so much so, in fact, that it caught the attention of Born-Free’s Mike Davis and Grant Peterson, who, after some serious thought, decided to not only get their hands on one but to have our pal Brandon Holstein over at The Speed Merchant custom re-tailor it for a very timely BF6 unveil.

Rather than attempt to interpret his interpreted vision, we’ll let Brandon “Brawny Built” Holstein tell his side of the story as to how The Thresher came to be:

“In early March 2014, we [The Speed Merchant] were approached by Mike and Grant. They asked if we’d be interested in doing something cool and unique to this new Harley-Davidson Street 500 model. Having never seen one in person, it was very intriguing. The idea that they had was something similar to an old XR750 flat-track bike.

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The idea that they had was something similar to an old XR750 flat-track bike.

Then it showed up at my shop with about three months to get the job done.

“I started by removing most of the stock parts from the bike: front end, wheels, bars, rear fender, battery, rear subframe, and exhaust. I replaced the stock wheels with a pair of Sun Aluminum rims with SS spokes laced up to some H-D hubs. The front end was replaced with a set of our SM mid-glide trees made for the H-D Forty-Eight Sportster. Huntington Beach Harley-Davidson was kind enough to donate the front end for the build. I topped off the front end with our SM preload adjusters. To finish up the front, I made an aluminum number plate that incorporates the overflow for the radiator and a LED driving light supplied by Lazer Star Lights. I used our radial mount brake bracket in the front and mounted a Tokico caliper to it. The bars are a custom set made in-house. The controls are off a GSXR 600/750, topped off with some Pazzo levers. Joker Machine shipped me out one of their well-designed quarter-turn throttle setups, used mainly for speedway. Next I decided to mount the tank in a different position. I raised the tank by about 4 inches to provide a more traditional stance.

“To match the line of the tank I started with the tail section next. After cutting off the stock subframe, and pulling the wiring from under the seat, I started laying out the new subframe setup. Part of the new subframe houses all of the stock wiring just under the seat. The new tail section was shaped out of aluminum. Once that was finished, I fabricated a seat pan that was handed off to Bates Leather. They nailed it with this custom tuck-and-roll design.

“To change the stance of the bike, I used some tall rear shocks supplied by Öhlins USA. They were kind enough to support this build. The taller shocks provided extra ground clearance and helped to enhance the stance of the bike. To round off the rear section of the bike, I decided to modify the rear swingarm by adding some extra bracing and hollowing out the square tubing. Then I made a battery box to mount the eight-cell Antigravity battery just above the swingarm.

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Having a brand-new model created some challenges