Ultimate Motorcycling article Oct 2012 pp 27 30

Simply Beautiful

>> GALLERY ATI FOUNDATION HARLEY-DAVIDSON TON-UP IRON 883

PHOTO BY DAVID NAWROCKI

>> GALLERY 2012 ATI FOUNDATION HARLEY-DAVIDSON TON-UP IRON 883

Dr. Chris E. Stout began sharpening his customizing skills on Revell models that he worked on after school as a youngster. Spending many hours in a hospital room with his sick grandmother, he methodically worked through the catalog, building models with an unyieldingly painstaking precision.

These skills and his physical proximity to his grandmother’s illness led to dual careers—Director of Research and Development at ATI Physical Therapy, and owner of Stout Engineering, a company that focuses on designing, fixing, restoring, customizing, and building motorcycles and automobiles.

The Ton-Up Bobber combines Stout’s two vocations. “The design ethic behind this custom build was to take a new 2012 Harley-Davidson Iron 883 and pay homage to the elegance of the Harleys of days past,” Stout explains, “when builders bobbed parts to lighten the bike’s weight and then hot-rod the motor in order to have a bike that performed as aggressively as it looked—both in speed and handling.What I was really going for was a build that someone would call ‘simply beautiful.’”

Black certainly is beautiful in the context of the Ton-Up Bobber; the Vance & Hines Shortshots mufflers, Roland Sands Design Café Clip-

Ons, custom built Paaschburg & Wunderlich Tubo aluminum front turn signal housings, custom shocks, and various powdercoated bits all are done in glorious black. Only the fiber of the performance-enhancing K&N 63 Series AirCharger delves into the world of color.

The RSD clip-ons go well with the RSD Café Gauge and Headlight Re-locator kit, which gives the Iron 883 a sleek look and performance focus. The EFI was custom mapped to take advantage of the increased breathing provided by V&H and K&N. Assisting Stout with the build was Mark McClain of the House of Harley in Milwaukee, with assistance

from Nate Green of Green Machine Customs in Wauconda, Ill. Not a vanity effort, Stout put together the Ton-Up Sportster as a charity project for the ATI Foundation, which provides medical resources and funding to children with physical impairments. Foundation director Terry Williams holds an annual Cruisin’-4-Kids event, which raises money for the cause, so the ATI Foundation has a solid foundation in things mechanical.

In the case of Ton-Up, Stout Engineering fully funded the build, raffle tickets were sold, and $127,000 was added to the treasury of the ATI Foundation. Simply beautiful. <<