Rick Bray’s Pala Duo Custom Sled
Competition Heats Up in FreeStyle Class
Rick Bray is rolling in his award-winning Pala Duo custom sled to compete in the 2013 edition of the AMD Affiliate Custom Bike Show. If he wins the class he will be joing an elite group of Team USA members that receive a complmentary pass and travel to Germany in 2014 to represent the USA and compete in the World Championships.
The bike’s name, Pala Duro, means Hard Shovel in Spanish and that’s good because the bike is running a Harley-Davidson 80 inch Shovelhead. It’s low and slender and has just the right stance. Rick is an off-road race car builder by trade and his fabrication work shines through. All of his brass components from the gas cap to the fasteners are from scrap metal that he turned on a lathe.
The bike has a finned theme from the Kirk Taylor built engine and rocker boxes to the frenched in gas tank panels to the beehive oil tank. After the bike was built in raw metal, it was torn down and sent out for paint. Rick has worked with his painter, Kool Hand Luke, for so long that he just drops off his parts for paint and it comes back right every time. Rick bought the roller from his brother to start the build and the rest, as they say, is historia.
