April 2006
Rucker Performance Motorcycles: Raising a Rucker among the V-Twin Community
By MIKE SEATE / The Works
April 2006 – If you’ve got the bucks, there’s no shortage of fine, handcrafted alternative V-Twins just waiting to fill your garage. Finding one with the perfect combination of sharp looks and blistering performance can be serious needle-in-the-haystack stuff – test rides on these high-buck babies are about as rare as rocking horse droppings, and written road tests are equally hard to find. Nevertheless, we were rather impressed with a line of new custom twins emerging from the Fort Worth, Texas, headquarters of Rucker Performance, a relatively new manufacturer that’s offered to let us ride and evaluate some of their big-inch street bruisers.
Rucker Performance was founded two years back by Bill Rucker, a designer, builder and fabricator who, 11 years ago, co-founded American IronHorse Motorcycles. Rucker sold his interest of AIH a couple years ago, and recently formed RP to produce high-end custom bikes. As a serious drag race enthusiast, Rucker designed his current lineup of production bikes to encompass the same “ground-shaking, lung-pounding, ear-splitting power,” of a top fuel dragster, only the bikes are far prettier and less taxing to ride than are the rail dragsters!
All RP bikes – the Assassin, Gauntlet, Predator and Vandal – are powered by 124-cubic-inch S&S twin cam-style engines with polished cases. They have soft-tail suspension, fat rear tires and 55mm-diameter fork legs. The sleek, angular bodywork on the Rucker bikes lends them an almost otherworldly appearance, too; part rolling survival knife, part classic hot rod. These aren’t bolt-together parts-bin specials, either. Rucker tells us that he’s gone to great lengths to design his own wheels, sheetmetal, pipes and other hard components for his bikes which we’ll test-ride and report in an upcoming issue. Curious about the experience of piloting a two-wheeled dragster? Visit Rucker on the web at
August 8, 2006 11:15 AM | send page | Press Releases