“Chariots of Fire was originally opened in 2005,” says William ‘Sparky’ Tindall. “We were in a little 1,200 sq. ft. shop where we brought each bike in through a man door. We grew from there to a 3,600 sq.-ft. place, and now we’re in our third location, which is just under 12,000 sq. ft. Right now, I’ve got 92 bikes in here and at one point we had as many as 120.”
In the 18 years it’s been open, Chariots of Fire Customs has grown exponentially, and William “Sparky” Tindall can attest to that. He’s been with the motorcycle shop since 2006 and has seen a ton of awesome bikes enter and leave the premises.
The Troy, MO-based shop is a family-owned service and repair shop that provides preventative maintenance, state inspections, major service work, and customization. That means that there’s often a few unique bikes in the showroom with some wicked custom touches. One of their more recent projects is a 2009 Harley-Davidson Road Glide that’s been given the name “Zombie.”
“The crazy thing about this bike is that it was actually owned by a guy who had it stolen out of his shop,” Sparky says. “The kids who stole it hooked a chain around it and drove it through a cornfield trying to pop start it, but its fuel injected so that couldn’t happen, and it ended up being left in the cornfield. The sheriff came out and towed it to us and once the owner’s insurance company totaled it out, we bought it back from the customer who owned it.”
The bike was completely trashed – there were no fairings on it, the crash bar had to be cut off with a hacksaw, and it couldn’t even be maneuvered around. Eventually it was repaired enough to begin a revitalization project, which would eventually lead to the pristine condition the Road Glide is in now. Everything except the original frame is completely custom.
The new engine is a stage 4 103 complete with new cams, cylinder heads, and a custom exhaust. The team at Chariots of Fire took a factory-type head pipe and built a two-in-one exhaust in-house using a Performance Machine exhaust tip. Currently, it puts down around 100 horsepower and 117 ft.-lbs. of torque.
Chariot of Fire doesn’t do paint work, so the bike was sent to Ohio for the redesigned “Zombie” look. “We told the guy we wanted it to be green and look like it had been run through the mill,” Sparky says. “I think he did a really great job.”
One interesting aspect of the bike is that it was the second bike in the St. Louis area to adopt the 180mm fat front tire trend, which Tindall believes turned out wonderfully. It also has a full front and rear air ride system by Dirtyworks LLC. It’s got an MRI center stand that it sits on, and it’s all custom wired into the dash so that the driver can see when it is activated.
If you have a motorcycle, ATV, UTV, snowmobile or jet ski you’d like to feature in MPN’s Ride of the Week series, please email MPN Content Director Greg Jones at [email protected].
