Billy Richina's relationship with Ron Simms and the crew at Simms Custom Cycles started like a lot of other people have, as a customer coming into the store buying parts for his bike. Billy would frequent the shop, picking up knickknacks for his brand new Dyna.
The Dyna was Billy's very first bike. He had wanted a bike for awhile, and one day just headed down to his local Harley-Davidson dealer, picked one out, and rode it home. It wasn't by any means a hot rod. It was a very nice stock motorcycle; an awesome, reliable bike that was probably more suited for commuting back and forth to work than standing out in a crowd. And that's exactly why Billy found himself frequenting Simms' Bay Area shop. He continued to ride his Dyna, working on it along the way, adding more and more parts out of the Simms catalog. When it finally became apparent that short of changing pretty much every part on his factory Dyna it was never going to be a Simms bike, a big engine, six-speed, long fendered, bright red Simms Custom.
After finding a new home for the Dyna, Billy walked into Ron's shop, and instead of scanning the shelves for parts for the bike he had been trying to turn into a Simms bike, he started with a clean slate. He decided that he wanted to start with a Paughco/Simms Easy Ride frame with 2-inches of stretch and a 38-degree rake with a Simms swingarm. They planned to fill all that open space in the middle of the frame with a 124ci S&S Evolution powerplant and a Baker six-speed transmission linked up with a factory Harley-Davidson chain primary drive. They added a set of Ceriani forks up front and hung a set of long fenders over the 18-inch Performance Machine wheels and brakes. And as things started to take shape right there on the bike lift behind the counter at Ron's shop, everyone took a step back to take a look at the foundation for Billy's new bike.
And at the end of that day, Billy left the shop with a huge grin on his face with one final request: the bike had to be red. Everything else was up to Ron and the Simms crew. They didn't disappoint, with killer details like the back-loaded taillight that shines through a Simms logo laser-cut into the rear fender, and the Autometer gauge that is recessed into the fuel tank right down to the tooled leather on the Corbin seat. After all of the details were worked out, the bike was pulled apart and the parts were sent off in three different directions. Everything that needed to be polished or chrome-plated was shipped off to Valley Plating. All of the components that were to be powdercoated were dropped off at Meclec. And everything that was to be painted was dropped off with Horst with a note was attached that simply said "Paint it red," but anybody who knows Horst knows that he doesn't just paint anything a single color. Horst outdid himself with a paint job befitting a Simms creation of this caliber.
After everything was shiny and back at the Simms compound, the crew started bolting everything back together, and exactly 6-weeks to the day after Billy had come down to the shop to talk about buying his dream bike, he was riding it out of the parking lot of the shop for the first time. And the best part is that it is exactly the bike he had been dreaming of owning since before he bought his Dyna.