The Handlebar Guru:Steff
Steffan Ihrcke: Owner of ZombiePerformance.comSteffan is all about being an individual. For him, there is no idea too weird, strange or just plain ‘out there’ when it comes to motorcycle fabrication. He has been welding and doing metal fabrication on cars and bikes as a hobby since he was 14 years old. It was only when poverty struck did he start making his hobby a money-making passion. “I had no money to buy parts,” he says. “So I started making my own.”
For Steffan, handlebars are his specialty. They’re easy and cheap to make. If he gets bored with one set, he can make another then put them up for sale. When starting a new project, Steffan says he “builds without a plan, one piece at a time.” He says he likes to just “let it come together.”
The smallest set of handlebars he’s made was 18’’ where the clamps nearly touched each other at the bends. When he first installed them on his bike, he thought, “I’m going to kill myself with these,” but after the first couple of miles, he got used to how the bike handled and felt at home. “Now I tend to over compensate on a bike with normal handlebars with all the extra leverage,” he jokes.
As Steffan hails from the remote city of Roseburg, OR, the majority of his advertising in accomplished via worth of mouth and internet mingling on chopcult.com. It’s a chopper site with a vast diversity of motorcycle riders. As the city of Roseburg is home to many weekend warriors who don’t dare modify their Harley’s much, Steffan relies on Chop Cult to showcase his work. “They embrace everything from sport bikes to choppers,” Steffan says. The site is tailored to the home builder and do-it-yourself crowd, which makes Steffan right at home. The Chopper scene is the most pronounced style of living on the site, so Steffan’s creations can be most typically seen on bobber-style, old school choppers. “I’d really like to build a sport bike/street tracker,” Steffan says, which is the reason why he’s selling his 2007 Harley Sportster, the first new bike he ever bought. He originally turned it into a chopper, then a performance oriented machine so he could drag race it. He added cut-off rear fender struts that are cast into the frame and a 1968 chrome BSA rear fender. He also built tiny I-joint supports for the rear fender and he built a bracket off the front of the frame that moved the turn signals away from the bars and closer to the frame.
“Being a freak, I wanted something that I thought represented me and my lifestyle,” Steffan says, which is how Zombie Performance fabrication has matured over the course of two years into what it is now. Steffan says his inspiration for new designs comes from looking at someone’s bike and coming up with an idea. Then he rummages through scraps of metals or old motorcycle parts he has laying around his garage, creates and sketch and finally fabricates a design. For exhausts, Steffan starts his creations by cutting up old exhaust systems, gaining inspiration the bends in the pipes, and using them to create a new design for a unique exhaust to fit a customer’s bike.
Another unorthodox modification that Steffan likes to add to his bikes is a fuel sediment bowl, commonly found on old tractors or industrial engines. It’s basically an old school equivalent of the modern day fuel filter, in which gravity filters the dirt and other elements out of the fuel. Steffan has a taste for the vintage, antique and “mechanical” modifications, which is where the idea for the fuel sediment bowl was derived 
from.
from. Steffan has been building handlebars, exhausts and performing other modifications for two years and he is now making it a full-time job. He typically spends anywhere from four hours to two days to fabricate and install his creations, putting every last shred of his patience and skill into his work.
He is working out of his garage for now, relying on a tig welder, tubing bender, small lathe, drill mill and grinders to build his modifications. All his handlebars are hand made from straight steel tubing that is 7/8’’ to 1’’ in diameter. He says he’d like to eventually create his own line of bars to sell on his website. Furthermore, once more funds are available, he’d like to fabricate handlebars from stainless steel instead of industrial steel, giving them a shiny, clean finish.
“I have high hopes for the business,” he says. “I may be working from home, but I have ten orders to fill before this weekend.”
Photos courtesy of Steffan Ihrcke
Steffan
Zombie Performance
www.zombieperformance.com
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