Meeks started doing custom paint jobs on electric guitars right out of high school for Roscoe’s Guitars in Greensboro, North Carolina. After years of perfecting his art form on guitars, Meeks moved up to a larger canvas – custom painted motorcycles. Not complacent to simply paint bikes, Meeks decided “If you want an Eddie Meeks paint job, you’re going to be getting it on an Eddie Meeks’ motorcycle” so he started building them as well and along with partner Simon Solomon formed Hardly Civilized Inc. in 1994. It didn’t take long before he was fabricating everything himself, from sheet metal and tanks to custom exhausts and seats. This lead to cover shots on magazines like American Iron, Biker and Easyriders.
Quantum Leap is equipped with an internal throttle and an internal clutch. Since a Baker racing clutch requires such an iron pull, Meeks designed a mechanism attached to the frame under the seat whereby the pull cable from the internal clutch goes into a pulley system that turns different size pulleys and cuts the leverage ratio needed to operate the clutch by approximately 40%. With his system, it’s much easier to turn the grip on the internal clutch.
“The bike’s so expensive, it’s a concept that’s going to be shown and to ride it and to take a chance of chipping or scratching it, it’s not worth it. All we wanted to do was make sure it worked, which we did.”
Meeks said the steering felt “kind of weird” explaining that when you do something for the first time totally different from what you’ve done your entire life, it naturally is going to feel odd at first. Learning to steer it definitely takes a learning curve. The bike was built as a show piece and will ultimately end up in a private collection after it makes the bike show rounds. It is titled in North Carolina, though, has undergone state inspection and has been granted a serial number and frame sticker.
Quantum Leap ranks as one of the most intriguing custom motorcycles we’ve come across in a long time. We first saw it at Sturgis where it took 7th place in the Freestyle Class at the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building. Meeks recently entered it in the Easyriders Bike Show in Atlanta where it took “Best of Show” honors and afterwards was photographed through the lens of Michael Lichter. Meeks said people mobbed around it at the show, heads four to five deep with camera’s flashing.
His next project is already on the drafting table. It won’t be as radical as a front-wheel drive, rear-wheel steering motorcycle, but Meeks said it will be impressive nonetheless. He plans on making a bike completely out of carbon fiber with the goal of making it as lightweight as possible while sourcing a very unique yet undisclosed powerplant. It will be designed with sights on a possible limited production run rather than the almost impossible-to-duplicate design of Quantum Leap, an engineering marvel in the guise of a custom motorcycle whose design da Vinci could appreciate.
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