Now you know the ins and outs of bringing your dream motorcycle to life on paper or a screen, but how do you know what will turn heads and what will fall flat? Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and really, it’s your bike! You can build anything you want.
However, if you’re a little unsure about your design, it's not the worst idea in the world to seek out some other opinions. If its aesthetics, this may be showing your sketch to a few trusted bike friends and gauge their honest reaction. Sharing your design also helps add some accountability to your build, because now it is out there in the open.
If you’re open to wider opinion, sharing your design on a model specific forum or perhaps to your Facebook or Instagram audience is an option. Be prepared however that the wider you seek an opinion, the more likely you are to get both positive and negative feedback (some of it possibly quite harsh). There is still value in negative feedback if the same issue keeps coming up; it might be something you want to address.
It’s also worth seeking a second opinion around engineering changes on the bike. But you will need to be little more discerning about who you seek an opinion from. The general internet is probably not the best place to go, but if you know some more experienced builders, professional fabricators or engineers, you should be guided along the right track.
At some point though, you will have to pull the trigger, lock in a design and begin the build. You may still feel unsure about elements of your design, but that is probably true to some degree for every bike builder. It's rare that builder feels everything is absolutely 100%, as you’ll be your own harshest critic. These minor things will normally resolve themselves during the build, as there will always be some small evolution. You’ll be surprised that when you're done, the things you thought were big aesthetic issues at the start turned out to be almost nothing at all.