Drag Specialties Magazine Custom-Crafted Independent Gas Tanks are in the FatBook and on customs everywhere for a reason: "We try to put out the best quality product money can buy," says the man who makes them.  Kyle Krejci's been creating that full line of stretched, sculpted and beautifully finished fuel tanks since 1999 when he, along with his wife Terri, decided to it on their own and created the company.  We're all the better for it. Obviously a man with considerable metal-working skills, Kyle began his metal-shaping career as an 18-year-old working on Porsche race cars.  Before long he was building some fairly intricate pieces, like intercoolers and oil coolers.  Kyle put in time as a pit-crew member on IMSA teams, too, doing the 24 Hours of Daytona and Sebring.  The guy's a gearhead, and always has been.  Getting around to motorcycle gas tanks, in 1996 Kyle went to work full-time for Roger Bourget.  He designed and built all the fuel tanks for Bourget's production customs, taking his sheet metal experience from the race cars and applying it to bikes, designing the originals Bourget Nitrous tank and many others that Bourget uses to this day.  Kyle stayed there until he made the big jump, opening his own shop. "Hence the name 'Independent,'" he says. Today, Independent Gas Tanks - definitely one of the more poplar brands in the FatBook- are hand-fabricated one at a time in a brand-new facility in Gilbert, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix.  Kyle designs every tank himself, "And right now we're doing over 25 different styles," he says.  They're all fabricated from 16-gauge cold rolled steel, Tig-welded and pressure-tested.  "I'm a stickler for steel," Kyle expains. "aluminum might be easier to work, but it sure wouldn't last.  Our tanks are on drag bikes, and thery're on street bikes, and they're on choppers everywhere, and there's never been a problem." As you'd suspect, Independent has all the metal-forming tools imaginable, starting with mallets and shot bags and going through to English wheels and power hammers.  And depending on the job everything gets used, too.  When those tools are finally put down the tanks are boxed and shipped in a beautiful, raw-metal form - polished, metal-finished, and ready for paint.  "There's no grinding or filling needed," Kyle says. "The painter can take the tank out of the box and start working."  Before any tank is boxed and shipped, though, it gets a full pressure test.  "And no leak ever gets by us," he adds.  "Our testing is foolproof." Besides all the sizes and shapes offered, Independent Gas Tanks can be had with a variety of fuel filler styles, too.  There's a standard screw-in bung, and there's a really trick pop-up filler.  The petcock fittings are offered in a variety of styles and locations, as well.  "for the Pro-street tanks, the ones going on low, forward-tilting bikes," explains Kyle, "we automatically put the petcock fitting and crossovers up front.  For the chopper tanks we'll move all that to the back."  The idea is to have that petcock in the deepest part of the tank, able to get that last drop of gas. In 1999 Kyle Krejci took a chance when he opened the doors to the Independent Gas Tank Co.  But knowing what you know now,  you're not taking any chance at all when you open the pages of the FatBook and show your customers what Kyle's done, and what he has to offer.  Kyle Krejci set out to produce "the best quality product money can buy," and no one's  going to argue that he didn't do exactly that.  And 2004 will be a year to keep an eye on Independent, too.  Due to the overwhelming demand for their tank line, Kyle Krejci had to put some of his other sheet metal ideas on the backburner for while, but next year it won't be just tanks at Independent.  Stay tuned......