these are all the choppers i've built and loved and the experiences i had with them
in the years that i owned and operated y chrome customs
the next order came from a guy in wisconsin who'd seen my ad i think can
do pop registry or something and he wanted something very similar to the jacks ripper
um even the candy apple red so i used the same paints that did a little bit different design
where it was more like a skull in the tank and then some flames elsewhere on it we used different
wheels they were i think that one had the wrath wheel still used a 127 inch so it was very similar
in fact it was similar enough that the owner of the jacks ripper kind of got mad at me because
he wanted to have the only bike like that and even though it was unique now there was one up
in wisconsin that was more similar to his than he liked so that's you know unfortunately part of the
business and the art aspect you have to get used to but i never actually met the guy in wisconsin
i would sit on the bike i would hold handlebars and say how do you want it to feel made sure his
height was similar to my height and it actually worked really well to be able to finish it all
like that ship him the bike and he was happy with it everything seemed to work well kind of my first
experience being able to do something over the internet you know and never even meet the customer
that's giving you thousands of dollars for this machine the next bike the stripper was the first
shop bike that i've built since the hardass i've been keeping really busy with orders which is a
good thing but i wanted to build something as a shop bike where i could try some new stuff
new looks and use myself as a guinea pig to ride it to see how i liked it i started with the war
eagle frame that wasn't down as low as a pro street it wasn't as stretched up as the shredder
it's kind of in between and then kind of a cool look and i made it stripped down and stripper
my buddy t-roy made a really cool stingray seat for it and he also mixed up what he
called the purest red possible so he laid down the base red coat for me and then i put on the
stripper graphics on the tank and it's kind of you know being still kind of learning
with the airbrush you have to kind of think about what's what's a stripper what color
is it right so i thought okay skin starts out as pink which is red and white but she needs a tan
so we need to put a little bit of tangerine candy on it and then a little bit of rope here for kind
of the brown tan and the shading and stuff it came out pretty well i was happy with it
but the only real paint was the frame and the tank and the little tail section so instead of using
a front fender i just had this little kind of fork brace on there instead of a rear fender i
just fabbed in this little tail section that went off the frame and kind of made a pocket for that
stinger ac the most unique thing about that light were the handlebars instead of the
standard risers and bars or a traditional one that i made that one i made the white waters for
and it was kind of different i made a sort of a mold or whatever you want to say a tool of wood so
that i could heat up the bar and bend it to make this arc and i use that same tool to make the arcs
pieces that went to the tail section but your fingers ended up almost with your thumbs downward
and in instead of like a lot of choppers you know you're either straight across or your pinky is
down lower this one they actually came in and it was funny to watch people just walk by the bike
and look at it and [ __ ] their head and kind of imagine what it was like to drive
it wasn't as bad as they think i didn't write it from jacks to lauderdale that way at some point i
think i had a weld come loose in the the mouse so i ended up putting just high risers and drag bars
when i finally sold the bike the guy insisted that i put the old barge back on with the y-bars
because to him that's what made the bike he also had a 124 inch sms i built the stripper
with an 80-inch harley-davidson engine just to keep costs down and a five-speed transmission
so he shipped me his 124 sms i changed the motors out and i put on the bdl with the outer bearing
for a little bit more support since it was a bigger engine and put it all there and tell
you what that thing went like a [ __ ] when i got it all put together it was i hated to
get rid of it i did have some bad luck on that bike one night going down atlantic boulevard
toward bourbon street bar that used to be i was going in the right lane um i didn't have
mirrors on the bike yet wasn't registered or anything and as i'm going down the road
i see this ford ranger come up to a stop sign and i thought okay i better start breaking now
well i swore the woman driving i looked it right at me as she stopped saw me so i got off the break
and at the last second like she did it on purpose she comes out the front now i couldn't get over
a lean because i didn't have mirrors and i didn't know if i'd get right in the way of
another car so i had to kind of thread the needle between the front of her truck and the white line
and as i did that my leg got crushed down here between the air cleaner and her front bumper
in fact it tore the bumper off from ford ranger and so i pulled over she pulls over she's crying
giving me insurance information and stuff i didn't have insurance at the time because i was just
working in my shop so i ended up just going to the bar having a few painkillers
and uh head back home and i lived around for about a month then i went to caller and say hey why
don't you give me 100 bucks you know for the air cleaner because that's really all that broke as it
smashed the air cleaner in there and figured that was fair she told me to call her insurance because
i'd broken her five dollar bumper with my leg so i called her insurance the guy says obviously it's
her fault how much money do you want i said how about 50 grand he said i'll give you 200 sold so
i should have done that every month i would have been better off financially the other misfortune
i had with that bike was when i went down to bike week that year i was riding into town
and i got a ticket because there's no plate on it it wasn't registered and the cops said technically
i should put me in jail and i shouldn't bike he ended up letting me go and even told me kind of
take these back roads into where you're going so that you don't get pulled over so i had the ticket
took off the next day meet some buddies there and they kind of talked me into that's my fault right
um borrowing a paper tag from one of the other bikes of the show out of the track
taping it to my chopper and so we're riding over by the broken spoke and that
and there's a bunch of cops standing there so one guy stops me flags me over right there and he said
that plate back there says dream that this is very clearly a red chop and i said yeah i kind
of borrowed that tag from the track and he said between that and these loud ass pipes and going in
the mirrors those handlebars he said i should give you a ticket right now so i reached in my pocket
pulled out the ticket from the night before and i said you mean like this one from last night
and he says get the [ __ ] out of here don't let me see you again so kind of yes sir i'm
out of here so went back to the track the other thing that was unique to the strippers it was
the first one where i did a lot of blacked out accessories instead of chrome everything so the
wheels were blacked out the engine was actually silver because like i said it was a harley engine
until did 124 went in which was black with polished bins all the little white chrome
accessories were blacked out and even the exhaust pipes we blacked those out as well
and then the seat had that stingray black seat on the handlebars were also blacked out like we've
done on the straight cap and i found that i really kind of like that look it seemed like if you had a
darker paint like the candy apple red then it looked better with chrome polished everything else
if you had a bright color like an orange or a red it seemed like it went better to be against the
black background accents just because it seemed like it was more contrast and that's one of the
unique things about when you're building choppers you have to be technically competent to make
something that people are going to ride down the road and save and performs well but you also have
to be somewhat of an artist because you want it to look good when it's done or nobody's going to want
to be through the next shopper we called the time killer the owner of that bike was my old college
roommate he always had all these skulls everywhere and t-shirts and there's one i remember that said
time waits for no one so he wanted something a little bit darker gothic looking so
i went with a flat black paint job on it i put a stopwatch on the tank that showed like
the grim reaper smashing the glass and then on the back it was like the reaper's eye looking
through the frame of the stopwatch like most of my bikes i cut the tail of the fenders and the
add-on little part to the tank to all match and be consistent design with the flat black paint sort
of establishing the look of the bike for all the accessories we did a silver instead of a chrome
and that was the first bike that had the y chrome design wheels you can see these custom wheels i
designed a little accent on it with a blade edge and then i have the holes in there for lightning
to look in the wheel these wheels were also the first split hub design i've done where we had a
brake rotor and sprocket both on one side so you had one clean or show side of the wheel as
well the hardest part about building that bike was the tail section he wanted a two-up seat
which i hadn't done on one of these wart eagle frames before
so i kind of framed out the seed pan made that the way i wanted but then i had to fab in these
amoeba shaped pieces that would sort of blend from the rear fender up to the actual seat
and once i got one side down and perfect then obviously i had to mirror that to the other side
and it's one of those things that either it's perfect or it's [ __ ] so you have to spend the
time doing it right very happy with how it came out he wasn't big on the speed it was his first
bike so we just went with the 80 80-inch harley engine for that and i think a five-speed train
and for contrast we use brown material on the seat instead of black just to make it pop a little bit
i was working on a bike when i closed the shop in florida and moved back to texas
said to pass that bike onto another local shop to finish for that customer that thing was unique in
that it was the first time i tried using a twin cam in a frame it was another warrior frame but
because it was a twin cam there's just an adapter plate to put on the back it wasn't that big of a
deal but that was the kind of unique aspect of that mic once getting back to texas i decided i
wanted one more chopper to kind of form myself and so i started building this one the gripper
a little bit different and then it was the first 300 rear that i built and that also meant it was
going to be a right side drive this bike also had the split hook rear and it was done on a warrior
pro street wrath frame so it has more curvature to the down tubes and that it's pretty extreme i
think it's over 45 degrees of rate total between the neck and the rig in the trees and you have to
do that's one less than i learned earlier is you have to make sure you get all that geometry right
to measure your rake and trail and everything if you don't get that right it's not going to handle
properly and that's not safe in the least so all that was figured out i got my fat cat's tank on it
for the drivetrain i ended up using a 121 tp engineering first tp engine i'd use love it
i also got the transmission from them and kind of a package deal that had jim's gears in their case
and then for the belt drive instead of the pdl's i've been using i went with a primo
one for this the pipes this was the first that i used these they were a frankie serrano design
a little bit different than the mgs as i used before on a lot of the choppers
i found some bars that gave me a good fit that kind of was like a shoulder height
while sitting down uh not the skinny 21 inch but a little bit fatter one with the appropriate fender
and the big six piston pm front caliper on it it obviously has chrome all over the place
with my white chrome custom accessories and you'll notice that for this one i even did a chrome frame
which i actually really like the way that came out it's a nice contrast as i said earlier to
the darker greens for the paint i painted them all with a black primer i used white to put some
graphics uh ghost graphics in it with like a grim reaper on the tank and then it turns into
an hourglass and a girl's ass basically rear view and then covered the whole thing in teal candy
then for accents on the front fender and on the tank i used a limetime green to put in some
realistic fire and then i used a little bit of peg and gold just to highlight give it more of that 3d
effect on the fire this one has a really low seat so the oil bag that would have came with the frame
was i mean maybe two and a half quarts it was pretty small it would have sat right under it
being that this is a big engine and it is texas it's going to be hot i ended up getting a four
quart moon oil bag and mounted it up front by just welding some mount tabs to the frame
that way it keeps it out here in the airflow getting nice fresh cool air instead of being
behind the hot engine i couldn't get the carb to run decent right off the bat and i ended up
putting in some flexible baffles into the pipes and i sent the carb away and had a triple x
circuit put in it so they add another circuit another jet inside and it gets really shitty
mileage now but it does go like hell it's it's very fast for a chocolate i rode this from san
antonio to daytona beach took several days to do it stopped in like houston and new orleans and
jacksonville for a biketoberfest one here and on the way the pipe one of them
i didn't have the internal baffle bolted down and i think it just vibrated and shook against
there and cut my pipe or broke the pipe what i had learned painfully about comfort for this thing is
it looks cool i love that low seat because of the way it sits when you're sitting on it you
have to keep constant tension inward on your legs if you don't your feet will slide off the pegs
and that's not good you can't ride with your feet back behind you because the way those pipes sit
and so there's only real one way to sit and it's not the most comfortable but you know choppers
aren't made for comfort necessarily either they made you go faster bar to bar and this one does
a great job with that when we got to the gas station in jacksonville the bike wouldn't start
again so how do i get a tow truck with a setup long enough to handle this monster of a bike
took it to my buddy's place the next day i went down to daytona and i bought a new battery and
a new starter i think and a starter switch and something else maybe put it all back together
did this all in his garage sweating like hell got it thought everything was good while coming back
from daytona beach a couple days later through jacksonville again it uh turned out it wouldn't
start again so me and my buddy he had his night train we basically had to rent a truck from u-haul
since we had two bikes i had to go to home depot drill holes on the floor of that u-haul truck
to be able to bolt down both bikes with the straps and keep them both in there solid and
safe for the pride hound so we ended up you know got back turned out i changed the regulator that
still wasn't it actually turned out to be the alternator on the other side so that was the
growing one but the kind of stuff happens when you're riding choppers it's not like
we may contest a million of these things each one you're basically writing a working prototype
but the bike has been very well received i think they got like a fourth place trophy
rat told in daytona beach but i also knew this was the only one of the top four bikes that was
actually written there any kind of distance not all on the trailer so i was okay with that i
did get the first place pro builders trophy at the austin motorcycle rally that year as well
it's definitely my best work and even with that i missed the mark on comfort so it's building
choppers has definitely been a learning experience but the important thing is i'm growing as i do it
and each one is better than the last and at the end of the day i'm proud to be able to
ride something that i built with these two hands didn't just go down to the dealership and buy
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