Hard Core

People do some interesting things as they journey through life. They try out different styles, personas, ways of living and, especially with the people we know, wide arrays of motorcycle designs. Sooner or later everyone hits on both cylinders and finds themselves and what works best for them as they make their way through whatever time they have left.

When Cowboy (he wouldn't tell us his real name) decided to go back, way back in time and get in touch with his roots, he knew he would be doing it from the seat of a rigid chopper. What he didn't know when this revelation hit him was that it would be from a very, very comfortable chopper seat.

Cowboy trusts one guy in the motorcycle world, Fuzzy, the owner of Shakedown Street in Ventura, California. Fuzzy carries some pretty impressive credentials from all the time he spent working at JIMS Machine before opening up his own motorcycle nirvana a few years back. So when he spent a few hours trying to talk Cowboy into a Softail-style chopper chassis instead of a rigid, Cowboy listened. And then said. "Nahh, it's gotta be a rigid to be what I want." Fuzzy said. "OK, but you are going to have to trust me when it comes time for the seat."

The project kicked off with an Atlas rigid frame. Since the bike was to be Cowboy's only ride, the geometry was kept relatively sedate and the steering neck was raked only 38 degrees. But, in order to get the look they were after Fuzzy did have six inches of upward stretch put in the down tubes. A set of 41mm H-D forks had six inches of length added to them before they were connected to the frame with Custom Cycle Engineering triple trees and one of CCE's famous fork braces.

To roll Cowboys' machine around, Fuzzy called on a little known fact--Performance Machine builds spoke wheels. Fuzzy ordered a 19-inch for the front and a 16-inch for the rear, to get a traditional chopper profile, even if traditional choppers didn't have 200 series tires back in the day. Stopping power front and rear comes from JayBrake.

Naturally the motor needed to be fast, but couldn't be so radical that it wouldn't handle daily riding. Fuzzy went with an unassembled S&S kit in a 96 cubic inch configuration. He carefully assembled the package, did some very effective head modifications and installed a cam of his own grind. He topped the powerplant off with the addition of a Crane Hi-4 ignition and a set of Vance and Hines Straight Shots with torque valves and no baffles.

The transmission was a straightforward affair. A Delkron case filled with JIMS gears. No fuss, no muss, just a good shifting, super-strength gearbox. It connects to the motor via a Primo belt drive, which is just the set up you would expect on a pretty bare bones chopper.

Cowboy had been hanging around the shop as his dream was becoming a reality, lending a hand wherever possible. Fuzzy hates wiring and Cowboy is really good at it, so while Fuzzy was busy creating sheetmetal, Cowboy ran his wires and hid them very well. You only see the wires where absolutely necessary.

A Sportster tank was smoothed out a bit by adding panels to the bottom for a more finished look and relocating the filler neck and fuel supply valve. A boat trailer fender was made to just about fit the 200-rear tire. No one even thought about throwing a front fender on this bike, so Fuzzy finished up his metal time by building an oil tank--but not letting Cowboy see it. He had a secret plan that involved the oil tank and he didn't want it shown yet.

Al Martinez Body and Paint in Orange, California got the nod for the finishing work. Of course, things were going much too smoothly on the project and something needed to go wrong somewhere. It happened when someone at Al's place lost Cowboy's work order. No one could remember if the tank was supposed to be black with white scallops or vice versa. A coin was tossed and the painter went into the booth. When he came out, the tank was white with black scallops and looked great. It was exactly opposite what Cowboy wanted, but looked great. Cowboy was going crazy and Al was trying to make arrangements to repaint the tank as quickly as possible. Fuzzy liked the look and put it on the frame. When Cowboy saw it he called Al and said to forget the refinish work--it looked great as is!

Fuzzy put the Shakedown Street bars, JayBrake hand and foot controls, Ness headlamp and Atlas taillight on the bike and called Cowboy to ask him to come down to the shop to see a surprise he had for him. When Cowboy arrived the bikes was complete, but the seat and oil tank area was covered up with a blanket. With a bit of a dramatic flourish, Fuzzy yanked the blanket off to reveal a traditional looking spring seat with a police-issue FLHRP air bladder hidden in the oil tank! Now the "hard core" chopper would offer a good ride no matter what the road threw at Cowboy.

Cowboy (we still don't know his name) rides the living heck out of his bike and Fuzzy couldn't be happier with the project. By keeping the weight of the bike to just under 400 pounds the 96ci S&S can hang with just about anything on the street and the phone at Fuzzy's shop keeps ringing as Cowboy keeps showing his chopper off.