With all the commotion about long and tall choppers these days, you would think it is something new to the motorcycle world. The fact is, that couldn't be further from the truth. Big choppers have graced the streets since the late '60s and early '70s, and they were pretty damn cool back then too.
Arlen Ness was just getting his name out in the industry back in 1970 when he built this bike and started cruising it around the Bay Area of California. Does it look new to you? Well, it is - except for the '70 frame and the four-speed transmission. Arlen had this bike sitting on top of a storage container behind his shop for the last 15 years, gathering dust and rust before he brought it into the shop for a complete rebuild last winter.
Knowing he had a gem in the vintage 7/8-inch Jim Davis frame, Arlen stripped everything else off of it. The old-school unit had 8 inches of downtube stretch and 33 degrees of rake - just the look for a '70-ish chopper. Ness knew that he could keep the lines of yesteryear and incorporate some of today's cool trends by adding an 8-inch-over chrome Massive Glide fork to the Davis frame.
To roll the bike around, Arlen went with classic chopper wheels - Ness 40-spoke chrome hoops in a 21-inch for the front and an 18-inch for the rear. A pair of Avon tires covers the wheels and Ness calipers and rotors ride at both ends. The clean look of the spoke wheels sparked Arlen to get going on sheetmetal so he could start riding his 30-year-old bike again.
With all the Ness sheetmetal available to him, Arlen decided that the best way to honor his 30-year friend was to enlist the help of Bob Munroe to get the curves just right. First, a tire-hugging front fender was created and then flared at both ends to add some shape. Next, a tail-dragger rear fender was pulled off of a shelf and fit to the bike, but it had about 10 inches of extension. Then Ness and Munroe went crazy and stretched a tank as far as they ever had. Then a dash with a place for a mini-speedo and a tach was built, and in comparison to the tank, it looks positively tiny. Finally, a filler panel that flushes out the area under the seat and down to the transmission was built to hide the oil tank and to add a beefy feel to the rear of the chopper.
Arlen handed all the sheetmetal and the frame over to the Team Ness paint crew for them to finish it up. They took on all aspects of the molding and the application of the House of Kolor Green base with the wild graphics. While that was going on, Ness went in search of a motor to get his bike down the road.
He settled on an 88ci S&S/Ness motor that was on the shelf of the warehouse. The motor, dressed up with a number of Ness trim pieces, matched up with a Primo beltdrive and the old four-speed H-D transmission from 1970.
As the bike was being put back together, Arlen was stuck on the handlebar design. He sat on the chassis again and again, trying to get a feel for what bar would be best until he realized that the only bars that would work on this bike would need to be custom-built. Once his pull-back design came back from the chrome shop, they were put in place, and the project got back on track. Every finishing trim piece and control you see on this bike came from the Ness catalog, and we wouldn't expect it to be any different.
When the wrenches finally stopped spinning, Arlen hopped on the Danny Gray seat and started his chopper. As he left the shop and went down San Leandro Boulevard, not much seemed different from how it was 30 years ago. It was Arlen Ness on a big and tall chopper - just 30 years later.