We at Street Chopper go to great lengths, traveling to the far corners of the globe, to bring you the finest in choppers from around the world. On a recent trip riding around Scandinavia, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Norrtejle Custom Bike Show sponsored by Twin Club M/C in Sweden. Twin Club has held the show and a kick-ass afterparty for the past 30 years. This year, the show had the distinction of being included as a venue in the Official World Championship of Custom Bike Building Competition presented by Custom Chrome. The winner at Norrtejle (a town about an hour's ride north of Stockholm) gets his tricked-out ride entered in the European finals in Germany, and the top three winners there get to go to Las Vegas to compete in the Big Twin West Dealer Show World Championships in November.
We met up with Mika Nieminen of Mr. Moore's Custom Craft of Lempaala, Finland, at the show, and we were blown away by his Third-Place-winning entry in the 2004 European Finals, the Viridian. OK, so what the heck does viridian mean? Well, if you paid attention in your Latin class, you would know that viridian translates into "green" in English. Actually, the bike is named so because the color is an exact match to the greenish glow that emanates from a bottle of absinthe, the very potent and oftentimes illegal liquor. But enough culture, let's get back to the story.
Mika had moved from Finland to Sweden to get involved in the chopper community there. The Swedish bike scene is really close-knit. Basically, if you weren't born there and hadn't built up a lifelong reputation, you would find it a bit tough to fit in. Mika went to work for Unique Custom Cycles in Haninge for a few years then opened up his own shop and quickly gained his reputation for excellence. When Mika was approached by Sweden's MCM magazine to design and build a bike to compete in the World Build-Off Championships, he got on the horn to some of the best designers and parts manufacturers in Europe to put together this trick, traditional Swedish-style chopper.
Sweden had long been on the cutting edge of hard-core chopper design with its legendary Long Bikes, but with the American scene beginning to take a massive foothold across the world, Sweden thought it was time to show it could still hold its own against the onslaught from across the ocean. Mika contacted some of his European buddies and together they dug their heels in and got busy. Stefan Pihkala and Itso Kotavuopio of Finland and Martin Lang and Allessandro Pacelli at Kustom Tech in Florence, Italy, got on board as did master painter Joakim Krantz and pinstriper Ettore "Blaster" Callegaro of Italy.
The first decision was what type of motor to use for the project. An Evo was out of the question because everyone else was using them. Panheads and knuckleheads had become a little over-hyped. Dead center in the old versus new gap was the shovelhead, which for some strange reason had been slightly overlooked by the pro builders. That was the way the team would go. A new S&S 96ci motor with a five-speed Zodiac tranny would do quite nicely.
First, the S&S engine was torn apart. Mika cut the rocker boxes open and mated an S&S 514 cam with a drag-bike cam cover to an Indian distributor. On the top end, the cylinders' lower cooling fins were shaved down and the spark plugs were totally re-located on the jugs' sides to allow for the exhaust port modifications for the custom Mr. Moore 2-into-1 pipes. Spok Motor in Helsinki, Finland, helped out with the assembly's 3-5/8x4-1/2-inch bored and stroked motor. There were plans to use twin Amal concentric carbs, but due to time constraints, the team opted to run a Mikuni HSR 42 carb instead. For the air cleaner, Mika built a custom, one-off velocity stack.
The team then constructed a sleek, Mr.Moore Amphetamine rigid frame with a 47-degree rake and a 6-1/2 inch stretch out of 1-inch 2391-C tubing. The idea was to eliminate as many of the straight lines as possible, thus creating shapes reminiscent of Detroit's '50s hot rod styling. Mike got busy modifying a European-made Simwell front end by reconstructing it to a 20-inch over - true Swedish style.
Back in Florence, Italy, Allesandro Pacelli had his machine shop hopping to supply the team with a steady stream of handcrafted parts. The drum brake is a tribute to the old Buick aluminum drums that were first introduced in 1958. Kustom Tech also fabricated the original rear axle mounts. Robban's Speed Shop is responsible for the finned primary cover as well as some of the other fin work on the bike.
The front wheel is 21 inches with a Kustom Tech Fin Line special-mated with a Morad aluminum 1.85 rim and an Avon Venom-X 80/90x21 tire, while the rear is a similar 18-inch setup with a Pirelli Dragon 160x18 tire. The front brake is a Kustom Tech/ISR and the rear is a Kustom Tech/Mr. Moore one-off design unit.
The gas tank started off as a Mustang tank and was fabricated by Mika as was the Speed Shell oil tank. The handlebars as well as the foot controls are from Kustom Tech as well as having Mika's special hand touches to them. The chroming was done by Stockholm's Metallsliperi, and the extraordinary paint is House of Kolor Organic Candy Green on Gold Base by Joakim Krantz.
Ettore " Blaster" Callegaro of Italy hopped on a plane in Venice and flew to Stockholm to handle with loving detail the bike's pinstriping.
It always seems to come down to the final hours before a show to get a bike done, and this case was no exception. With the team members chugging gallons of coffee and smoking about a carton of cigarettes apiece, the bike was finally completed at 5 a.m. the morning before the show was to start in Norrtejle. The bike took First Place, then took Third in the European finals in Germany last March thereby clinching its place in the Official World Championship of Custom Bike Building Finals at the Big Twin West Dealer show to be held this November in Las Vegas. I'm sure that however the competition ends up, the Viridian crew will be having one hell of a time in Las Vegas and we'll be on hand to let you know how the judging goes.