Over two years ago, Greg Friend (ex Street Chopper editor) and myself were sitting in a lunch meeting with Keith Ball (the boss at the time). He asked us if given the chance to build a bike from the ground up, what we would build? Immediately ideas started flying through my head about my ultimate chopper build.
I felt good about it; this was not my first build. But all the bikes I have had in the past started out as running bikes that were stripped, rebuilt, and customized. Even my blue Softail was a bike that I picked up after a friend started building, but he ran out of money and I took it over and picked up the rest of the parts pretty cheap. So when we were given a chance to build a custom and show off what we could do, we jumped on it.
We both started with an idea and a drawing of what we would like to have in the end. The cool thing was that the bikes were going in two different directions; Greg was going with a Sportster platform with a pro-street/street fighter style bike, short and low. I was going more along with chopper lines, a hardtail frame, a springer frontend, long and tall. About the same time the drawings were floating around the office, the trash talking was also in full swing. To get started a long wish list was put to paper, and the more I thought about where I was going with the build the longer the list got, then the waiting on parts started.
The guys at Chopper Head Road heard about the build and hooked me up with a frame, asked what I was after and in less then three weeks it was sitting on my lift. It was a hardtail frame with 6 inches up and 4 inches back and wide enough to fit a 180mm tire. Soon after I was working on getting the motor and transmission in hand. After a few phone calls, JIMS Performance was glad to be part of this build and supplied me a transmission, so I took a trip up to Camarillo, California to check out the shop and snap some photos of a five-speed trans going together. Then I found a way to sneak it out the back door; it was too big to tuck in my pants pocket.
Not long after that I had worked out a sweet deal with S&S to get my hands on a 93ci SH Series engine. As soon as that motor was released to the public all I wanted to do was get my hands on one, it was love at first sight.
The belt drive was next on the list. At that time Belt Drives Ltd. (BDL) had just released the 2-inch belt drive with a ball bearing lock up clutch and when I asked if it would work on this build, one was un-boxes and all the parts were laid out in front of me and I was asked, "why not?".
When it came for sheetmetal I called MGS Customs. Mike had told me about this deal where he would send customers a block of core foam that they cut and form to the shape they want for a gas tank. Then they just have to ship it back to MGS and they would make the gas thank to match their foam. Well I knew I was not able to make a gas tank from scratch, but I could cut and shape one from foam. It was a little harder than I thought because; once you cut it a certain way you can't put it back. Once I had the foam the size and shape to fit the frame, I took a trip out to Lancaster, California to watch the team at MGS do their thing. When it was all done the tank fit the frame just right and I still had a hand in making the tank. Also while I was there I picked up one of their heavy-duty steel rear fenders as well.