AC Choppers: January 2005

Since we are still talkin' history how about the 78' super sport

Well I found this 1978 CB750f basket case in a barn outside of Canton Ohio. There were piles of bikes and parts in the garage and there by the door sat this cb750. Wires were hanging out of it, mouse nest in the air box, this monster king and queen seat, I can't believe I brought this home with me, but i did.

...oh did I mention the bars, man those are ugly...

...the barn where she was resting in the background...

...one of the first days at her new home, my garage. I told you that seat was big...

First things first this wiring has to go. I found some great articles on wiring these bikes on Honda Chopper web site, there is a huge wealth of information there, check it out. I even found a diagram for building a Santee Electrical Box. Check out these pictures.

...I told you there were wire everywhere...

...This was all the left over wires after building my Santee Box, these wires were unnecessary to make the bike run so why have them there?...you got me...

...Santee Box complete with all wiring and switches...

...the other side...

So one day while digging in my basement for what ever it was, I found this old police spot light, just the thing i needed for my project. Who would have known carrying that thing around for years would pay off.

One of the last projects I worked on was the fender. I must have looked at 500 fenders looking for the right one. Well I finally determined I needed to make one. I didn't have the experience to build it out of steel, but fiberglass, I can do that. I made my mold out of foam insulation, coated it in vaseline and went to work. Please if you try this do it in a ventilated area and where a mask, I was high as a kite working on this project.

...I was going to go to work...

...but i got high...

...Final Product...

There were lots of other projects that went into this bike, and plenty of stories, maybe if you ask nice and buy Ken and i some drinks we will tell them to you. Be sure to ask about the time I caught on fire, thats a good one.

Here is the progress, I put on about 300 miles this summer, I didn't really get it on the road till well after the 4th of July, this year will be the year of the chopper.

...

...YES, it's low, I can't even clear a pack of smokes standing on end with those pipes...

...and yes I plan on fixing the dents in the tank and of course it will be painted the only color a chopper should be, matte black...

History of our name "AC Choppers"

Well I guess it just fell out of our drawers one day while wrenching on our bikes and has stuck with us ever since.

Ass Crack 1

Ass Crack 2

History of the '76 Cafe Racer

This bike came into my posession near the end of the summer out of frustration.. after working on the Custom all summer, i was ready to ride..

I pretty much stole it from a guy out in Ashtabula, jumped on and rode back to cleveland..
the bike has about 27,000 miles on it.. the first owner probably put on 25,000 of those, then sold it to the guy i bought it from after about 10 years. this guy owned a metal fab shop and made custom sheet metal for bikes,, tanks, fenders, etc.. he used this bike in his heated showroom for the last..eh.. 19 years?.. to display the custom metal they were making.. he said they'd take it out about once a month or so to keep it running, but otherwise, there it sat..begging to be ridden.
I havent done much to this bike as i bought it purely to ride the hell out of.. i just recently put the race fairing and way cool retro clubman bars on it.. and that's it.

..routing all the wires, cables and lines up front is the biggest bitch about switching bars,, everything changes.

but the result is well worth it.

check out these way cool clubman bars,, matthew picked them up for me at the rice paddy.
they are actually supposed to curve a little more downward, but because of clearance, had to be mounted this way,, and after i tried them out i was glad they sat a little higher.. they completely changed the way i sit on that bike.
it blows a "little" smoke once in a while because i think a valve or carb is stuck open and it floods at least one cylinder after riding long enough, but otherwise runs like a champ.

some history on the '81 custom

A friend of my roommate's father had this bike sitting around in his barn for a couple of years,, all he ever used it for was riding the kids around in the yard, and was hanging on to the bike to salvage the rubber for his sportster (aka, the piece of shit also featured in this blog). I was ready for a chop project and basically made him sell it to me. this is how it looked the day i brought it home:

obviously i wasnt about to ride it around like that..
So, the first order of business was ditching a bunch of crap. mufflers, front fender, chain guard, bars, seat, side covers, rear fender, the ridiculously huge taillight assembly, and eventually the footpegs and the entire electrical system..
We dropped the bike a few inches by dumping the rear shocks and replacing them with solid struts..while we were at it, we had to cut the rear section of the frame off to get that clean look in the rear end.. i wanted the fender to sit less than an inch from the tire..

first the struts were just some flat stock with a couple of holes drilled in them to get the spacing right..then i thought i'd try some square tube stock for a little different look,, it looked box-y and cool, but we were all convinced i'd end up flying down the freeway with the tire spinning 3,000 rpm under my ass, and i might want something a little more substantial. so we cut and welded some struts out of steel pipe and used the rubber bushings from the original shocks..
worked pretty well, and definately a bit safer.
..the bike now sat the way i wanted it to, but my legs were still too god damn long to ride it comfortably,, hence the forward controls..
try as i might to find a how-to from someone who had done it already,,no luck..
i ended up making them out of some old stock footpegs, fabricated steel plates, carriage bolts, old stock pedal rubbers fitted to fabricated pedals, some rear brake linkage, and several fabricated spacers made from pipe.

they look pretty bad ass huh? on this side though, there was a problem..
the brake pedal in this configuration functions pivoting on one of the main supports for the pedal itself.. which means that support has to be a little loose to allow the brake pedal to pivot around the pipe. .. i still havent figured out the perfect solution for this, but my two thoughts are either (1) dump the back brake alltogether, (taking the pedal and linkage with it) or (2) starting over and fabricating some serious shit this summer while the motor's out of the bike.. stay tuned to see what happens with that..
what about the clutch pedal you ask? there is none. this bike as it sits right now is a suicide shift with the clutch lever built into the shifter arm.