The Chopper Compendium

Hi,

I built a bike with help from the “Chopper Handbook” community back in 2006. I’d just like to say that the bike is still on the road. You may remember it as it was the cover bike for “The Horse, Backstreet Choppers” April 2007.

I moved to the south Nashville area a few years ago and had the bike in storage for a while. Big mistake. The heat from storage messed up a lot of things. I’ve had to replace seals, electronics, rebuild brakes, carb and a lot of other things. The leather survived, though and I’m slowly working it back to original condition as I hop on it and ride quite frequently now.

If anybody wants to help me tune up the Keihen Carb, much appreciated.

My bike is not dead but this forum is...

I think everyone is just getting the last of their ride time in before the weather goes south

hey man, good to see you back! i definitely remember both you and the bike. loved it then, love it now.

as usual, this place is a ghost town in the summer. hopefully it'll start picking up soon though.

take care,
-dan

The one major design flaw to date is that oil tends to flow into the crank case from the elevated oil tanks if the bike sits too long without running. When it cranks it wants to throw oil out the breather tube. Fixed that with an in-line valve leaving the oil tank. The seat design has worked great. Have put about 10,000 miles on it so far win no comfort issues.

I had to swap out the engine overnight when I rode to the Smokeout back in 2007 April. The transmission splined shaft stripped out and a replacement took two weeks to arrive. Pulled the engine out of my 100th Anniversary bike to make the trip. Not sure if anyone noticed at the Smokeout. You can tell if you look at the official pics.

midnight engine swap - sounds like fun. do what ya gotta do though, right?

-dan

had to do some repairs this week. I hit a dip in the road. Went airborne. Broke some bolts holding the left gas tank in place on landing. Otherwise bike and myself are ok. Replaced the bolts and got it all back together and running.

Future planned work. Lowering the front forks an inch or so. Putting in some led blinkers on the rear. Lowering the headlight to the forks. Wire from new Ultima ignition to the tach is not working.

gotta love hard tails grade 8 bolts are your friend

and threadlocker

sounds hairy. lucky you hung on when you got airborne. good that you were able to get it back together with just some bolts, too.

-dan

If you look at my bike pics you will notice that the front forks are a bit too tall. When I hit the road bump a while back, apparently, that ruptured the seal in my right fork. I rebuilt the carb last week and took the bike out for a ride only to discover fork fluid leaking out of the fork.

I looked up the parts and ordered a kit from JPCYCLES. I finally decided to lower the front end while I had the forks off to change the seals and fluid. I finished the lowering and seal replacement last night and will put the forks back on this evening. I’ll post some “After” pics to show the difference. I also videoed the work for YouTube because I could not find a video for that year range Sportster (84-87) online.