Street Chopper's 40th Anniversary Bike Build

CUSTOM-BUILT BARS BY NOISE




On "Ruby" AKA The 40th Anniversary bike, we didn't want any off the shelf bars. We wanted something that would both reflect the old and new chopper styles this bike has. Knowing this job would not be easy, we hired Scott, AKA T-Bone, AKA the guy from NOISE to bend and weld us up some handlebars.

We know that on the initial concept drawing of the bike it had Z-bars, but we felt like every bike being built as of late has a set, so we were going to go a different route.






T-Bone Starts his measurements by having the rider sit on the bike. He then uses a bent piece of welding rod to get a feel of where the rider wants their arms. From there a few other measurements were taken with a ruler and tape measure.





T-Bone starts the whole fabbing process by cutting two lengths of 1-inch DOM tubing to his calculations.









He bent the tubing accordingly and checked it against his wire template.





T-bone then cut each bent end to an approximate size.





The bars are re-measured so that the two bends of tubing are in perfect unison with one another.





The bent tubing, which were already starting to look like a set of bars, were held up to figure out how much rise we wanted them to have.





T-Bone then cut each piece of tubing to the correct height.







He fitted a set of his hand-made threaded bungs into the bottom-end of the tubing and prepped them for welding.





Check out those welding skills.





With the bungs welded into the bottom end of the tubing, T-Bone chased the threads to make sure there were good and clean so there would be no issues when installing them on the springer.









We installed the bars and checked for height as well as measured for the proper pullback.





Once the measurements have been taken, the bars were removed and T-Bone gets them ready for welding.













We went with two 1/4-inch cross bars to join the two halves of the bars together, so T-Bone cut them to size and mitered them to fit the curve of the 1-inch tubing.







The 1/4-inch cross bars were fitted to a special jig and tacked into place.








Once everything checked out okay and matched the initial measurements, the bars were finish welded.









The bars were allowed to cool off in the jig and then T-Bone fitted them to the bike.





The finished product!

For more info on T-Bone and all the cool stuff he builds and makes under the NOISE label, check out his blog at: noisefastloudhard.blogspot.com  

DUANE BALLARD CUSTOM LEATHER/BILTWELL SEAT





Two of our favorites teamed up to supply us with one good lookin' seat.
Chris, Bill and McGoo sent a Biltwell seat pan and foam kit over to Duane Ballard for him to do some leather working on it. Once it was in DB's hands, he gave us a holler for some direction on what to do. Being all for people to "do their own thing" we told Duane that the Bike's name was Ruby as well as it being the 40th anniversary bike and that he could do anything he felt like doing.

Well, Some time passed and when the seat showed up in the post, it was nothing like we had imagined. Being that Duane it a toolin' leather kind of guy, we were surprised at the fact that the seat was fully stitched and did not have one single tool mark on it whatsoever. the seat fit the look we were going for perfectly and it just showed how diverse this dude can be when doing a custom seat.




Duane Ballard even took the time to cover the bottom of the already powdercoated seat pan... now that's classy!

for more info on Duane Ballard Custom Leather, check out his website: dbcustomleather.com  

AEE SISSYBAR MODIFICATION AND INSTALLATION



Our buddy Harppon had a real-deal NOS AEE sissybar and was kind enough to donate it to the build. Being it that if it wasn't for AEE there would be no Street Chopper Magazine we thought that it would be right at home on our 40th Anniversary bike.





Once the bike was back from T-Bone's we started to mock up the AEE offering. It needed a little cuttin' and tweekin' to get it to fit.





Grant machined and tacked the upper fender mounts into place.







He then slid it on the bike to take a few measurements for the license plate and rear taillight.

















Once the Sissybar was bolted up to the bike, Grant got busy with some cardboard making templates for the license plate and tailight.





From Here it's a bit of fabbing, welding and then off to Chrome  

PAUGHCO PARTS



Ron Paugh and the fine folks at Paughco sent us down a few much needed items for the build. In the box was a set of engine mounting bolts, a top motor mount (we had to use a different motor mount other than the Custom Chrome one, due to us not using a coil on the motor mount) and an engine skid plate. As usual, all of the parts came with top=notch plating.

As you may know Paughco has been in this business for around 40 years now and they know a thing or two about how to build chopper parts...

Word on the Street is we should be getting a set of pipes from Paughco to bolt up in the near future.  

THE ENGINE IS DONE

Rico at Hi-Bond gave us a buzz and told us that the shovel was done and that we should get in the old Ford, bring the charging system, and come and get it!

When we arrived, the ultra shiny motor was sitting on the bench and we were at a loss for words.







Rico grabbed the Custom Chrome "Motor Factory" charging kit out of our hands and got busy installing it.

















Take a look at the Stevensons Cycle split rocker boxes. They are a thing of beauty.







Rico also showed us the machining he had to do to the rocker boxes to allow the S&S rockers to clear.





We hustled the Shovel back to the shop and installed the Joe Hunt Magneto and S&S Super E carb. We then sat back and stared at it for a while.





After the stare-fest, Grant and Skinhead Todd both manned-up and slid the motor into the frame. Just look at them celebrating this milestone of the build. Or is Todd just getting ready to throw down with Grant?





Check it out Kiddies, the Shovel is in the bike!

 

FENDER FITTIN'

Now that the engine, trans and primary are on the bike, we could move on to mounting the West Eagle polished aluminum fender. As we all know there are a thousand ways to affix a fender to a hardtail frame, so we mulled over our options, broke out the trusty Miller welder and Hobart plasma cutter and got down to biz-nass.









We measured the seat stay cross bar and drilled the center out for our threaded bung to be welded in.







The Bung was radiused to fit the rib of the fender and cut to fit flushly inside the tube, then tacked into place.







We fabbed up a convex spacer that would firmly hold the fender to the frame and finish welded the bung to the frame









With a bit of metal we whipped up a mount that was tack welded to the rear of the tranny mount. We also designed it to hide the regulator under it.









We took some measurements and had to cut a fair amount off of the bottom of the fender to archive the position we wanted it to be at the top. We also had to cut a bit off of the drive side of the fender, so the final drive chain wouldn't rub.




With all the gutting and drilling done, Grant slid the fender back into the rear of the frame and measured the fender for any clearance issues.







We checked the lower mounts and once they checked out, bolted the fender up.





Not bad huh?  

ARLEN NESS TRINKETS



We hit up Arlen Ness for one of his gas caps as well as one of Ness' really trick hydro-activated brake light switches. These switches can really do a good job of cleaning up a bunch of unnecessary wires. The Gas cap is a minimalist design and will look killer on our Detroit Bros. tank.  

PIPE TIME

With the Shovel motor, Baker Tranny, West Eagle fender, and AEE sissybar all mocked up where they will permanently reside we decided it was time configure the exhaust.

We wanted something to fit to look of the bike, but be street legal as not to attract Johnny Law's attention to the other less law-abiding features of this bike.

Already in our possession were the West Eagle mini trumpet mufflers as well as a biltwell exhaust pipe kit, so we could easily build a completely custom set of pipes, but time was running short and Paughco offered up a set of its upsweep pipes ready built for our Shovelhead.

With the clock running out on our build we could have just bolted on the pipes, slapped on the mufflers and call it good, but that would have been the smart thing to do. We decided that to get the "right" look, we were going to use the Paughco pipes, weld some extensions on them from our Biltwell kit and the top them off with the West eagle mufflers. And we were going to do it all in a very quick like manner.







We started hacking up the stock mounts from the Paughco pipes, then we buzzed all of the chrome off at the ends so our welds would penetrate







Taking a u-bend from the Biltwell kit, we busted out the chopsaw and started the first of many cuts.









We then got busy tacking the pipes together and test fitting them for what seemed like 1000 times until both pipes were at the correct angle.







Once the pipes were good to go, mounts were made and welded onto the extension tubing.









The frame mounts were then tacked into place, checked for proper alignment and finish welded.









With some finish welding, a bit more sanding and filling, the pipes were ready to be shipped off to the chrome shop. If you think we were going to show you how sweet they looked on the bike before they went to plating, you're high! We want you stay tuned for the competed bike coming up in a matter of days!  

CLUTCH CABLE STOP

We decided that we were going with a hand clutch on this bike and after looking at a ton of bikes that have used a hand clutch with a Baker 6into4 we blatantly ripped off what Kutty Noteboom of Hippy KIller did on his Sinner's Prayer bike.





We whipped up a bracket and took an adjuster barrel from a vintage dirt bike's clutch lever.





Here's where we tacked the clutch cable stop into place. As you can see the cable will extend about another 5" from this to the Trans lever (with the blue tape wrapped around it)





Here it is after is was finish welded.  

KICK STANDING

While in search for the right kickstand, we found a few candidates, but either the actuation of it was funky or the look of it wasnt what we were going for. I remembered see a nice and simple kickstand when I was in Europe a while back that Kustom Tech out of Italy makes.

I remembered that Euro Components who is Kustom Tech's USA distributor had them in stock and after I taled with both of them, I had one in the mail the next day.





We got the bike off of the workstand and onto the floor where we could get it mounted correctly and tacked into place.





With the stand tacked into place, you can see how just simple this weld-on stand is. It employs an Internal spring that is adjustable with a set-screw





Once it was determined that the kickstand was in the right place, we ran a big old ugly structural bead first, and then a nice looking finish welded over the top of that.




Hows that for a weld-on job?  

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BLOW APART AND FINISH WELDING

Mock up time is done and it's time to get all the parts off the bike and disassembled for some finish welding and pre-polishing before taking the pile of parts to Southbay Chrome.



























Ok, we are done with the dirty part of the build.


A lil heads up.... The Gas Tank will be the only thing that will be painted on the  whole bike. Everything else will be chromed or polished.  

AXLE SPACERS







For mock up we used a pile of 3/4-inch washers as our wheel spacers. The reason is, we can add each washer (which are about 2mm thick) one at a time to get the proper spacing. This comes in hand or rear wheels especially if there is a sprotor or some other type of disc brake, where the builder has to make sure there is a proper amount of space or catastrophe could strike.

Once the bike was apart and at chrome, we went to our buddy Ballbreaker's shop where he whipped us up some classy 6061 T6 aluminum spacers.





Each side of the wheel had a bunch of stacked washers, which we are of the proper length. We will measure each of them and fab up aluminum ones.





We cut some lengths of tubing that are close to to our measurements





Real measurements were made and marked onto the tubing.







The tubing was chucked into the lathe and machined to the proper length.





And now we have some spacers ready to go to the polisher.  

BACK FROM SOUTHBAY CHROME





Our Pile of Parts looked like this when we dropped them off at Southbay Chrome in Santa Ana Ca.





And this is what they looked like when we picked them up. Pictures do these parts not a bit of justice. Gary and the crew at Southbay Chrome did nothing short of an excellent job of pre-polishing and triple show-chrome plating the parts. Southbay's job quality was second to none and they did it in a completely reasonable amount of time.  

BACK FROM THE POLISHER



When we took the wheels spacers to in to get polished, we also took the Tech Cycle clutch cover,  Flyrite brake caliper, Chassis Design oil tank cap and a few other items to AB Polishing in Upland California, where the owner Apolonio did a great job getting these parts shining like diamonds.