My Day of Living Dangerously
My Day of Living Dangerously
UP FRONT
David Edwards
IT WASN’T AS IF I HADN’T BEEN WARNED. “Go easy in right-hand turns,” I was instructed. “If you ride hard, the lower exhaust pipe will hit. You need to use a bit of body English and a lot of caution.”
Employing neither, the first time I pitched the bike into a tight right-hander had me wobbling toward oncoming traffic in a shower of sparks and nervous sweat-never, I’ve found, an appealing combination.
ness. Companies like Corbin, Performance Machine and Arlen Ness made their first millions catering to the chopper crowd. And what are today’s topselling cruisers if not sanitized versions of choppers?
Then there was the brake. Singular, of course, because a proper chopper should only have a spool front hub, unencumbered by such eyesores as a big ol’ effective drum and its attendant cable mucking up the aesthetics.
So here I was sitting atop an Ascot-worthy Triumph Bonneville motor (Routt 750cc big-bore kit, highcomp pistons, headwork, heavy-duty valve springs, Hunt magneto, etc.), the only thing between me and rearending suddenly stopped soccer-mom SUVs a spongy rear binder woefully unup to the task. Shoe leather seemed a safer, surer option.
I was reminded once again that of all the risky things I’ve done on motorcycles-and that includes lapping Wayne Rainey’s two-stroke GP Yamaha at Laguna Seca, racing an AÍ Baker XR610 Honda in the Baja 1000 and setting three FIM world speed records on a Suzuki GSXR750-riding an old-school chopper is by far the most dangerous.
Why do we like these damn things so much?
For the past 40 years, the chopper has shaped much of American motorcycling, starting with that most iconic bike ever, Peter Fonda’s starred-and-striped Captain America Panhead from 1969’s Easy Rider. The chopper boom that followed set the stage for today’s billion-dollar aftermarket busi-
Now, as you can read in this issue, Harley-Davidson and Yamaha have taken things a step farther and will sell harder-edged neo-chops in 2008. Is it time for Easy Rider II: TheAARP Years, with Wyatt on a Rocker and Billy on a Raider?
David Fagar, a.k.a. “Greasy Dave,” the Detroit toolmaker who built this Triumph chopper a quartercentury ago, probably would not approve.
“This is a real chopper, dating back to when people built choppers, not companies,” he
noted in his eBay listing. “I never thought I’d get rid of it, but times change. I just don’t ride choppers anymore, so it needs a good home.”
Originally put together in the late ’60s or early ’70s, the bike had been buried in a backyard shed when Dave found it and began resurrection.
“I changed quite a few things but always managed to keep the ’Frisco styling,” he said. “Every possible method to make it stronger and more roadworthy has been employed. Notice the lack of cheap clamps and brackets that can stress from vibration and break. Look closely at the oil-tank mount, the exhaust mounts, the controls, pegs, battery box, etc. Everything is custom-fit with welded bracketry made of tool steel. I built this bike 25 years ago, have ridden it all over Michigan, and it’s still holdin’ up!”
Same can be said of the styling. Ron Finch, the crazy old coot of recent “Biker Build-Off” fame, did the pipes and paint. Dave is responsible for the spectacular, one-of-a-kind gas tank, a stocker that was sectioned, stretched, channeled, bull-nosed, then fitted with a recessed filler cap. At the rear, it’s barely an inch across. By my loose count there are 50 gold-plated parts sprinkled about the chassis, now mercifully faded to a mellowed patina that more closely resembles nickel.
Dave’s final selling point?
“I once rode it through the front door of the infamous Bookies Club 870, one of the country’s first punk rock bars, and spun doughnuts on the tile floor in front of the stage,” he said. “The tire marks were still there when Bookies burned down in the late ’80s!” Now that I own the bike, we’ll probably steer clear of punk rock joints. Righthanders are excitement enough.
