HighCaliber's '78 chopper... in his own words. Some info on the bike: 1978 CB750 (what else?) When I bought the bike, I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. I'd been looking for a weld-on hardtail section and some 10 over forks, to make it more of a traditional looking "chopper." After a few months of general repair work, getting the bugs out of the stock bike and getting together a collection of parts, I started thinking about the whole "chopper" scene in general and how even a really expensive, beautiful bike can get lost in the crowd these days. I decided to do something that very few people were doing at the time. I hit upon the idea of building a motorcycle version of an old school rat rod, if that makes any sense. I just decided to use what I had in my parts pile, and whatever I didn't have, I'd either make, or find a way to re-use something from the bike. It had to be flat black, loud, stripped down to the bare bones and fast. I tore the bike down to the frame and front end, knowing that the engine was in pretty good shape, I didn't mess with it much other than new coils, adjusting the valves and general tune-up work. The frame got Konged, using sections of tubing from a Bobcat skid steer to build the backbone and re-enforce the new joints. The stock shocks were shortened by 1" to bring down the back of the bike. I know this is a no-no for most people, but it's only temporary until I get new short shocks. I cut off a lot of the old, ugly bracketry on the frame and re-painted it. The gas tank is a standard Sportster tank. I hacked out the tunnel and welded in a flat bottom and new mounting tabs to make the tank sit frisco style. In hindsight I shoud have moved the petcock further back to let me use the last 1/3 of the fuel in the tank, but screw it, there's plenty of tanks out there that I can get and do that to next time. The oil tank is made from a 5"X14" steel pipe section, with a pipe fitting in the center for an oil fill. I re-used the stock fittings as much as possible here. It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but ugly is in. The headlight is another Sportster "donation." I was going to use the stock headlight, but when I saw this one, I decided it had to be on the bike because of the way the lens is frenched in. The battery went to live on the swingarm, an Electrex regulator/rectifier went in and I re-wired the bike in the simplest way I could. No idiot lights, turn signals or anything that didn't make it go or stop. I re-used the stock rear fender, because I liked the chrome and the ribbed edge. The shorter I made it, the more character it had. I think even though it's ghetto as hell, it's one of my favorite parts of the bike. I found a cool little taillight though Low Rider Tommy, and used that. It's probably not legal, becuase it's so small, but who cares? After the bike was wired and almost together, I added the small sheetmetal sections under the seat, purely to give me somewhere to put the ignition switch and the start button. The seat pan I made from aluminium and I re-used the fake leather from the original seat to cover the foam after I'd shaped it. I also used 10 guage shotgun shells for end caps on the handlebars. I know everyone does this, but I had them laying around, so why not? Originally I was going to use five-foot long straight pipes on the bike (seriously, I thought it would look cool) But I ran into some clearance issues with the kickstand. I didn't want to mess with the stand, so I just used some electrical conduit to make lake-pipe style kickouts for the exhaust. The pipes are in sorry shape, so they're going to get header wrap one of these days. The speedo you can see in the pics isn't hooked up. It's there to keep the cops off my back (yeah right!) and to help balance the look of the front of the bike. Without it the gas tank looks like it sticks up too much. So, how does she run? Loud. Loud and fast. Having the Konged frame lowers the center of gravity of the bike and helps it handle better. It's a bitchin' ride and when you really twist the wick, the bark of those short little pipes makes your brain itch. All of the fabrication, modification, painting and mechanical work was done by me. Nobody so much as handed me a wrench on this project. I did receive plenty of support, encouragement and damn good advice from Andy, LRT and all the guys at www.hondachopper.com They're all a good bunch of guys and this project wouldn't have happened without them. So what's next? Header wrap for the pipes, a longer swingarm, new shocks, smaller rear rim and maybe some 12" apes and wide whitewalls. At least thats what's next for THIS bike ;)