The Chopper Compendium

Just registered, so thought I'd introduce myself. The name's Willy, and I use the handle "2Loose" (an old family nick name) on a variety of hot rod and bike forums. I'm a Maui boy, 72, been around awhile, have always built all my own stuff, and have had 4 wheel hot rods of various types in the garage since high school, and 2 wheelers since college. I've made my living as a farm machinery engineer in sugar cane and pineapple. My bikes have been Hondas, BSA's, panheads, shovel heads, evo's and one new one (2010 Dyna), but that one's stock and gets used for local errands mostly.

Started cleaning out the storage shed a couple years ago, and ended up with 5 bike projects. My '62 pan that I chopped in '68 is getting a full repop, pretty much keeping the original flavor though. Denver's rigid frame, rebuilding the motor & tranny, mild build, nothing too wild, keep the 18" over wide glide, might narrow it though, stay with the 21 in front and 16 rear, sissy bar, solo seat, might add a front brake this time around though....

Putting it together the first time in '68:

Where I'm at today:

still looking at what bars I wanna use....

A '59 basket case I've had around forever is finally going together. It's a hot rod. 93" S&S "Sidewinder" internals, ported STD heads, dual plug Morris mag G5 ignition, in an old Paughco shovel "drop seat" style swing arm frame that I'm redoing. Have a couple front ends I can use, undecided, but might hang the 16" over black Paughco springer on there after I cut the neck out to about 45 deg.
This is the '59 when I first got it in '70. My son Vincent in this pic is now 50 yrs old! Most of those parts are long gone, kept the motor and tranny.

Checking valve clearances for an Andrews B grind, solid lifters...


Had a pair of '60 cases sitting around, and enough parts to just put together a cruiser 74", drop seat swing arm frame, so gonna make a "local boy beach cruiser", just getting started on that one....

I've got a VL springer, needs an overhaul, but think I want to run it on this bike.

That's the wrong bike in this pix, but you get the idea.

A close buddy developed a serious medical condition, so I took over a project using a Jammer Pan/Shovel crate motor and a Revtech 5 speed, in an old drag race chrome moly tig welded swing arm Strociek frame that's been sittin' around forever.

I also have a Magnuson 80" roots style blower I've had on the shelf forever I'm going to use on this bike.


I've also got a '91 Dyna that I'm redoing for my son. New paint and a lot of new parts.



My two Dynas:


The '62 and the '91 have both done mainland trips. My trips usually take six weeks and cover
about 6,000 miles, NW, Midwest, Canada, and of course, Sturgis.

Aloha from Maui
Willy

good to see over here. i've been following your bike builds on the jj. good stuff. welcome.

Welcome!

Welcome to the group.

great googly moogly! will you adopt me?

seriously though, i'm jealous of all the wonderful projects you've got going on there. as for forks on the '62, i think a nice set of narrow girder forks would be the bees' knees on it. or i could equally see a super narrow and long springer. whatever front end you put on there, i'm sure it's gonna look sweet. please, keep us updated as you progress on them.

-dan

Good to see you here. Good pics! We are picture hoes.

OK, I need some advice from Dan or whoever, as I'm working sorta slow on these five projects I have going (some of you folks amaze me with how fast you can put a project bike together !!), when I start posting over in the "Project Build-Logs" area, maybe start only one thread, and just post progress on each project as I 'get-er-done' in that one thread? Or start a separate thread on each project? There are not going to be the fabrication skills I see on some of the projects, but I am going to rake and extend one old frame, and do a rebuild on an old VL springer. Should be fun.
Willy

Welcome...personally I would do a separate Thread for each.What you may think isn't up to what someone else is doing,there might be stuff you do that someone else might find usefull.It might get lost if all are lumped together....my 2 cents

budoka wrote:..............as for forks on the '62, i think a nice set of narrow girder forks would be the bees' knees on it. or i could equally see a super narrow and long springer.....

I almost did, I have this old Paughco I cleaned up and black powder coated, it'd look good on that '62....



The frame it's on in this pic is the old Strociek frame I'm going to use for the blower bike....

The thing is, that '62 was my first chop job, my third bike (had a '62 Honda Super Hawk, then a '63 BSA Lightning, then got hooks on the panheads), and I've had it for 47 years now! Parked for the last 25 years, so the idea was to put it back on the road pretty much the way I was running it from '68 - '90, but with a few "improvements" that I had planned way back when, like when I had the folks at Denver's build that custom frame for me to my specs, but never got the bike switched over to the new frame. Likewise, I have a set of narrowed wide glide trees and an axle I was going to put on way back, and never did, so I'm just continuing with what I was going to do 25 years ago and never did, think it's about time to do so. Maybe down the road I'll try my hand at building a girder and putting it on the '62.

The '62 is staying with me to the end, whenever that is....



Re: Pic above, When I first set up the '62 frame in '68 I did not have a lot of confidence in my welding skills, and was particularly afraid of cutting the neck, so I chopped off the rear, and dropped the rear end down to the ground and built a hardtail with horizontal axle plates to give me a 50 deg rake with an 18 over front end. We called it the "praying mantis" look.... That springer is a buddy's, I bought 18 over tubes from Frank's and ran the original '62 glide lower legs on 'em back then, had to put two sets of springs in and trim the upper springs to get the sliders to work the way I wanted 'em to, and they do work well....
That's also the 2 gal tank I ran back then, moved the filler to the highest, right side point on the tank, and had it stick up 3". Looked like it had an erection. Often though about what it might do to me if I ever went over the front end in a crash, but I never crashed it!

Compare this pic to the first one I posted back at the top here, it's the same frame.

A friend is in the process of putting my old frame back on the road with this springer, it will take awhile though....
Aloha to All....
Willy

welcome i agree with jeff

Yeah, I agree too after thinkin on it a bit.
Got some new software for page building online,
been learnin it a bit and put together a page
for the splittin of the flywheels.
I don't have exotic tools for this, as you will see.
Here, take a look....
My First Attempt for the 60FL w this new software

Now, I'll start a build thread over in projects, pulling pix and info off this webpage.

This way its all my stuff, i'm not dependin on any of the photo storage places
to keep my stuff for me, it's all on a private server one of my buddies operates.
Willy

I know I'm following this.
School is in session. All students accounted for.

Added a bunch of stuff to my personal page here, and some of it on the project build page...
Project Page
Aloha,
Willy

post 'em how ever you feel like. believe me, we'll all be salivating over it anyway you post it up!

-dan

Had 3 sorta old webpages on the '59 motor that got corrupted by wXP software trying to run in w7.
Finally got 'em cleaned up and working, but that software is history, got new software now....
take a look, and I'll post over in the 'projects' too....
http://www.wheelsmaui.com/59FL93project1.html
Aloha
2Loose Willy