SINGLE DOWN TUBE CHOPPER FEVER

And in this photo I was 8 or 9 years younger and fresh off the plane from Hawaii. Got off the island when I got a job working for Chica, building bikes in Huntington Beach. Fab and assembly. Hacking, cutting, grinding, welding, day in - day out. It was lots of fun at the time.

This was my first project there, less than 3 months of employment and presto. He offered to let me design a bike so this is what I wanted to do and we did it. My, how time flies. Just to fuck with people and to get a good laugh every time, I had named this project Atomic Bomb Revenge. It was funny. When the bike was done we changed the name of course.

I remember coming in on a Sunday because I was adamant about building a single downtube frame. If I wanted to do that, we had to do it on our "off" time. So I came in and we fucked up like 3 or 4 tubes until we got one just right. Not many people were running single loop frames back then. In fact, this was quite a bit before the Single Down Tube Fever virus hit chopperdom.

I had never seen a chopper with a real deal custom single down tube frame, aside from photos in magazines. I had been looking for a Motor Shop frame but they were scarce. No one I knew had one and if they did, they wanted too much money for it. Better off making one. Trick was to get the single loop all the way under the engine. Even the mid controls were so questionable back then. "Oh, you'll get cramps riding like that!" All kinds of crazy comments. "Wow, that brake side control looks amazing! where did you get that?" Uuuuuh, stock FX? $5 at the LB swap.

Prior to even building this, there was a lot of calls to Irish Rich I think, lots of referencing and info if I remember correctly. And I think I used to call Mike Scraggs at Chopper Guys a lot to bug him about old school Frisco shit as well.

I took all photos this way because I had joined the chopper army. And in this army, one needs not to cut his hair.

This bike rode like a champ. Test rode it to Moreland Choppers in Solana Beach one day and had a great time and a good lunch. I wonder where this bike is now.