It all began innocently enough at Ogemaw Hills Bike Week last summer. It was the one solitary solid week of the summer of 2013 when it was actually hot in Michigan. Not warm, but sweat your nuts off hot. So, I found myself there, sweating off said nuts, causing trouble and investigating opportunities for additional mischief. Of course, being the diligent person that I am, I found some with the good folks from Chop-In Block, a sort of co-op of bike builders, fabricators, and designers. I bumped into them by happenstance, ended up having them lay some stripes on my Electra Glide, and hung out for the evening enjoying a homemade burger and a few cold ones.
Well, one of the boys in the crew is a dude by the name of Wendell Turner. Wendell was old school before it was cool. He rolls on a flathead. Yup: flathead, bitches. This guy builds and restores sick old hogs, and he had brought with him a sweet hardtail Ironhead, 1960’s, right hand shift, sprung leather covered seat…it was cool. So, we were hanging out and I told him I really dug the scoot, and Wendell went on to tell me that you can pick up the later Ironheads on the cheap, slap on a Led Sled weld-on hardtail, and have a sick little bike for not a whole lot of dough. I was intrigued.
The ugly duckling, a/k/a “Rude”, before disassembly
That was July. By October, I had located (in a trailer park, no less,) a really solid 1979 Ironhead with an ’81 assembled title. It ran great, and with the assembled title, no harm, no foul on hacking the frame. I negotiated the deal, loaded up, and brought the ugly duckling to my garage.
Once the winter set in and my riding was brought to a reluctant and abrupt halt, I started in on the disassembly. It didn’t take long for me to realize a couple things. First, my garage was not a very comfortable work environment when the outside temps were in the single digits. Second, I was missing a few key things to do a build like this. You know: welders, jigs, grinders, mechanical aptitude, talent…. So I did what any good self-respecting aspiring bike builder would do: I phoned a friend. I called John Harrow, the gentleman from Chop-In Block who pinstriped my bike and asked for some help. After hearing what I was doing, he suggested I call Ron “Ronnie” Harris, owner of Chop Docs Choppers. After some conversations over the phone and in person, I was confident that Ron and I were on the same page with the build, so I delivered the bike to him to assist in the heavy lifting of the build.
At present, Ron has the frame cut, hardtail tacked on, and most of the parts are either at the shop or on the way. I have my fingers crossed that by the time it’s short-sleeves-and-sunscreen riding weather, the chopper will be road-ready and I’ll be terrorizing the streets with it.