what is a chopper

What is a Chopper

Starting back in the late twenties and going on well into the fifties motorcycle racers used to modify their bikes to reduce weight by discarding a lot of the nonessential factory parts and by cutting down the side skirts and 'bobbing' the ends of the fenders by removing about half of their stock length. Such bikes were referred to as ‘Bobbers’ or ‘Cut-downs’.

Nobody knows for sure but somewhere around the end of World War II young soldiers returning home from the war started to build bikes from was surplus Harleys that carried the 'Bobber' concept one step further by performing customizations and modifications to the bike's frame by 'chopping' it up and welding it back together in a different configuration.

These modifications usually consisted in lengthening and lowering the frame to give it a longer wheelbase and lower center of gravity to improve high-speed stability and hill-climbing ability. Somewhere along the line somebody had the bright idea of changing the stock steering neck angle as well and this is where the first classic chopper was born.

We used to say that these bikes had a 'chopped' neck, not a 'raked' neck. This first bike, wherever it is, was probably set up for drag racing as most of the old-timers I knew as a kid credited the development of raked and customized bikes to those builders who were heavily involved in legitimate straight-line racing and illegal street races. That's where I got my start, building drag bike frames.

Basically then a Bobber was simply a stock factory scooter that had been stripped of everything except the frame, motor, transmission, forks, handlebars, wheels, tires and basic electrical wiring. Most didn't have a front fender or a front brake and the rear fender barely covered a quarter of the tire. These were light bikes with big engines designed to do only one thing and that was to go as fast as possible, but they were still designed basically as road racers where handling was an issue. The 'straight-line' crowd however had a completely different set of criteria and this involved extreme high-speed stability and neck breaking acceleration. To achieve this half way safely required modifications to the frame to make it longer and that’s why the Chopper was developed, probably somewhere around the mid-fifties because by the early sixties the style was already firmly entrenched as an American art form, at least in Southern California. I remember seeing bikes with extended front-ends and long wheelbases being ridden on the streets, as early as 60-61 and by 1962 they were fairly common.

Ironically, as much as most of us today hate to have our 'choppers' equated with 'customized' show bikes these early chops were typically called 'customs' by their owners to differentiate them from Bobbers which to chopper folks were still factory bikes.

Interestingly it appears that a good portion of the original evolution of the typical Southern California bike style came from the membership of African-American motorcycle clubs in Los Angeles where builders like Cliff Vaughs, Al Grant and Ben Hardy were already doing significant custom work as early as 62. Vaughs was quoted as saying that “a Chopper is the final romantic expression that is left in this country. Obviously the frontier is gone. The cycle is the one thing that you can build from nothing, just a basket, and make into something very beautiful and really put yourself into it”.

It's interesting to see it put this way because the American Chopper has long been associated with the replacement for the frontiersmen's horse. That's why they're often referred to as Iron Horses.

It's also interesting to know that Hardy and Vaughs are the guys who built the two Choppers for the movie Easy Rider that had tremendous influence on chopper design and even the entire social subculture for several decades yet only one chopper magazine of the period gave them public credit for the work they did. Why were two black guys selected to build bikes for a white hippie movie right in the middle of the civil rights turmoil? Well it's because at the time they were the most experienced builders around who actually had a chopper shop and knew how to do the work. In the early sixties these guys were the best of the best.

Prior to around 1966 if you were into building bikes you had to do all of the modifications and make everything yourself or at least find somebody to make the parts for you. Chopper building was truly a personal experience. Beginning around 67 however we started to see the emergence of a small industry built around supplying bike builders with a variety of basic parts. To some people this period in time marks the point where the chopper trend really started. To others, myself included, it marks the point in time where a large part of the personalization of choppers began to disappear and 'bolt-together bikes' first appeared on the scene. Prior to 67 riders just built their own putts. After 67 anybody could just buy the chopper 'look' and bolt it onto whatever they happened to own.

There is trend today, especially in America, to call almost any custom-built bike a chopper but some of this new generation of 'customs' and 'theme' bikes weigh a ton, are as wide as a small car and look more like lawn furniture than a motorcycle. In some cases the frames are so large and out of proportion that the rider and the motor look like miniatures on a parade float. In other cases the chassis is so distorted that you can pass a basketball through the airspace between the engine and frame. It's not uncommon to see the riders of these so-called customs sitting off-center in the seat so they can peer around the huge high-mounted fuel tanks to see where they're going while at the same time using body English to counterbalance the weight of the extremely offset engines.

Ironically the riders of these malformed monsters don't really ride them very much because they're usually ill handling punishing beasts that exhaust the pilot even on short trips to the local watering hole. They look cool though, especially when they’re standing still, which is the way most of their owners prefer it.

Fortunately there still are individuals and small shops creating clean, lightweight rides that are incredibly beautiful because they are so simple and well proportioned.

Unfortunately not to many of these bikes are making it into the popular cycle magazines who can sell more copies by featuring the freakish, outlandish, or downright ugly so-called customs. Can you remember the last time you saw a nice little Bobber on the cover of a mass-market rag?

A real Chopper is any motorcycle stripped down to the bare essentials, to a minimum weight, and modified to make maximum horsepower and to go as fast as possible especially from a standing start. Anything that doesn’t contribute to this objective is dispensable including such nonsense as swings arms and softails with all of their associated excess weight and mechanical contrivances developed to make it a little easier for posers to enjoy their cool pseudo rides without having to learn how to deal with potholes and other inconveniences of the highway lifestyle.

It's fun to watch the 700 pound slammed softies with their big 35 pound Avons beating the frame to death as they flop over highway expansion joints while the Rigids just seem to keep gliding along after almost sixty years of supposed obsolescence.

The whole point of building a chopper is to create a ride that is simple and unfailing on the one hand yet extremely complicated and sophisticated on the other. It's like building a Rolex watch that you ride. Remember that the Rolex, like a good Harley chopper is considered obsolete by today’s standards but what watch still dominates the marketplace?

Old technology is not necessarily bad technology and this is the point that many people miss. If it works, and works well, then use it! Old classic Choppers can run circles around today’s fad bikes and these old rides will still be around and be providing good service long after the street/show creations of this era are long gone. In fact I’d be willing to bet that there are more old choppers on the road today than there are recent vintage so-called modern choppers that have been built during the last ten years.

An extremely telling fact is that no aftermarket demand has developed for used softail frames yet there is still a huge market for used and even ancient hardtail frames. When was the last time you saw an ad stating “wanted, used softail frame for chopper project?”

My guess is that you've never seen such an ad because nobody wants one.

My personal opinion is that a Chopper is a bike that is made as small and light as is humanly possible having no electrical system beyond the head and tail lights. A good chopper can be completely disassembled using three or four wrenches out in the middle of boondocks. A good Chopper is a 'riding' bike that can carry the pilot over thousands of miles of open highway without needing a backup crew following behind. A good Chopper is cheap and easy to build without needing special custom made proprietary parts that will someday need to be replaced. A good Chopper should last decades and be passed down to future generations. A good Chopper will never become obsolete or out-of-style. A good Chopper is handmade from the ground up and custom tailored to it's builder.

Now that I've had my say please remember that it's 'your' bike and you should build it any way you want to and use any type of frame or motor that you desire no matter what anybody else says. That's the other nice thing about choppers. They’re personal.