Choppers
Now you might think Nathan is some sort of Batman groupie or something, but you would be dead wrong. “I’m not much into Batman or anything, it just had an incredible theme to me,” said Nathan. “I just wanted to build a chopper. I couldn’t decide what to do and my sons, Drav and Creed, were watching Batman and I sat with them and watched those two villains, Two-Face and Riddler, and I thought to myself, ‘Imagine building a bike that was two-sided.’ I wanted to build the Two- Face first, but I didn’t have the skills so I built the Riddler bike and learned.”
That “learned” part is pretty interesting because Nathan had never built a chopper or even rode street bikes, he’s an off-road rider and this ambitious attempt at doing a ground-up build required him to learn the necessary welding skills and to become proficient with a planishing hammer and English wheel. Obviously the guy’s talented and a quick and fearless learner. He’s also gotta love a good challenge as watching TV motorcycle shows like American Chopper goaded him into building one. “I watched shows like Orange County Choppers and that and I got really, really fascinated with those bikes,” said Nathan. “I went on their websites and saw how much money they were charging for those choppers and I got to thinking, ‘No way!’ I really wanted a chopper but couldn’t afford one so I learned how to build one. I set a goal and a deadline and went from there.”
Building a theme bike for an over-the-top villain like Riddler naturally required an over-the- top design and the radical 46-degree rake (with an additional 6-degrees in the trees) PMC frame with 6” of stretch in combination with a wicked-long (18”-over) American Suspension inverted fork insured it was O-T-T to start. “Everybody seems to hate long bikes, but I actually love them. They’re a little harder around town, but on the freeway they’re just incredible,” said Nathan. One this first build he honed his sheetmetal skills fabbing up the curved, flat-sided fuel tank, oil tank, and rear fender/seat platform with a frenched-in taillight. Gotta say it’s amazing work for a first-timer. Dan Langston was called in to spray on the paint, as Nathan hasn’t decided to master that little skill just yet. “A cool feature on the green bike is the green paint is the on the show it’s actually a neon glowing green. We painted it so when the light shines on it in the daytime it glows,” said Nathan. At night it’s a pitch black bike until light hits it and then only the green stands out.”
Rolling stock of DNA wires brings the bling with a mandatory long-bike fat tire out back to make the skinny 21” front’s life a continual workout. Nathan smartly chose an 80” H-D Evo motor mated to a Baker tranny via a BDS primary as his means of motivation. Martin Bros pipes show a bit of blue and that’s because Nathan rides his bikes. He’s put over 4,000 miles on Riddler and about 6,000 on Two-Face. ”They both have 80” Evos in ‘em. I’m not good at motors so I just bought a stock kit and assembled ‘em,” he said. “I suppose I should’ve gone bigger, but boy they shoot around like nothing. How fast do you want to go?”
After completing the four-month Riddler build, Nathan didn’t just kick back and licks his chops. He planned an even more ambitious build involving the DC Comics bad guy Two-Face as his muse. If you look closely, you will see that everything (except the wheels and tires) is square on the pink side and round on the black. Go ahead — take another look. “It took a lot of time and fabrication to square-off the frame. Every ounce of it is square on that side from the forks to the bars to the frame to the brake setup and everything,” said Nathan. “I got the fork sent to me raw and I boxed it in and then counterweighted inside the round tube so you can actually take your hands off the bars going down the freeway. It’s perfectly balanced.”
Nathan’s second build took it a step further O-T-T dimension-wise with a more horizon-reaching 52-degrres of rake supplemented by an additional 6-degrees in the trees. This required an even longer extended fork with an additional 26” of wheel-holding ability. Dan Langston was called back in to two-face the paint and this is probably the most controversial part of the finished build. Be honest, people actually hate the paint. I took it down to Laughlin and it more or less got laughed out. A lot of people looked at it, but the couldn’t believe I’d paint it pink. I love it,” said Nathan. “The paint is incredible, the detail of the face and everything. On the pink side of the tank, in the middle of it, you can see some speckled-leather look. That’s actually a soft-touch rubber that feels like leather. The Two-Face character wears a leather jacket, which is why it looks like that. I took a horrible chance, but I pulled off the vision in my head. It came out the way I wanted it.”
The best part about custom bikes is that the maxim “to each his own” always applies and in Nathan’s case, he’s not afraid of anything whether it’s building a ground-up chopper or painting it pink when you’re through. “Where I’m from in Utah, I’m about the only guy with these kind of motorcycles around so I kinda stand out like a sore thumb. I guess I don’t really know what’s in or out,” said Nathan. “These things are just fun to me. The bike I’m building now is quite incredible. It’s 12’ long with a 38”-over springer and a 66-degree rake. It’s probably not even going to be driveable, but I’ve got a place for it in my living room where I want it.”
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