Nathan Chaney of Alpena, Arkansas, is a spontaneous guy. He’s been known to wake up in the morning, get an urge to take a road trip, and 18 hours later, he’s in Florida. He builds the bikes he rides on these sojourns, and he rides them hard. Nowadays, most of his traveling is done on El Culo, his ’53 Harley chopper.
He found the beat up, rusted frame in the weeds outside of his friend Gabe’s shop, and set about blowtorching and filing it until it was in usable condition. “I actually wore out two Nicholson flat files in the process,” Nathan said.
The bike is Nathan’s eighth build, and his first Harley. He built it in his backyard shed, which he describes as looking “like someone suicide bombed a garbage scow.” Nathan’s dreamed of a bike like this for a long time. “When I was a kid I saw a group of Hell’s Angels at the local gas station, and I’ve wanted an Old School chopper ever since. I decided on a modern power plant since I’ve been known to cover 900-plus miles in a day when I’m out road tripping on my bikes.”
Nathan did almost all the work on the bike himself, though he happily gives credit where it’s due. “The points cover was an idea that me and my friend James Gatlin (AKA Bubba McFonzarelli ) came up with one night over beers — Bubba even gave me the T8 anti-tank cannon round that it’s machined from. His grandpa had it brought back with him from the service. In an odd bit of serendipity, he found that the shell was made in 1953, the same year as the frame. “Its date coded to prove it,” Nathan said. He hand-twisted all of the square stock mounts on the frame, and stretched the seat post an inch to make sure it would clear the engine.
Let’s talk about that engine for a minute. When Nathan put a 1985 Evo on that antique frame, everyone said he was crazy. You just don’t go around chopping up a beautiful frame like that to fit an Evo. He bought the engine from a guy named Nervous Larry, a fellow swap meet shopper who overheard Nathan complaining that no one had any engines for sale. Larry just happened to have one in his basement, and sold it to Nathan. “It was one of the craziest chance encounters ever,” Nathan said. “I re-ringed it, put in new lifters and stepped up to an HSR42 Mikuni. The way it runs exceeded my expectations.”
Purists were outraged at the modification. “What an ass,” they told him. So Nathan smiled and continued with his work, and when he was through, he named his bike, El Culo, which is Spanish for “The Ass.”
He cut and plated a notch in the seat (since a Pan is quite a bit smaller than an Evo). He molded in the ‘39 Ford taillight “with a frenching bucket that I flipped over and welded to the fender. Then I shaved one of the filler necks off of the Axe tank to kind of clean it up a bit,” Nathan said. In addition, he had to re-engineer the oil tank to work with his modified breather system. “While I was at it, I cut off the stock oil tank mounts and made some custom hidden mounts,” he added.
Nathan’s boss and friend, Ross Carter, taught him how to operate a mill and a lathe, and helped machine some of the parts for the bike. “This wouldn’t be the same motorcycle without his help,” Nathan said. He also credits his pal Ulys Youngblood for hooking him up with parts and advice. “Support your local indie!”
Nathan rides his bike everywhere (“It’s my favorite form of transportation”) and says that it’s pretty comfortable. “The hardest thing about riding it is the foot clutch and jockey shift, but once you get used to it, it ain’t so bad. You just have to remember what you’re riding. I drag my heels around corners all the time, but it’s a chopper, not a crotch rocket,” Nathan said. He hasn’t entered it any shows yet, but he’s happy with the reactions he’s received from strangers.
“It gets rave reviews at gas stations,” he laughed.
SPECIFICATIONS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|