Now that you’ve seen the photos, I bet you experienced a WTF? Moment like I did. From the right-side it’s a perfect picture of a well built Harley Shovelhead chopper that’s got the open road in its sights more than a rotating bike show stand. It’s tough, it’s cool and it looks like a bag of fun to ride. Obviously the owner feels that way too as the nicely kept engine shows the lovely signs of oil mist and road patina that shows this bike is ridden. I’m gonna guess ridden hard too. It’s an aggressive bike just sitting there taunting you to dare to ride it even if only in your mind. Well at least that’s how it made me feel from the get-go.

 

  When you checked out the left side, you saw a totally different version of the same bike. By now you know what I’m referring to and that’s the asymmetrical aspect of the finished product. The right half is impeccably finished, painted and detailed while the left side is living a life of its own. Kind of a Mods’ and Rockers’ marriage under the kind and gentle auspices of the church of Harley-Davidson. On one side the fuel tank is perfectly sculpted with a fuel line gas gauge with its own tunnel at the top to let the line meld into the tank. On the other, it’s showing its bare metal and welds for all the world to see with what might seem an unfinished side, but it’s so deliberate without trying that it looks somehow right. A straight line goes down the middle and separates the distinctly different but related areas as one.

 

  Same goes for the rear fender with two completely different styles that somehow blend as one, but each has a personality that speaks out while sharing a common ground. The barely-there vestige of a front fender does the same giving a whole new stylistic meaning to incorporate a fender in a design instead of just eliminating it and calling it design. Like the judge told a cop who ticketed me for not having mirrors, “You can’t cite him for defective equipment if it isn’t there.” If there was a front fender law in New York (there isn’t) where this bike is registered, it should pass the letter of the law as well as just being an interesting take on mudguards for modern choppers.

 

  The frame manufacturer is as unknown as the builder, but it is an inspired choice with frame dimensions that literally reek of unabashed straight-ahead performance with a touch of bad boy built in. The radically extended tubes of the conventional fork are detoured on their normal path to the front axle via a set of raked triple trees that I assume are for decent rake and trail figures. The extra rake really adds a lot of attitude and I have to think that’s what this bike is all about on so many levels ─ attitude.

 

  Actually the attitude is not the bike itself as much as the builder himself. There’s an artistic bent throughout this build from the pieces that were hand-fabbed from scratch to repurposed bits that add a whole hell of a lot of personality to the build. Even though this build is deadly serious in its intent, the builder had a lot of fun with various bits and despite all the hard work and finesse involved, he’s having a good laugh at the same time.

 

  By now you know what I’m referring to and that’s the asymmetrical aspect of the finished product. The right half is impeccably finished, painted and detailed while the left side is living a life of its own. Kind of a Mods and Rockers Shovelhead marriage. On one side the fuel tank is perfectly sculpted with a fuel line gas gauge with its own tunnel at the top to let the line meld into the tank. On the other, it’s showing its bare metal and welds for all the world to see with what might seem an unfinished side, but it’s so deliberate without trying that it looks somehow right. A straight line goes down the middle and separates the distinctly different but related areas as one. Same goes for the rear fender with two completely different styles that somehow blend as one, but each has a personality that speaks out while sharing a common ground. The barely-there vestige of a front fender does the same giving a whole new stylistic meaning to incorporate a fender in a design instead of just eliminating it and calling it design. Like the judge told a cop who ticketed me for not having mirrors, “You can’t cite him for defective equipment if it isn’t there.” If there was a front fender law in New York (there isn’t) where this bike is registered, it should pass the letter of the law as well as just being an interesting take on mudguards for modern choppers.

 

   Same goes for the tremendous front and rear brake setups (which are required in New York), but the builder’s take on today’s trend of no front brake possibly to show off an unfettered wheel is even cooler and better looking in my opinion. A classic chopper-sized 21-inch front wheel covered by a 90/90×21 Avon Venom tire not only displays everything its got like a Kardashian trying to break the Internet, but the beautiful rim brake adds a bit of wheel jewelry to the mix. With a hidden caliper mounted behind an elaborate fantasy mount (my words) that made me smile to see not only the builder’s personal style, but appreciate how he hid it and made the rim rotor look more like part of the wheel than part of something as rudimentary as a high-performance stopper.

 

  Out back, the butch-as-hell wide rim laced wheel is protected from road hazards by a meaty, but not too meaty, 200/60×16 Avon rubber. Keeping it slim allows this bike to slice and dice with any fast New York traffic or a trip through the Adirondacks. When in the Adirondacks, the floating rear rotor and underslung caliper along with the rim brake should make this baby one fine stopper. There’s just something about being able to pull and/or stomp on a lever and get all the retardation you deserve to make it a fun mountain ride instead of wondering when you’re going to have to drag your feet and hope for the best. I consider our mystery builder’s brake choice to be the motorcycling equivalent of having an open carry permit and your handgun of choice is a .50 caliber Desert Eagle.  

 

   Even though there’s a bunch of fun frippery like the giant 1877 Indian Head penny on the timing cover or the twin New York license plates acting as inner fenders or the wrench fender stay or the wrench hand shifter with its amazing double-jointed action, there’s a lot of dedicated seriousness poking through. There’s a cohesiveness to the overall design whether it’s the individual sides by themselves or taken as a whole. It’s like seeing the building process and the finished bike at the same time, but it isn’t at the same time. This bike is its own personality even if it’s a little bit split with a whiff of schizoid thrown in to make it even more interesting.

 

   There’s just a ton of stuff still going on that I haven’t begun to cover and if you’re thinking about building a bike, any bike, as my cow friends always say, it would behoove you to take a closer look at Mr. Cofano’s photos and maybe blow them up until you see it from the view of our mysterious artistic builder did. The more you see, the more you’ll respect what he was up to. In my opinion, it’s an unusually wonderful display of talent.