What makes them interesting to build is what also holds them back. The whole trike architecture/platform gives a builder much more space to customize and engineering/aesthetic hurdles to overcome. But, it’s a great space to let their brain roam free coming up with hopefully elegant solutions while possibly breaking some new ground along the way. Big wheel baggers are relatively new, but big wheel trikes are nothing new. Many, many of you had one as a kid. Hey, maybe it’s all finally going on and I just don’t know about it.
Leave it up to an ex-Aussie to blow things right out of the trike water and build what I perceive to be a Steampunk board track racer trike. Notice I said “I” as I have no idea if that was any intention of Shaun Ruddy of Chop deVille in always lovely Las Vegas, Nevada, but that’s the description I’m going with. The board track aspect probably comes from the last Barnett’s Magazine Online article we ran on Shaun’s always slightly beyond interesting imagination turned into a custom motorcycle. In that case it definitely was a Chop deVille board track inspiration on two wheels. Same goes for this trike as I see it and it’s not just a crazy stretch as racing trikes stormed around the board tracks too.
The Steampunk aspect I’m grooving on comes from the very piece that purportedly started this whole build sometimes known as the tinkerer’s delight and familiar to anyone who’s had the sometimes dubious pleasure of owning or just riding in almost any English car, the infamous S.U. carb. Yep, just the carb by itself could illustrate the definition of Steampunk which, in this case could be described as a motorcycle appreciation and glorification of 19th century industrial machinery into 21st century custom motorcycles. I have no idea when one of the Skinnner brothers initially designed it, but it hit the open market in 1925 and basically has remained the same ever since. Man, that’s close to a century ago.
Obviously, Shaun’s got an eye for the art part of parts and the rest of the S.U. carb’s back-up band shows it even more. The 95-inch S&S-based Shovelhead engine features ported and flowed heads and a very rare, beautifully-finned Burkhardt magneto. That’s a 20th century casting with 19th century written all over it. The ground zero S.U. is topped with a wide mouth air intake featuring 12 brass bits running around the opening. Artfully complicated and gorgeous at the same time much like the rest of the Shovelhead. With its show polished cases and heads balanced out by other bits of brass carefully positioned everywhere to delight the eye and the trademark black Shovel cylinders lending a touch of reality, the engine could be popped onto a stand and displayed by itself.
The kick-only engine and the chrystal-knobbed hand shifter transmission are delicately combined via a belt drive that looks like its floating in space between two separate entities. Look a bit deeper and Shaun’s thin curved rod “backing plate” can’t possibly do what it does, but it does. Opens up a lot of space and provides lots of new viewing holes. Well, I call them that. The barely-there, but extremely pretty headers on each side are exhaust tubing speed lines in 3D. Surprisingly I have a feeling this setup might be a bit on the loud side and that can be good or bad depending what side of the fence you are on. For the amount of hard core road miles this will ever see, let it moan.
Sitting in the middle of a Chop deVille fabricated trike frame, the Shovel looks like a hard-edged art piece surrounded by curvaceous black tubing that also carries the engine’s oil. The way the tubes flow around and about on their way aft looks more like the whimsical stroke of a designer’s pen rather than a steel trike chassis. It’s set off by Shaun’s innovative twin gas shock girder front end, an item that is so beautiful it has no shelf life expiration date built into it. Oh it’s stunning now and will be 50 years from now although I don’t think I’ll be around to verify my claim. Just take my word for it, it’s that simple, clean and beautiful. Out back there’s no suspension, no differential, just utter simplicity with the chain driving a sprocket that’s also the rotor for the small caliper mounted just in front of it. Just an absolute minimum of what’s needed and not a lick more to get on down that road.
Then there’s the striking trio of fat spoke 26-inch wheels wearing whitewalls just to give them a bit more jazz. Their almost-not-there skinniness only adds to the greyhound feel from the frame and makes this trike look light as air as there’s so much of it in the design. But that’s not all, the retro tank with it’s Steampunk port hole leather side panels fills a bit of that space and provides a delightfully curved back for the more port-holed leather to slide back from the gas cap down the tank and over the curved top tube before surprisingly ending in an upsweep as a seat cover. That’s a really, really nice piece of kit Shaun. Another little Steampunk dab is the leather grips with stitching, brass and more polished bits on the gotta-be-rad-to-ride board track bars. That’s a lot of thought, time and effort just in the grips man! Oh, I forgot to mention that the pegs have the same style and all the work involved too. Shaun is nothing but an uncompromising stickler for details.
Shaun has made me a happy guy today just drinking in all the beautiful details of his trike. This thing is a knockout from any angle and I bet if you turned it over it would be the same. The workmanship, the craftsmanship, and the massive amount of creativity and good taste involved are hopefully appreciated by you as I’m totally sold. It’s easy to be sold, though, as Shaun’s trike was voted People’s Choice at the recent Artistry In Iron Show in Las Vegas. The people have spoken and we want more custom trikes. Shaun’s ahead of the bell curve, but it sure would be nice to see more builders interpretation of what custom life on a trike might be. Until then, at least we’ve got Mr. Ruddy’s Steampunk fun, board tracker trike to drink in until the last details been found. It could take quite a while.
For more info on Chop deVille, click on http://www.chopdeville.com/ or check out their Facebook page.