Actually, there’s an interesting story behind all of this as Terry is not only well known for his wild American V-twin customs, including our recently featured radical Buell café-style bit of brutality. This Honda chop was built as a tribute bike to an old friend of Terry’s who has passed on to the perfect riding roads of the afterlife. According to Terry, “This bike and build is dedicated to Speed Gonzales who built Honda 750 choppers during the ‘70s and rode them all over this country. He was a close friend of mine and in every moment of this build.”

 

   What makes this build even a bit more unusual to me is that Terry didn’t use the original SOHC 750cc Honda engine you’d typically expect, but the later model (1979 to be exact) DHOC 750 engine which probably bothers Honda chopper purists. I’m sure there are lots of details on this more visually complex engine that makes them cringe. Man, this bike could upset a lot of single-minded people and that’s okay by me. Variety is the spice of life and if you don’t like variety, even in small or occasional amounts, you’ve already achieved nirvana and anything else is going to bore you to death. For the rest of you, let’s get to breaking down this clean and interesting build.

 

   This was not the typical Honda chopper build of the ‘70s that I remember seeing everywhere with 12”-over Forking by Frank fork tubes, Z-bars, a king and queen seat, sissy bar,  slightly fatter rear tire, and some sort of hideous paintjob. Nope, this bike would have been the best Honda chopper ever built in the ‘70s if it could somehow go back in time. Terry chucked the Honda frame and started fresh with his own design and fabricated chassis that owed nothing to the original. The Envy Cycle rigid wishbone frame features a big five-inch stretch and a 40-degree rake. The engine now sits so out in the open it’s shocking. No, you can’t miss this four-cylinder engine even if you wanted to, but I gotta think that it’s got to be amazingly easy to work on. I really couldn’t see much that wasn’t as accessible like an engine on a bench is. I don’t know if that was intended, but it sure is a nice end result.

 

   Hanging off that steering head is a fork that’s just different enough to qualify as not owing much to anybody else, another Envy ground-up piece built from cromoly-tubing and a single nitrogen shock. Sweet Jeebers, you could spend quite a bit of time just checking out the construction and operation of that piece alone. Well done sir. Poking straight out from the fork’s top is a handlebar that might be described as a combo curved Z-bar/clip-on setup that looks like it was part of the fork design from the get-go and could have even been the first thing built before they worked their way down. Probably not, but if Terry told me that’s how it came about I wouldn’t doubt it.

 

  The Envy Glory Ole wheels play a big part in this build as there’s lots of room to show them off. They’re pretty damn busy in design with five spokes with holes, black and aluminum finishes, and lots of mechanical nubbins running around the rims, but they really add a bit of mechanical design interest that stands out on their own without overpowering the basic design. Gotta look great in a slow roll.

 

  Speaking of a slow roll, that freshened-up and intricately-mechanical detailed 750cc mill would look great in that slow roll too. Terry stepped out a bit and replaced the rack of stock quad carbs with a coupla 34mm Mikunis topped by K&N filter pods each feeding two cylinders through beautifully-fabricated one-into two manifolds. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the four-into-two exhaust system with wheel-matching “oles” on the heat shields is courtesy of a company you probably already are familiar with for their H-D-style exhausts, Street Walker Exhausts. What you probably didn’t know is that Terry owns Street Walker so it was a pretty convenient and commercially smart thing to have them whip up a set for this bike. I do like the way he ran the left-side through the frame behind the transmission and made sure the oil filter housing up front stayed even more accessible than stock.

 

   With little final details like, oh, making a tank, Terry took the time to add a neat touch to the cap which I assume is some kind of breather or just a cool piece that has no necessary use except for being what it is. I’m going with the breather, though, but I’m a-guessing. Terry layed down the red basecoat, black scallops, and graphics while Tony Perez of Tonys Design & Art did the pinstriping. There are just enough scallops and pinstriping going on to declare this black and red paintjob a total success with a touch of old and the cleanliness of new.

 

  A seat shock goes a long way to making a rigid a real rider and I’m always shocked (so to speak) at how well they work. On paper, I’d never believe it would be much different or better than springs, but they make a rigid rideable. Terry whipped up a pretty beefy single-shock one here and then had Mike Veselik cover it in leather in one of the prettiest coverings I think I’ve ever, ever seen. The colors are just perfect to me and unfortunately I could never ride on that seat anymore than I would sit on a freshly painted Perewitz tank. I would frame it and hang it on a white wall in a heartbeat, though.

 

   So yeah, it’s a Honda and I hope you’ve gotten over it by now. I know of two other people besides me that definitely would give this bikes a big thumbs up and that, of course, would be Terry and the other would be his late friend, Speed Gonzales.

 

   For more information on Terry’s work, please visit www.envycyclecreations.com and if you just need a new exhaust, check out www.streetwalkerexhaust.com.