A little background on Sic Chops is in order and Scott not only makes exotically wild custom motorcycles, but also delves in custom cars and hot rods. His ’50 Buick two-door pictured on his website just is the coolest, re-worked Buick ever with only a basic chopped silhouette, some Buick grille teeth and the legendary Buick VentiPorts as distinguishing features. There’s a slew of other extremely nice custom cars, but that just hit me. Taking it top another notch on the variety of stuff he offers, Scott makes some of the coolest kid’s strollers ever like his ’60 Caddy convertible that I actually would have loved being pushed around in when I was just a tyke and maybe still would today if somebody wouldn’t be too embarrassed pushing my fat ass around. Anyway, I’m just throwing this in to show the wide scope of what’s going on in his imagination.

Getting back to his Nitemare bike, Scott built around a big air-cooled V-twin engine, but not your typical Harley, S&S, etc. architecture. Scott chose a Yamaha (or as it’s now known as “Star Motorcycles” for some stupid re-branding reason) 1602cc Road Star air-cooled engine that is about as close to a Harley in spirit than any other metric V-twin. The cylinder split is 48-degrees instead of the traditional 45-degrees (what’s three-degrees between friends?) and features hydraulics pushrods just like Milwaukee’s finest for a low cylinder height compared to an OHC Victory or whatever. Power is delivered like a Harley with gobs of low-speed torque and a similar power band so the actual riding experience would be Harley-familiar. With all the detail work Scott did, I’d honestly be surprised if the average H-D guy (no, not you true techno-guys) could tell the difference in looks or sound without being told that it ain’t a Harley.

Where Scott took a leap, a giant leap, and then another giant leap was what he surrounded this engine in. His one-off frame features a radical 54-degree rake and instead of just going the easy route and making it a show-bike hard tail, he built a rear suspension too. The American Suspension Air Ride, front and rear, eliminates having to put a kickstand on it and if that was the main intention, that sure was a lot of work to get around welding on a kickstand. I’m sure it wasn’t, though, as any bike that just parks itself on the ground is always shocking to me at least. And if you haven’t noticed by now, this dedicated show bike is one long, really long beast. Scott doesn’t give any figures on the stretch, he just says, “Long” and I think that describes it in a nutshell, a very long nutshell.

Keeping things in proportion sorta is the giant 26” one-off front wheel adjusting the vertical proportions with a gigundously fat 330 tire out back doing its horizontal thing. Scott’s choice of copper plating the wheels just adds bling to the bling and increases the bling factor to, well I don’t know how to factor that, but it’s sure slightly beyond-beyond. And if that wasn’t enough, the wheels are brakeless to unencumberedly show off all their blindness, but doesn’t mean the bike is brakeless. Scott incorporated a sprotor-style chain brake that I doubt would win any stopping contests, but does help win show contests and that’s what this bike is for anyway. This ain’t no Road King so don’t get all huffy about this setup.

Where he took it over the top, so to speak, really over the top, are details like the through-the-tank ram intake that extends past the handlebars that just adds another dimension to the wild-child style along with the similar arching copper-tubing headlight that starts at the bottom of the down tube and continues on through the American Suspension forks until finally gracefully hovering over the front fender. Nutty-cool stuff. Or, the header-wrapped exhaust that start out somewhat normally until they end up traveling underneath the seat into a common (that’s just a term, nothing’s common on this bike) chamber and finally exiting out the ducktail portion of the rear fender between the taillight and the plate holder.

No whack-job paint scheme was needed to make this bike stand out and Scott’s choice of gloss black with copper accents lets the lines and the bike speak for itself. Whether you like or appreciate or hate this bike, you have to appreciate Scott’s imagination, skill, and balls to come up with something so radical that you have to look at it even if you think it was the worst or silliest thing ever compared to yur Road King. Hey, it’s a show bike and the key word here is “show” not cross-country bike or back road bike or whatever.

Now that you’ve seen this extremely extreme example of Scott’s Insane Chops, be sure to check out tomorrow’s article for a totally different take from the fertile mind of Scott Laitinen. In the meantime, you can check out his website at www.sicschops.com for all his work and be sure to check out those crazy kid strollers too.