“I wanted the gas tank to disappear, so you could show the motor off, so we moved the gas tank under the seat,” Steve explained. The oil tank is in the frame, in the front nose of the bike, so Steve and Bandit did a disappearing act on that too. “The bike looks like it shouldn’t really run,” Steve said.

The build took about nine months to complete, most of that due to the fabrication work, which was completed by Jim Battles in Claremore, Oklahoma.

It’s a topless bike with no backbone. “It has a sidebone that comes up to the front and holds the motor in place and stops vibrations,” Steve explained. “Because it has no backbone, we actually built two frames and stacked them on top of each other. You couldn’t really test how strong the bike would be so we thought that if we stacked two frames, put them together and started at the back of the bike, we could grab a cradle strength. We wrapped it all in the middle with what I call running boards, frames going down the side, and that makes the two frames disappear.”

Some of the work was farmed out. The wheels were from wickedimage.com, the custom leather seat was made by Dusty of Oak Hill, Oklahoma and the front end is by American Suspension.

“It’s an inverted Springer. The springs are at the bottom of the bike instead of at the top,” Steve explained. “The motor was made by Revolution Performance. It’s a Evolution 113 with 127 horsepower, so it’s a very fast bike.”

The Topless Chopper won first place in the Kansas City Easy Rider Show in the People’s Choice radical custom chopper division. “It’s an absolute rider- not a show bike,” Steve said, “but more than anything, I like to take it to rallies on the big strips where all the big custom builders are, and show that other people can build them too.”

Steve lives in Tulsa. “I’ve done lots of things in life, but I’m actually building a global online ministry right now. So for me to build a bike like that and have a global online ministry just doesn’t make any sense at all.” No it doesn’t. In fact the only hint of Steve’s occupation is in the chopper’s paint job, which was done by Lil’ Toot Auto Artworks. “The bike’s paint job is called ‘Evilution,’ because if you look really closely at the paint job, you’ll see skulls through all the different eras of time. It’s all of evil through evolution.”

It’s not as evil as this bike though. Not even close.