Matt bought us a rolling ( just about) chassis that had seen better day, basically it consisted of a toptubed and hardtailed B.S.A A 10 frame, wheels, springer forks and a ratty sporty tank.

Matt wanted us to build it into a road going chopper on a very tight budget. after having a bit of a chat we decided that due to the style of the frame, this bike was never going to look like one of our 'built from scratch Choppers' and the only way to go was to do it in a retro style.

I was really looking forward to this as these were the kind of bikes i used to see hooning around my home town when I was a kid, there were no 250 section rear tyres, no stretched off the shelf tanks then, this bike would have been the mustard back then.

were to begin?

although it would have been great to put an old A10 lump back in the frame, matt's budget just didn't stretch to it so instead we pressed another xs 650 motor into service.

I cut all the unnecessary bracketry off the frame and Neil mounted the motor up and bent me a sissy bar with a good sharp point on it and also mounted the funky little maltese cross rear light., I mounted a 6" flat rear guard up and cut up the original oil tank, made a door on it and now it houses all the electrics.

I used a set of forwards that we had lying around and modified them to fit on the original mounts.

The seat was off one of my old choppers and the pillion pad is an off the shelf item.

I put some rear pegs up nice and high on the frame rails, where all rear pegs should be ( although everyone tells me how uncomfortable thay are, they look good up there......)

Notorious Nik made a battery tray and a neat little strap to hold the battery in,

Me and Neil had a fit of inspiration one day and we made the extremely long pipes with fishtails on the end ( it was going to have drag pipes originally)

I made all the cables for the 18" apes and then it was ready to be dissassembled for paint.

the tank went off to Nik 'the fluffer' Reeves who did a very simple but effective flame job over high gloss black. I painted the frame and engine in house and all the chrome was done via Boneshakers, once again Stoner Pete took care of all the polishing.

The whole bike went back together with stainless fasteners and Notorious wired the bike up from scratch wih no problems at all, i re jetted the carbs and it fired up straight away.

So there you have it a retro chopper built on a real small budget, not the kind of bike we'd usually build but none the less a cool little chopper that reminds me of sitting on the green in the sunshine watching the local club fly past, huge apes, monstrous sissy bars and wishing I was old enought to own one of their bikes.....