Installment #12 – The Story Of One Fine Rat Bike

Cop bikes were bare bones with black handlebars and wheels. There wasn’t any chrome on these suckers. We stripped ’em down and rode ’em around like bobbers. They were cool except for the frames-too bulky. Well I got this ’68 and wanted to do something different with it so I bought a swapmeet Sportster front end. A buddy had a ruined Knucklehead frame so we cut the rear section off. Rigids were the craze. You didn’t have a chopper unless it was a rigid, so in 1974 I welded the rear end off Knucklehead chassis to this Shovelhead swingarm frame, and then installed the chromed Sportster front end and 21-inch front wheel. I black wrinkled the engine, polished the rocker boxes and stripped the sucker to the ground. I took off the aluminum primaries and ran it open with one of my super custom handmade steel guards. With the juice brake still on the back I made some ridiculous sissy bar that was only about a foot tall. The bike was basically a rat bike with a chromed front end and it still had the black fatbobs with the white panels. I remember smoking a joint one night and painting a star with a skull in the center on each side of the 5-gallon tanks. It was a rat bobber of the finest order.

Well I rode it around for a while when the bottom end started to thump upon acceleration. I took it to a buddy of mine, the late Andy Hansen, from H.E.S. (before he started the company), and he confirmed that it was probably the lower end about to go out. Once I was up to speed it just purred along, so I kept riding it around town without plans for long runs.

A pal of mine, Mick Karr, called me one night and told me that he was going to ride to the Yuma River Run and asked if I wanted to go along. I wanted to peel out with him, but at the time my only running motorcycle had a bad bottom end. So I helped him work on his bike and he split for Yuma. It was about a 450-mile run, and the next day I got a call from him that his motorcycle had broken down and that he really wished I was there to help him with it. Well, you know how it goes. When a brother calls and needs a hand ya gotta hit the road. Another buddy, Dave, who always showed up at the house with a six-pack under his arm (for himself), had this monster Buick sedan. None of us had pickups at the time. I went out to look at this early ’60s cruiser and sized it up. I couldn’t go help a friend without a motorcycle, so I strapped my ’68 to the trunk of this Buick like yuppies put bicycles on the back of their Volvos. It looked ridiculous, but I grabbed Drinkin’ Dave and my girl and we climbed into that beast with a pile of tools and spare parts and headed out of town. We hauled ass for the border of California and Arizona where we stopped for gas. It was a summer night in the desert and warm so I couldn’t stand it any longer and pulled that scoot off the back of the Buick and thought, “What the hell, if it blows up we’ll just put it on the back of the cage and take it home.”

I pulled out of the gas station and took it up to over a 100 and held on. That sonuvabitch flew until I got to Yuma where I pulled into the area where the crew was camped out. I ran it out into the sand until it sunk so far that it wouldn’t budge. I didn’t have to put a kickstand down, just got off her and walked away. We partied the rest of the weekend; fixed Mick’s bike and I rode the thumper home. I ultimately took the engine apart and rebuilt it, but I swear I could have put another 10,000 miles on it without a problem. The crank pin had 1/16 inch groove in it. It was unbelievable.

On the same bike one night we went out partying. Just a regular weekend evening smokin’ pot and having a few drinks. We rode to two or three parties and my girl kept puttin’ away the booze. I’ll never forget riding home with one hand on the bars and the other holding her from falling off. I managed to jam gears and get us into the driveway before I had to grab the clutch and let her go. She went down in the grass. Didn’t hurt her too much.

I’ll throw one more tale at you about that motorcycle. When I got around to rebuilding the engine I tore the bike down and decided it was time for a real chopper that fit my 6’5″ frame. A couple of guys had started stretching downtubes and I was dazzled. That was the way to go for a tall guy, and I cut the down tubes and slipped 4-inch extensions in and heliarc’d the tubes. The monster was a cluster fuck. I had crashed it and replace the fatbobs with a 4-gallon custom Mustang tank. I also cut the stress bar outta the frame. It was all black at this stage. It tracked as straight as an arrow and I rode it for a couple of years like that. I never liked to pack so I set the sissybar up so I could wrap an army blanket around it and bungee cords it on. Then I could sit on the Bates solo and lean back against the sissybar and ride that sucker all day long. It had an 18-over Durfee Girder on it. The only piece of chrome on the bike.

One afternoon while riding around with George Christie, who is the President of the Ventura Chapter of the Hells Angels, we rode out to the pier in Santa Barbara (we weren’t in clubs in those days, just a couple of loners). He rode one of the cleanest 80 flatheads I had ever seen with apes. You could actually ride out on the pier. We hung out awhile and on our way off the pier I pulled a wheelie. Three weeks later I was checkin’ the bike for vibration and I noticed that I had broken the frame just behind the neck. Shortly after that I scraped that frame for a custom unit from D&D Distributors. That’s it, the history of one fine rat bike.

Next issue as a tribute to George, long time friend who is currently waiting trial, I will tell you the mellow story of a Yuma Run George Christie and I went on in the ’70s.