Screw You
SCREW YOU
West Coast Choppers builds a showbike that's also a racebike
MARK HOYER
JESSE JAMES DOESN'T CARE WHAT YOU think. He might care if you think, but what your reaction is to his two-wheeled creations, or his larger-than-life, almost explosive way of being just doesn’t matter. What matters is that there is a reaction, preferably a large one. But even that might be open to debate. This purple-and-chrome jewel is his latest play, the most recent high-profile product to roll out of his West Coast Choppers shop in Long Beach, California. It doesn’t matter if you like it, or even if Camel, the ciggie company that commissioned the bike for its annual promotional Roadhouse Tour, likes it. James’ philosophy was simple: “I started by thinking what would really piss Camel off and get us kicked off this thing, then took it back a notch,” he says.
What he ended up with he jokingly refers to as the “Purple People Eater,” a custom chopper inspired by a photo of Sixties drag racer Leo Payne that James found while leafing through one of the motorcycle books in his personal library. But this bike is more than just an “inspired by” piece of eye-candy: James plans to run the bike at the Bonneville Salt Flats in search of a land-speed record, and maybe drop in on a couple of drag races, too.
“They never told me 1 couldn’t make my own racebike with their money,” he says of his patrons. “I just had to make it look good so they wouldn’t bitch.”
While it’s true Camel didn’t tell him he couldn’t make a racebike, they did have three stipulations. James relates their request: “Don’t put f***, naked chicks or swastikas on it.”
What a bunch of tight-asses, eh?
So it was with a clean mind and visions of racing that James started work. A scan of the Southern California Timing Association’s rulebook is responsible for the dead-man killswitch and Öhlins steering damper, and other elements of the bike were tailored to conform to the non-streamlined Modified-class rules. The chromed seat hump that conceals the battery and other electrics is borderline streamlining according to James, but he says, “If you aren’t cheating at racing, you aren’t trying hard enough.”
I asked him about the notable lack of seat padding, to which he responded,
“I made a wire form of my ass to make sure it would be comfortable.”
The wire form he’s talking about is part of James’s old-world bike-making technique. Every chopper that rolls out of his shop has frame, wheels and bodywork that start as raw material-it’s all flat sheet or straight tubes or billet.
As you would expect, his workshop is a fabricator’s dreamland, with giant English wheels, presses, sheet-metal hammering machines for forming fenders, tanks, frame pieces and other bodywork, plus all manner of torches, welders (heliarc all the way, he says), tubing benders, mills, lathes, you name it. James’ creativity expands to fill his world, with everything in the shop a kind of industrial art. His giant metalworking machines are painted with flames, gates are made to resemble spider webs, giant sculptures of his “West Coast Choppers” signature Maltese cross-cut and welded from diamondplate aluminum-hang from the twostory-high ceilings. The showroom has a bar, pool table, a good number of bikes (including his personal Yamaha YZF-R1 and YZ426F-both with chrome bodywork-as well as a heavily modded 228-horsepower Suzuki Hayabusa), a couple of very trick custom cars and more Tshirts than the Hanes warehouse. It seems like that’s where the dude is making some serious money: clothes. He’s definitely selling a lifestyle, and selling it well.
At the heart of it all, however, are the motorcycles, because if he didn’t make cool bikes, people wouldn’t want to buy the lifestyle.
All the high-profile builds start in James’ brain, from concept to a fairly finished piece, and the Camel bike was no exception. He hammered out the bodywork and seat, contoured and routed the crossover dual exhausts, all of which was tailored to one of West Coast’s El Diablo II raked, Softail-style frames. Once he lays down the overall architecture and roughs in the general assembly of the bike, his right-hand man Bill Dodge takes over to supervise and finish the rest of the build.
Although the two work closely on such projects, how the bike will turn out is often a mystery for Dodge until later in the project.
“When the Magura clip-on bars showed up, Bill’s exact words were, ‘What the f*** are these for?’”
James says. “The guys in the shop never know what’s going on in my head. But I can see the finished prod-
can see product-exactly how it will be-before I even start.”
Having that clear concept at the start allows James and crew to turn out a custom bike at great speed. This motorcycle went from barely finished frame to an unpainted roller in about two weeks, including the custom wheels, fork sliders, billet footpegs and a pile of other parts. “All steel” says James proudly, and you get the idea he’d just as soon leave bikes in this raw state. Anyway, 10 more days and the bike was ready for its Daytona debut, a chromed and painted running piece of moto-sculpture.
If you’ve ever tried to build, paint or chrome anything this quickly, never mind accomplishing all three at once, this is unbelievable work.
“All we had to do was give out a few T-shirts,” Dodge says with a wry smile.
To which James counters, “Yeah, a few hundred!”
Admittedly the paint job isn’t too complicated, but the hand-painted “nose art” illustration on the chromed fuel/oil tank center panel
isn’t just a shoot-it-and-run affair. And getting a chrome guy to turn around a frame in one-day...well, that’s a miracle.
As any proper chopper should, the People Eater runs a lot of rake-40 degrees, 32 of it coming at the steering head, 8 more from the triple-clamps. “Stabilizes the chassis,” says James. “People always say, ‘Oh, you can’t ride those things.’ Yeah, right. This thing’ll do 200 mph.”
Two hundred per is a pretty tall order for an unstreamlined “air-crusher,” but if it doesn’t go that fast on the salt, it probably won’t be the fault of the major motor.
It’s a 126-cubic-inch (2026cc!) S&S, with a 2i/4-inch Super D carb that’s large enough to swallow a baby’s arm-and part of the shoulder. James says the mill is worth 160 horsepower, more than enough to light the giant, 250mmwide rear Avon. Power travels through a Primo belt primary and new Baker six-speed gearbox, then down the right side via chain final drive.
They started the beast after it was loaded in the flat-black West Coast Choppers van following our photo shoot. It boomed and cracked through the drumlike interior, the serpentine dual pipes bellowing out their flared, sweptback tips, hot exhaust blowing loose papers and insulation out the rear doors of the van.
Photographer McNally exclaimed, “Man, that’s like shooting a gun in closet.”
He’s right. It’s a sound much more appropriate for the wide-open spaces of Bonneville and the heat of competition.
Just don’t tell Camel, okay? □
