Chopped Ducks
CHOPPED DUCKS
Don't cry "fowl" over these stretched Supersports
BRIAN CATTERSON
IT WAS AN UNUSUAL SIGHT, ONE YOU HAD TO SEE TO believe, as the saying goes. There at the Long Beach, California, Cycle World International Motorcycle Show was a pair of high-profile motorcycle designers gathered around a matched set of custom choppers. Thing was, Pierre Terblanche of Ducati and James Parker of RADD (think Yamaha GTS1000 front end) weren't inside the convention center, they were outside in the parking lot, peering into the bed of Mat Zabas' slammed Chevy S-10 pickup.
Why, you ask? Well, truth be told, Parker was just waiting around for the opportunity to show Terblanche his latest idea in single-sided swingarms. But Terblanche was legitimately interested in the two V-Twin-powered machines, not least because they weren’t your run-of-the-grist-mill Harleys.
They were Ducatis.
Perish the thought, you say, what a waste of a perfectly good motor! You could look at it like that. But it’s also distinctly possible that the glass just might be half-full, and that these just might be the coolest choppers ever.
Certainly, they’d gotten Terblanche’s attention. “I quite like what he’s done with them,” the Ducati design chief said of Zabas’ work. “He e-mailed me a photo, and seeing as how I was going to be in California, I asked if I could see them in person.”
Pierre’s last name might as well be Carte Blanche when he builds customs like the trio of SportClassics on display inside the convention center, so many resources does he have at his disposal. And his work is an inspiration to us all. But guys like him get inspired by greasy-fingemailed custom-builders who aren’t constrained by the concerns of mass-proaucnon, rurure or omerwise.
Guys, in other words, like Mat Zabas. A native of Long Island, New York (ah, paisano), Zabas went West in 1990 and started messing around with bikes. He rode Harleys for a while, built a few choppers, got bitten by the drag-racing bug, and then bought a Ducati 900SS that he “rode for a day or two and then took apart.”
He initially considered chopping the stock frame, but when that proved impractical decided to build his own. He set the engine up on blocks at what he perceived to be the right height, started measuring and cutting, and when he was finished he had the basic design for the two bikes shown here.
Zabas entered his original creation in an Easyriders custom bike show in January, 2002, and it got second place in the Spectator Class (think People’s Choice). That success turned into a fledgling business that Zabas calls 13 Choppers
{www. Id choppers.coni).
“I wanted to pick a name that was as unique as the bike,” he says, “so I thought why not a number instead of a word? I’m always swimming in the other direction, so 13 is lucky for me, not unlucky. And it’s weird, but lots of 13s came up while we were building the first bike, like the shift linkage was 13 inches long, stuff like that.”
Unusual for someone with a graphic-arts background, Zabas opted not to have a dedicated logo for his company. “The bikes will always have a ‘13’ on them, but it can be Rockabilly, Gothic, whatever style suits the bike best,” he explains.
On a similar note, he doesn’t want to attach names to his creations. “I’m thinking of using numbers and letters, like 913 SPR for a 900SS Springer,” he says. “Our goal is ‘custom production.’ We’ll build whatever the customer wants: a 750, a 900, a 916...carbureted or fuelinjected.. .whatever.”
The racier-looking of the two bikes shown here is essentially the base model, while the one with the springer front end, coffin tank and Harley wheels is sort of a what-if.
“It’s like this is what we’re building, but this is how crazy you can get,” Zabas explains.
As stated, Zabas designed the steel frame himself, though it’s heavily triangulated like the stock Ducati trellis with the engine solidly mounted via aircraftgrade aluminum heim joints.
“I wanted the frame to be strong yet lightweight,” he says, again revealing the drag racer inside. “Wanting a bike to be light isn’t something Harley guys even think about!”
He built the stretched aluminum swingarm himself, too, and designed it in such a way that it looks like a hardtail when viewed from the side. He also made the aluminum control plates that resemble a chin cowling from the side.
Wherever possible, he retained the original Ducati chassis components: the wheels, brakes, shock, tripleclamps, even the extended forks are stock, just modified internally. The 900SS engine also remains stock, though it breathes through a set of 41mm Mikuni flat-slides and exhales through the stock header pipes connected to a set of Rivera mufflers.
But while the 13 Choppers look like they’re all show, Zabas actually conceived them to go.
“Set that engine where it is, low and forward, and the bike just lunges,” he exclaims. “You can give GSX-Rs a run for their money to the eighth-mile!” As I discovered when I took one of the 13 Choppers for a spin. Surprisingly, from the saddle the bike felt longand-low in more of a dragbike sense than a chopper one, in spite of your feet being out front leading the way. Hanging U-turns is a bitch, no doubt about it, but dump the clutch and take off in a straight line and the thing accelerates hard! Always accompanied by an exhaust note that just seems wrong for a chopper, but which sounds great nonetheless. The guys back at the office said they could hear me getting on it from a mile away!
So, the 13 Choppers aren’t a waste of perfectly good motors. But why was Terblanche interested in them?
Is Ducati considering getting into the chopper business?
Well, no, not exactly, he says, before admitting that the company is considering what to do with the Monster line. No wonder he spent so much time at the Honda booth looking at Jesse James’ VTX café-racer... U
