My Two Cents
MY TWO CENTS
Quelling the critics
Neal MOFFETT DOESN'T want to be a chopper television star. He’s not looking for fortune or fame and doesn’t even want to go into the business of building bikes. The sole reason that Moffett built this radical Kawasaki ZRX 1200powered beauty was that no one else had done so and it was exactly what he wanted to ride.
“I don’t want to be the next big thing,” Moffett says. “I just wanted to build the bike, just to do it.”
He didn’t even know how to use many of the tools that would ultimately be necessary to create it. He took T1Gwelding classes, bought an English wheel, taught himself how to use it. It was not easy or quick. “Although things seemed impossible at times,” he says, “it just took time, persistence.. .and money.” Neal went against the usual V-Twin chopper grain and chose the inline-Four ZRex engine because aesthetically it was designed to be seen, it was carbureted and a perfect lump for the 140 ponies he was after. Hot-rod mods were handled by good friend and drag racer/engine builder Steve Rice.
That was the easy part. The two biggest hurdles Moffett had in building the bike were getting power to the rear wheel and hiding the engine’s liquid-cooling system. The bike uses an RC Components pul ley/rotor combination mated to a standard 150-tooth V-Rod belt. “It took me about a year to design the whole drive system,” Moffett relates. Rice helped fabricate it, derived from his own Funnybike.
The front pulley is borrowed from the blower on Moffett’s big-block Chevy boat engine. “My boat’s not running but my bike sure is,” he says with a grin. Final gearing is virtually identical to the stock ZRX’s.
A big task was cooling the engine while keeping the radiator and assorted hardware out of sight. The solution was to conceal an ATV radiator in the space that a big V-Twin’s tranny and oil tank would normally take up.
The handmade exhaust is the bike’s “most impressive feature,” according to Moffett. The H PC-coated 4into-1 system took countless hours to form. The nasty bark from the slash-cut pipe is more Prostock dragbike than chopper-you definitely won’t confuse Neal’s ride with a V-Twin chopper.
A heavily modified RC Components frame was altered to accept the wide ZRX engine while a 10inch-over fenderless fork and Progressive Air Tail shocks handle suspension duties.
RC Components Marshall wheels are wrapped in Avon Venom rubber (250mm' rear). The Custom Cycle Controls handlebar features a Dakota Digital display in the center with internal cables and master cylinders. Modified RC foot and hand controls are used.
Another creative idea was using a huge Kawasaki Vulcan fuel tank (from a junkyard) to not only house gas but modified to conceal most of the bike’s electrics, battery, air-shock compressors and wiring underneath a custom cover. Alex Paul of AP Designs sprayed the silver paint, candy root-beer flames and pinstriping that matches the metallic powdercoating on the engine.
Final touch? Two shiny pennies siliconed to the top of the crankcase, showing critics that he doesn’t need their two cents’ worth.
Blake Conner
