Sam Burns sends me images several times a week. One time, not long ago he sent me some shots from a builder in Europe. I could never put it all together to create a feature. But just the other day he sent me a serious batch of shots of this Sportster project in an old Amen sprung frame.
He also included just enough crumbs on the path to lead me to a shop and Ryan Woods, the Chief of Chrash at Chopper Chrash http://chopperchrash.bigcartel.com/
Awesome.
Ryan sent me the following info about this project, and bada bing we had a cool feature to share with our readers:
One day I found a pair of Olds Cutlass marker lights and hung them from the back of the frame and that snowballed into the whole Hurst, Olds 442 theme.
Once I made the new taillight buckets and welded them up I decided to cut the original left-side shifter pedal, turn it 45 degrees and weld the Hurst Indy shifter to it with a linkage through the frame connecting it to the trans.
My buddy Ron Harris of Chop Docs Choppers painted everything white like the Hurst Olds 442 and painted Miss Hurst Linda Vaughn on the tank. Once he was done we called in my buddy Pinstripin Mikey to frame and stripe it all out.
Steve from Paughco reached out to me on my Instagram (@chopperchrash) and said they believe Ron Paugh made my springer a billion years ago before the company really took off.
I wanted something other than the typical 21-inch front spool wheel, so I modified a 23-inch x 1.60-inch wheel from a Honda XL250 and slapped that sucker on there.
The headlight was found by scouring eBay UK until I came across the Butlers Saucer Lamp Mark II. I had never seen one before, so I had to have it.
Billy (@speedmillbikes) made a lot of the cover plates, brackets, battery box etc. I’ve still got some tweaking to do with the hydro clutch setup since all parts, including the tamer had to be handmade, milled and whatnot. It took longer than expected but I’m stoked with the final product.
–Ryan Woods
https://www.instagram.com/chopperchrash/ Ryan Woods on Facebook
All creative projects have their hiccups. Ryan whispered, “Hurst so bad.” Among other names he’s called this custom Sportster are the Iron Headache and the Sportsturd. ChopperCrash took some photos at Weems Motor Co. Tampa and Robinson Motorcycle Sales and Service, Daytona Beach. Sam Burns said, “He also gave a shout-out to Mikey Ayers, Pin Stripin by Mikey, for helping with the mounting of that damned springer.”
Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving 2021.
–Bandit
Paughco