The Build

by Paul Teutul Jr

  We chose to place Sacrifice and Loyalty on the right side, but on a red, white, and blue shield because the military shields us as a country. Because Honor is on the gas tank, it stands out the most.

  We placed GEICO’s familiar green gecko and the company’s special phone number for military customers on the primary cover. Up top, the bike had a beefy, tapered set of handlebars and a leather-tooled seat designed to be as comfortable as a pricey pair of cowboy boots.

  For the final touch, we reached into our bag of tricks from the Cadillac Bike and, to represent our military’s upright strength, built the Armed Forces Bike to park on its frame, vertically, instead of at an angle.

  It was a huge honor to be able to pay respect to the men and women of our armed forces. Patriotic themes are great to work with, but it’s also easy for them to wind up looking gimmicky. I thought the Armed Forces Bike came out rich and respectable, and it’s my favorite military-themed bike we’ve built. GEICO bought the bike to be a traveling tribute, and it continues to tour the country and bring attention to our armed forces.

  I shared in chapter 4 how I designed the Jet Bike, one of my earliest bikes, as a tribute to my maternal grandfather, Paul Leonardo. A fighter jet seemed like the ideal tribute to a World War II gunner.

  I believe that a lot of my gifting came from my grandfather because he was a gifted, well-rounded man. Creative and a great troubleshooter, he could build practically anything he wanted, although he didn’t have the opportunity to build flashy motorcycles. I considered him the hardest-working man on the planet. I didn’t fully appreciate his skill set when I was younger, but I think a lot of my talents transferred from him to me.

  We built the Jet Bike in only four weeks. We aimed for a fast, sleek bike and started by giving the gas tank a cockpit look and painting my grandfather’s name on top of it. We put winged handlebars on with an old-school bombsight in between them. The front wheel was three jet wings. We added bullets on the down tube, missiles underneath the down tube, and Gatling guns beneath the motor. We also created a vintage bomb oil tank under the seat.

  The back fender featured tail fins. Off the back, we added a wheelie bar. I’ve been asked often why we included a wheelie bar. My answer: Why not include a wheelie bar?

  We finished off the build with a silvery, riveted paint job and 7 on the back because of that number’s significance to me.

  It’s neat to look back at the Jet Bike. The bike was pretty heavy on theme considering it was built at the time I was developing the idea of the modern theme for custom motorcycles. Some critics might say it’s a little prop heavy. There was a lot going on with the bike, but that was by design.

  When I evaluate the Jet Bike now, I can tell that it was one of my early bikes. Technological advances that have come along since have improved my abilities, so it’s not a complicated bike by current standards. But all in all, the bike held its lines well and they closed out nicely. A decade and a half later, it’s still a cool bike and an important one in my life because of the connection to my grandfather.

  The Comanche Bike marked the beginning of OCC opportunities that no other builders had.

  The Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche helicopter was an unbelievable machine. Here is a brief history: the RAH-66 Comanche was an armed reconnaissance helicopter designed to be super stealthy. We were asked to create a Comanche-inspired bike in 2003, during American Chopper’s first season.

  The helicopter’s stealth features allowed us to design a bike that looked drastically different from our other bikes. The reception for the finished bike was amazing, and the Comanche die-cast model turned out to be one of our most popular.

  The bike’s most obvious feature was the angular designs mimicking the stealthy features of the helicopter. The tank represented the front of the helicopter, including its two identical cockpits. It was a tall tank, and to keep the stealthy look, we placed the handlebars underneath the triple trees instead of on top as customary.

  Meeting fans, signing autographs

  The helicopter carried its weapons internally, so we built hydraulic-powered missile flaps on each side of the bike that opened to place missiles into firing position. For the exhaust system, we used a set of hooker headers—basically a pipe inside a pipe—that looked like two machine gun barrels. We mounted the gun underneath the motor, which helped hide the bike’s voltage regulator. The rear fender was really cool because we made it look like the helicopter’s distinctive enclosed fantail rotor. The end product was a heavy-duty bike that I thought captured the angular design of the helicopter.

  Because of the handlebars, the Comanche Bike’s riding position was actually fairly awkward. You have to really lean over to ride a setup that tall, and riding the Comanche Bike made the rider part of the angular stealth effect. That forward lean and being stretched out also created the sense of flight when riding the bike.

  The unveil was one of our most memorable—and not all for good reasons.

  We hauled the bike to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for the Bike Week there. But when Vinnie tried to start the bike the night before the unveil, oil came pouring out of the engine. Joe Malloy from H&L Motors, who built the motor, flew down the next morning with replacement parts.

  The unveil took place at a nightclub, Club Kryptonite, and I was supposed to helicopter in with Vinnie while my father and Mikey arrived in a limo. As we approached for the landing, Vinnie looked down to the club’s parking lot and couldn’t see the Comanche Bike. Joe and the crew weren’t able to get the bike started until literally within a minute of when we landed. Then they pushed the bike out of the trailer and into the parking lot just in time for me to ride.

  I can’t describe how relieved I was when I got on the bike and it started up.

  Like most unveils, that one was set up for us and we didn’t have a chance to get a good lay of the land ahead of time. I was told to drive the Comanche Bike up a long ramp and onto a small platform. I had to get on the gas to make it up the ramp; then I had to stop quickly on the platform, which was covered in mesh for the event’s camo theme. When I hit the brake, the bike slid on the mesh and stopped with the front tire on the very edge of the stage. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I was an inch from going off the platform.

  So we were within a minute of the bike not starting, then within an inch of the bike crashing to the ground.

  After the unveil, we took the bike to Grissom Air Force Base in Indiana to film ride shots for the show. I rode the bike down the runway several times at up to sixty miles per hour. A Comanche helicopter followed me, flew above me, and flew alongside me.

  What a cool bike and experience.

  Our show’s popularity allowed us the honor of hosting kids from all over the country through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Because of that, the Make-A-Wish Bike remains a special one for me.

  The foundation grants the wishes of kids diagnosed with life-threatening medical conditions, and we were thrilled to be in a position to help make kids’ wishes come true with a visit to our shop. It was humbling to think that a kid who’d been told what has to be the worst news imaginable would make coming to our shop his or her one wish.

  In 2005, my father, Mikey, and I flew out to Anaheim, California, to receive the Make-A-Wish Chris Greicius Celebrity Award for our work in fulfilling wishes. We had about fifty Make-A-Wish kids coming to see us a couple of weeks later for a Christmas party, and we wanted to build them a bike for a special Christmas episode of the show.

  I decided to make the shooting star from Make-A-Wish’s logo the centerpiece of the theme, and from there, Vinnie and Rick Petko had a lot of input on the creative. We wanted big three-dimensional chrome stars on each side of the tank and cartoonish shooting stars in different spots on the bike. We were careful to make sure the stars didn’t have sharp edges so kids would be safe around the bike.

  Early in the creative process, we opted for a large, very wide tank because we wanted a lot of color painted onto the bike. We a
lso picked a wide back tire so we could have a wide back fender to add even more color.

  I wanted a bright blue powder coat because blue is Make-A-Wish’s main color and the foundation makes kids’ lives brighter. Then we would add light accents with the shooting stars in white. Overall, I wanted a paint job that would be fun for the kids.

  Nub painted the bike, and while he was working on it at his shop, he came up with a genius idea: he brought in young kids from the area, put water-based paint on their hands, and had them leave hand imprints in different colors on the big tank and rear fender. Then he designed his paint job around the handprints.

  When Nub brought the completed tank and fenders to our shop, I immediately loved the handprints because they made the bike stand out as a kids’ bike.

  We added LED lights to add even more brightness to the bike.

  During the build, my father, Mikey, Steve Moreau from OCC, and I went shopping at FAO Schwarz for Christmas presents for each of the kids.

  When the kids came to our shop, we unveiled the bike for them—they loved it—and gave them their gifts. The film crew captured some of the tender moments from the day, and they turned it into a heartwarming special that aired six days before Christmas in 2005.

  In addition to giving the kids a fun day, we were able to use our platform to showcase Make-A-Wish through the special episode. I’m a big fan of the foundation. I believe I speak for everyone in the shop at that time when I say that the children’s charities were king. Unfortunately, we had to be selective, because there were so many worthwhile causes that contacted us. It would have been impossible to get involved with all of them. But we felt strongly about partnering with the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

  We had numerous visits from Make-A-Wish kids that were not part of the show, and each of the visits impacted all of us emotionally. It was heartbreaking to learn of the types of illnesses the kids had. Obviously, spending time with the kids made us feel compassion for them and their families. They were dealing with circumstances that none of us wanted to experience. At the same time, it was overwhelmingly humbling to think that the one wish of these kids was to come see our bikes and spend time with us in our shop.

  Gas tanks are critical

  During Make-A-Wish visits, we’d ask for updates on kids that had stood out to us on previous visits. Sometimes we received the good news that a kid’s health had improved. Other times, the news was bad.

  In those cases, I tried to remember the kids’ wide eyes and bright faces while inside our shop. I hoped that in the brief time we spent with them, we helped give them a reason to smile. I know those kids sure put a lot of smiles on our faces.

  Building the New York Giants tribute bike in 2008 was a dream project. The Giants meant so much to me growing up, and long before I started building bikes, I would have jumped at an opportunity to have any affiliation with the Giants. Then when the Giants upset the undefeated New England Patriots 17–14 in Super Bowl XLII—the greatest Super Bowl ever, in my biased opinion—designing a Giants bike seemed a natural project to undertake.

  This bike was probably the easiest theme bike I’ve worked on because of my passion for the Giants. We had built a bike for the New York Jets in 2004 and one for the Yankees the following year, but the Giants were my team!

  I’d followed the Giants so closely for so long that there wasn’t much research to do. But I did some anyway because my father, Mikey, and I were invited to tour Giants Stadium with offensive tackle David Diehl. I had been to the stadium several times, but that was my first behind-the-scenes look. One of the highlights was going into the locker room with David and seeing the names above the players’ lockers with their helmets hanging inside.

  The Giants have had two widely recognized helmet logos. They wore the white lowercase ny from 1961–74. After a short-lived uppercase version of that logo, the franchise switched to a bold, all-caps, italicized GIANTS from 1976–99. Then they went to an updated version of the lowercase ny with red trim.

  We included both the ny and GIANTS logos on the bike.

  My favorite feature was the tank that Rick Petko built, with the ny helmet on the front end, complete with a face mask. We also used ny on the inlaid front wheel. We placed the all-caps GIANTS logo on the air cleaner.

  Probably my second-favorite feature was the back wheel. We opted for a single-sided swing arm that would leave one side of the wheel completely open. On the open side, we placed a large ny logo on the center plate that served as a floater. Back in the day, we would sometimes run spinners that, when the bike stopped, would keep spinning as though the wheel was in motion. On this bike, we weighted the bottom of the center plate so that even when the bike was moving, the ny logo remained upright. That was a pretty cool effect.

  Also on the back, we made the struts in the shape of a horizontal yellow goalpost that held up the rear fender. We added a red streamer at the top of the two uprights to simulate the little flags on NFL goalposts that indicate wind direction. It’s always fun to watch how strongly fans react to little details, such as the red streamers.

  Up front, the headlight was a half football.

  Because we designed the Giants Bike to be a show bike, we didn’t have to build it to be street legal. That gave us some fun freedom on the exhaust. Rick came up with an exhaust system different from anything we had previously made, with twists and turns in the pipes.

  We had a firm deadline to meet because we had decided to unveil the Giants Bike on the final day of our three-day grand opening for OCC’s new world headquarters. And, unfortunately, we did encounter two problems.

  The first problem was with the commemorative plaque I’d designed. I built the handlebars with bends and a reverse angle in front to create a spot for a chrome plate that would read 2007 WORLD CHAMPIONS. (We couldn’t make it read Super Bowl Champions for trademark reasons.) When the chrome pieces came back from the chrome shop, the plaque was missing. It turned out that piece got lost during the shipping, so the chrome shop never received it.

  There wasn’t time to get that piece done in chrome, so at almost the last minute, we had to come up with a plaque that we could create and paint. I was bummed about not getting the plaque in chrome, but our plan B turned out nice because the color really made that plaque pop off the handlebars. Perhaps the lost shipment was a blessing in disguise.

  The second problem involved the painting of the tank and fenders. We painted the frame red ourselves. But we gave Nub the wrong color blue for the tank and fenders, and when they came back to us, the paint didn’t match the blue on the Giants’ helmets. Ralph Estrada in our shop had to jump in and rescue us on that one, and he did an awesome job.

  For the unveil, we invited Giants players Diehl, Michael Strahan, Rich Seubert, and Shaun O’Hara—and former player Mark Bavaro, my all-time favorite Giant. They all loved the bike when I drove it in, and we had a huge crowd there for the grand opening that included a lot of Giants fans.

  We kept the bike to display at OCC, and I later built a similar bike for Strahan to auction off for his charity.

  The Giants Bike is straightforward and, like I said, perhaps the easiest theme bike I’ve been involved with. But for obvious reasons, it’s one of my favorites.

  Maybe if the Giants can win another Super Bowl…

  This bike is almost Black Widow-ish from the standpoint of creative freedom.

  In 2010, Sean Downes, the COO of Universal Property and Casualty Insurance Company, wanted a bike built for his company during the first season of Senior vs. Junior. Being a smart businessman, he visited Orange County Choppers and PJD. He and I hit it off right away, and he chose Paul Jr. Designs for the build.

  Sean liked a bike I had previously built that had a ghosted—or transparent—tank, so I knew that would be a good feature to include. The tank turned out to be the coolest part of the bike.

  “Universal Property and Casual Insurance Company” is a mouthful. We were able to put the name on the sides of the tank, but it had to be i
n small letters. We needed something more prominent to represent the company.

  The company’s logo included a red elephant and a smaller globe. We had built the GEICO bike with its signature green gecko, so we had experience with displaying a distinctive mascot. Universal Property’s red elephant added to the interesting aspect of this bike’s creative. We put the logo, with the elephant and globe, low on the bike, on the primary drive cover. The logo’s blue and green contrasted nicely with the rest of the bike.

  To go with the elephant, we created tusks for the wheels.

  I absolutely loved the color scheme of three different shades of red. Going with a straight color looks nice in some cases, but for this bike, we wanted it to be over the top, and the three reds with the silver leaf striping gave the bike dimension.

  Handlebars are difficult to make original, but we came up with a new look for this bike, and the handlebars flowed out nicely with the rest of the bike. The oil tank sat out in front, and at the back, the exhaust had an oval slash effect. The air cleaner matched the aesthetic of the bike. The seat was a drop seat, which gave the bike extra-nice lines. We added trim pieces on top of the fenders, which, to me, reflected the work of art this bike became.

  The ghosted tank clearly was the centerpiece and usually the first thing people talked about when they saw the bike. (We hid the actual tank in a scoop at the bottom of the bike.) The entire bike had an arching flow that complemented the arching flow of the gas tank.