Chopper Hostel

There was a time when the name Latowski formed images of a well-equipped road agent of a bike, ready for battle with the long miles at a drop of the preverbal hat. A bike that was often seen on both coasts or at a campsite somewhere in between the two. I rode it and wrote all about it and now that version of the Latowski is gone, morphed into a chopped long bike crankin’ the local twisties and parked back at home damn near every night. Where did it all go wrong?

Well, it didn’t although I’ve listened to more than one fuckstick tell me I ruined the bike by changin’ it up only to see them leave on their stock assed bagger. I never once regretted turnin’ the bike from an adventure worthy long mile brawler to a hardtailed 24″ over ridiculously stanced chopper. There was never really any sudden change from my perspective, it was just a natural progression to a bike that reflected the riding that I’m doing now.

There was a time when I spent a lot of time bounchin’ around the map finding adventures to write about. There were a lot of miles passin’ under the pegs and much of that was highway miles. I always prefer to take the secondary path but inevitably I’d find myself just wanting to cover miles as fast as an ol’ Shovel could take me. Come to find out, you can get an ol’ Shovelhead to do very unShovelly things if you throw enough parts and money into it.

For years, it was nothin’ but me and the bike. It seems that after years and years blowin’ up the same bike like it was my job, which it was, I eventually built a bike that did everything I needed it to do.

It was my Starship Enterprise on those long open highways, and it handled great even with those big ol’ bags mounted high and out of the way. Those things were like a pair of black holes. You could keep throwing shit in ’em, press the lids down , do a few hundred miles and things would settle and there would be room for more junk. When I went to remove them, they’d weigh 70lbs a piece. I emptied one of those bags after a trip and found two slices of pizza about halfway down. I have no idea how they got there. Fuckin’ gross.

By the time the smoke had cleared, and I found my ass in the sticks the Latowski was, once again, on the worn out side of its regular ride and repair cycle of life. Everything need a little work, but it was the kind of ‘little work’ that would get real dangerous real fast if not addressed soon.

The chassis was worn out and the swingarm needed constant attention or it would get sloppy on the pivot bolt. I had been using shims to keep it from catfishin’ when I hit the throttle because the frame was worn to the point it couldn’t hold preload on the swing arm bearings without them.

I had started to gather parts for a 24″ over hard tailed chopper and was lookin’ forward to usin’ a spare Shovel I had at the time for that chassis. The chassis was something I am really proud of. I didn’t build any of the components, but I did the math, figured out the right geometry and over all design. Now I have a chopper with a 24″ over springer you can turn lock to lock with 2 fingers, even in a parking lot.

The numbers on the chassis go as follows. It’s a Jeremy Cupp modified Flyrite frame. It’s 10″ up 2″ out with a 45-degree rake. The front end is also at 45 degrees with 9.5″ of trail. The key to having a light frontend is the neck rise. The higher the neck rise the more the frame wants to flop that front end over. This becomes a real problem over 2″ of rise, mine has 1″…power steering.

The thing that put all this nonsense into motion was that ridiculous front end. I have a buddy Jay Kroll (Jay #1) that I still keep in contact with back in Arizona. We had been horse trading back and forth for years. He sent me a picture of some front ends he had for this project. This was before I even had the frame, and looming in the background was this 24″ over springer with original inline crowns!

My cock suddenly found the compensation it needed, the world became brighter, babies stopped crying, and sandwiches were being made around the globe, it was a wonderful moment, I was in love and Jay was ready to deal. Fuckin’ parts pimp!

There’s always a but, so here it is. It was perfect BUT it must have been layin’ in a basement with a bad water heater because the entire back of the radius rods that made up the rear legs were completely rusted away…completely!

There was still some really high grade early 70’s Browns plating holding the whole thing together. This stuff was such a bright chrome it was almost blue, and it was ‘playing card’ thick. Really over the top show quality shit. So, the rear legs were made up of that chrome and nothing else. The rear legs were just chrome piñatas full of rust. Jay shook the rear legs before he sent it, and we probably saved $50 in shipping.

First thing I had to do was find a set of Model T radius rods to replace the rusted-out ones. Radius rods are the long-tapered steel shafts that connect the buggy spring front ends to the chassis to stabilize it.

At full length they measure at around 36″. That is exactly the length needed to match the rear legs to the solid front legs. I made a quick post on social media, and I had an original unmolested set that were about to be molested.

Just when you think it’s safe, another Jay (Jay Huffman) enters the chat. Jason number 2 is a welder/fabricator that spends his weekdays making stock car chassis. He knows his shit. He’s a family friend back in Jersey and when I was there, I dropped all the pieces with Jay while I moved to West Virginia.

He took it upon himself to get the front end squared away when he had time. We had taken the rear legs apart to line it all up and we were reminded that the ’60’s were powered by cheap bathtub crank and everything’s ‘safe enough’ when you’re dodgin’ shadow people.

When we pulled what was left of the rear legs from the crowns there was one of the original legs had been just smashed into the radius rod and the other side was just cut off with only butt welds to hold the rear legs to the crowns! Shadow people…I’m tellin’ ya.

Jay #2 (Jason Huffman) started by sleeving the radius rods with thick wall 3/4″ DOM tubing that attached the rocker to the lower leg and slip into the crown and plug welded. He finish welded them and I’ve been runnin’ them for years at this point with no issues.

I had to design the rockers so the math would make sence. The wheel offset from the the angle of the neck stem will ‘fool’ your front end to thinkin’ it should have resionable trail…which it does. this is 24″ over on a 45 degree rake with 6″ of wheel offset makes my trail 9.5″. It seems perfect.

Enter Jason #3 (Jay Tardiff). He machined up the 6″ offset rockers as well as the axle, concave spacers and cool assed castellated nuts. I’m the proudest of the fact that the rockers don’t look like dicks. It’s a dilemma that I didn’t know existed, but I do now. You won’t know the trouble until you’ve tried it and if you have you know I’m right.

There is a point I think is important. I had a tiny apartment in this fuckin’ hippy town 10 or so miles away from here. It’s full of gold card hippies, leftists and armpit hair. They and I weren’t a good fit so I got rid of my couch and built a chopper. I was just smokin’ weed and watchin’ movies but instead of sitting on my couch I sat on this mock-up chopper I was building.

I planned on smoking a lot of weed and riding the bike around and I hated the idea of not getting the seating or the stance correct so this just seemed like the best idea. I was right to do the mockup first and take those measurements into metal form in the next step.

I had the complete front end and the stock (Flyrite) frame sittin’ on a couple of 4×4’s in my living room. I dummied the 10″ up and 2″ out with broomsticks and a camera tripod and then I made it comfortable…really, really comfortable.

I realized the other day that I’m an abnormally tall guy and I like to spread out . No need for a narrow bike here, there ain’t no lanes to split. So, I built the most comfortable riding position for a 6’4″ (and dropping) guy with very specific needs if I wanna keep walking. I have a famously shitty back and if I ride in the proper BMW approved upright attitude, I wouldn’t be able to walk after a few miles on a hardtail.

However, to me bein’ cool on a chopper is bein’ laid back, heals forward and your arms up in the air. If I take this position to its logical next step that lays me back far enough that I’m actually putting pressure on my lower back instead of pounding my spine by riding ‘correctly’. It works for me, looks cool as fuck and my beard blows in the right direction so I’ll call it a win. Research and development assisted but Orion’s Kush and Star Trek reruns.

With the addition of a set of wheels I was ready to address the powertrain. I had a mystery FLT Shovelhead motor layin’ around for some reason. It’ supposedly had new pistons and rings but the base gaskets were just garbage paper junk, made in some third world sweatshop. Obviously, somebody didn’t give a fuck.

I shoved a bore scope into the cylinders, and everything was clean and apparently rebuilt but the cylinders showed no sign of cross hatching. I guess they threw a set of pistons and rings in it and never even broke the glaze on the cylinder walls. Cool!

I knew the motor didn’t have a long life left in its top end, but I figured it would get me around until I figured out how to ride this thing. Did I mention I had never spent any real time on a hardtail and never ridden anything looooooong. I was doin’ all this shit not ever thinking how hard it could be to ride. Whatever girly man.

With that third world motor dumped in the frame I filled the rest of the holes with a Softail primary and five speed transmission. It lined right up; I can use the good starter, and 5 speed transmissions are cheap and plentiful. Granade your transmission? Just get another one for a couple of hundred. I had a Baker 6 in a 4 but I couldn’t afford to rebuild it when it needed and to be honest, I never used 6th gear. A five speed with a cheap belt drive and I was on the road.

I got it running at BMR 9 and it was so easy to ride that I had half the campground riding it around the fields, aside from a few stalls, nobody had a problem. It handles like a 9 1/2′ bike but it doesn’t fight you. Once you lay WAY back in the saddle and just let your arms hang off the bars the bike’s on autopilot and it’ll put you wherever you need to be.

I had every intension of this becoming a separate bike and the Latowski was still its own entity. Separate motor, trans and numbers. These two paths were never meant to intersect but…I smoked that motor comin’ back from Morgantown clockin’ around 80. It made it home, but the oil exited stage left. It ran fine but needed rings, I sold it the next day.

My glazy eyes were now tightly focused on the Latowskis hot rod, stroker motor to get me through the rest of the season. I had a problem with that. I knew if I put that motor that I love so much into that chassis that I have grown to love as much as i do, that bike would become the Latowski and that chapter of our life together would be closed.

I got over it. Once I felt that stroker churning up the shit and that long ass springer getting light under power any sentimentalism turned into carbon monoxide and got spit out as noise, praise be!

I was hooked man. Whatever makes the Latowski the Latowski lives in that motor. Move that from chassis to chassis and I’ll always know what configuration my old friend is. Even if it appears to be a completely different bike.

The two major configurations of the Latowski are by far the swing arm, magazine days bike and the current raked out hot rod trippin’ through the mountains.

I was asked to write up a comparison of the two configurations and I gave it days trying to figure out what I was comparing. The first version of the bike was a swingarm four speed frame with Progressive suspension on the wide glide front end and the same for the shocks in the rear. The second version was what I described above. A long light Shovelhead that was the length of an S-10 pickup but handled like it’s on rails.

I rode the shit out of the first version. There’s 37 +/- years of chasin’ that horizon and fuckin’ up all over the great country of ours. I rode that bike my whole life. It carried me out of as much trouble as it carried me into. It was a piece of shit from the factory that I rode too hard when we started and it was a much more expensive and efficient piece of shit when I planted that kickstand for the last time.

I wore out and replaced damn near ever part on that bike. The only factory parts that remain are the frame, the left side case, the lifter blocks, front rocker box, cam cone and the rear brake stay. Everything else was destroyed, replaced or improved over those miles. This became the Latowski, those miles, long ago documented through articles in The Horse.

In these early Latowski years this bike broke me, made me a man and then broke me all over again. I have the scars, the limp, bad back and emotional baggage to testify to my destruction. Every ache and pain a memory of something cool/ foolish that happened on that bike. All my current aches and pains are memories dog eared with reminders in the form of creaking old bones.

That has a lot to do the radical seating position change. My ass was planted on that bike in roughly the same position the whole time. I got hit at highway speed by two buses and an 18 wheeler. I was in that position for those collisions and a shit ton of miles. These days when I assume that particular riding position it won’t be long before all those broken parts align and set off a shock wave of debilitating pain that turns me into a crying fem-boy.

The one thing that swing arm version of this bike wasn’t was a chopper. That really stuck in my craw everytime I put my mind too it. Those long nights chuggin’ through Iowa or wherever there was plenty of time to think about it. It was a big thing and I naturally obsessed over it.

Flash back to the present. I’m scapin’ around some twisties layin’ on my back with my heels in the air…like your mom at the prom. I run 6 bends now that turn my wrists 45 degrees and avoids the pain from my ape hanger destroyed rotor cups. Between my hand positions, getting the pressure on the right part of my back and that magic “GO” button negating the need to kick it too life, I can ride all day and feel just as good as when I first jumped on it.

Most importantly, it’s a motherfuckin’ chopper baby and where I am in things I can’t see me ridin’ anything else from here on out. A chopper wouldn’t do the things I used to do with the swing arm but I’m not doin’ those things anymore.

I’m not doin’ overnight rides through the desert, across endless corn fields or freezin’ my ass off riding some mountain pass in the snow ’cause El Nomad thought it would be fun. These are all things that I did, so now I don’t have to do them, and I have the scars and the stories to prove it.

It’s been two different bikes depending on the riding that I was doing. Back then I was all about the miles and gettin’ the fuck out of wherever I was. Now it’s all about slinkin’ through the mountains thinkin’ I’m the king. I my mind I am and so is this ever changin’ bike my chariot.

However, there’s one Latowski that has yet to become a reality. There’s the Latowski I imagined I was riding when the miles made my brain go numb and I was in the stratosphere and beyound piloting my Rocketship through the great unknown. I got some parts and I got some time so maybe…”GTP” out.

Alright kids, this is the part where you dig a few bucks out of your pocket and spread that cheese on this cracker. This is what the dog and I are makin’ our way with. Take a few minutes and send a couple of frog skins in this direction, a little goes a long way. I appreciate it and thanks for your continued support . Please like, comment and most importantly, subscribe! “GTP”