Frisco Lanesplitter

March 10, 2016

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Article And Photos By: Grizzly

Originally Published In The July 2013 Issue Of Cycle Source Magazine

Richard owns a small bike shop in the north of Holland, Europe, and sells mostly stock Jap bikes. One day he took in a Harley long bike. It did not handle well and seemed impossible to sell, so Richard decided to keep it. Having your own Harley chopper in your garage is pretty cool if you just want to show it off to your neighbors and friends, but luckily Richard wanted to ride the thing too. He decided to call his old friend Wicky, who he had known since first grade, and ask for some advice. Wicky is a lifestyle biker who owns more than one chopper and has built many. “Why don’t you stretch the frame and bring the neck back?” Wicky suggested. “It will make this specific bike handle a lot better and it’ll look more like mine. I know you like that one.” Yes indeed Richard did like Wicky’s current ride a lot. So a deal was made, and together with some other friends the men started building the frame. Richard explained, “I wanted the bike to be a slim lane splitter. I don’t like the fat German style bikes others here in Holland seem to love so much. I asked Wicky to turn the two down-tubes into a single tube, stretch it and bring the neck back to 36 degrees. In a week’s time the frame was finished. We then mounted the 6” over frontend of the old long bike and decided to use the same wheels and oil bag.

The motor and tranny were also okay in my opinion. The fat original Harley tanks were junked for a small tank from a Sporty, and then it was time for a quick mock-up. Man, the bike looked ten times better already! Believing Wicky on his word that it would handle better too, I now knew I absolutely wanted more.” Richard and his friends were determined to turn this bad handling bike into a fast Frisco city chopper with great straightforward looks. He wanted a rib on the gas tank, hardly any tunnel and a relocated gas cap. Wicky modified the gas reservoir and another friend designed the gas cap. New tank mounts were made and with the Friscoed tank in place, the bike started to look more classic, despite the modern Harley Evo motor and six speed Ultima gearbox. Richard said, “I told Wicky I wanted a ribbed fender as well.

So the guys bought a cheap, ordinary flat fender and added pieces of round stock to create a rib and rounded sides. Since my back is not in the best of shape, we also made a seat pan with springs by welding two pieces of hand bent 2mm sheet metal together. So, we were going classic? Time for a sissy bar! A bitch bar would enable me to mount the license plate above the tire so the bike would stay as slim as I wanted it to be. We mounted the sissy bar straight up like you used to see them in the old biker B movies. To get a bit of extra California gangster styling we used long risers and K&N bars. Now the bike was starting to look really sweet. We just had to change a few little things of the old bike’s parts and it would be perfect in my eyes. Pipes made by the former owner were chopped to make them shorter, and we welded some new sides in the horseshoe oil bag so they would flow more.”

Within a few months the bike was ready for paint, and we had only worked on Saturdays. The best part was that the total rebuild had cost me hardly anything so far. We did not have to buy many new parts at all and the other things we changed or added were made by hand. I sent the sissy bar and gas cap to the chromer and asked another friend, Co Brands, for help with the paint. From the start I wanted the chopper to be painted white — pearl white with some blue inserts. The icing on the cake was the two percent logos on the sides of the Frisco tank. After explaining the look I was after, Co got the idea and I gave him free rein from then on. The result is stunning. It completes the bike the way I had hoped it would and turns it into a real crowd pleaser!” Richard then started building the chopper all by himself. He first took the engine apart, cleaned up the inside and the outside and renewed what was too old. With a shiny ‘new’ Evo engine, fresh paint and chrome, Richard had the bike up and running in a few days. Richard finished by saying, “I love the way it looks now, but I dig even more the way it handles. This bike is a blast to ride through town and handles good long distances as well. I want to use this space to thank my friends; without them it would not have been possible to change a bad handling, ugly, fat, long bike into a lean and mean Frisco street machine! Thanks to you too, Wicky, and I think my bike looks better then yours now! Ha!”