I'll admit, I used to watch American Chopper back in the day. It was the early days of reality TV and it was about motorcycles, which I love. Looking back, I'm not proud of it. The show was a mess, as was Orange County Choppers.
It was all about manufactured drama and not enough about building good bikes. And seriously, they did not make good bikes. Most of the time, the bikes didn't even run. They were display-only bikes for big clients who didn't care whatsoever whether they could be ridden or not.
Again, they didn't even have to work.
No better example of this is OCC's Geico bike, a raked-out, supercharged, high-compression chopper that supposedly made 300 horsepower. It didn't, nor did it ever really run. But it recently resurfaced after years of display thanks to the guys over at the YouTube channel Bikes and Beards.
And after messing with it, dynoing it, and then trying to ride it, they gave up on getting this very bad chopper to actually run right. That's why they sent it over to Craig at The Bearded Mechanic who's basically the motorcycle whisperer. If he can't get it to run, no one can.
Craig starts off by essentially tearing all of the known issues down. He pulls the starter, the battery, the injectors, fuel lines, and more, and then sets about seeing what works, what doesn't, what's gummed up, and if there's any method to OCC's madness. There isn't, by the way.
One of the biggest issues is that the original bike's starter was just shit. It was too small and never worked, so Craig had a new one made, but it didn't exactly fit in the original location. So he had to grind pieces down to get it to sit right.
Very OCC, Craig, very OCC.
But will all of Craig's hard work pay off? I'm not going to spoil the ending for you because Craig's work ethic is second to none. Honestly, I'd really love to just hang with him and watch him work. Or for him to teach me the finer points of wiring insanity. I could use it.
