Custom Chopper

CASEY RESSLER

Frontiersman Valley Life Editor

As Joe Kaiser gets on the throttle, the methodical thump-thump-thump of the diesel engine suddenly gives way to a throat-clearing rumble. As you look over at the intersection, you think it has to be a big rig, or perhaps a large pickup with that familiar rumble and pungent smell a diesel brings to mind. A quick glance over is met with surprise. It's not a big rig. It's a motorcycle.

And then Kaiser hits the switches, injecting propane from the two common Coleman canisters mounted underneath the handlebars, and flames come shooting from the stacks behind the rider. The light turns green, the chopper speeds off and you're left wondering, "Did I just see a purple and orange, flame-throwing, diesel custom chopper? Or did I not drink enough coffee this morning?"

The custom chopper exists all right, and it's been turning heads around Southcentral Alaska. It's the brainchild of Kaiser, who, along with a team of five other students known as The No Coast Choppers, built the custom chopper from the ground up as a final senior project at the Colorado College of Mines two years ago. Kaiser was the team leader, and he's brought the bike back to Alaska, turning heads at every intersection.

"The other day, I was at the intersection by Wal-Mart and I saw this kid looking over at the bike, so I hit the flame-throwers and you should have seen how wide his eyes got," Kaiser said, a sly grin telling you he enjoyed the situation as much as the kid. "When we were building it, I burnt my hair once."

The popularity surrounding custom choppers has boomed in recent years, thanks to television shows like American Chopper on The Discovery Channel. That popularity led Kaiser to the motorcycle project for his senior design project. The design and construction of the custom diesel chopper took a year, with 40- to 80-hour work weeks, on top of school work. Kaiser and his fellow students found parts they could use for the ingenious idea in things ranging from dishwashers to airplanes.

"The battery is actually from a DC-9 air conditioning unit," Kaiser said. "The motor we found in a junkyard in Colorado Springs."

A custom frame had to be designed and fabricated, due to the increased size and weight of the diesel system. The diesel motor is a 1.6-liter inline four-stroke that was taken from a Volkswagen Jetta. The diesel increases fuel efficiency, but it needed a little more power, so The No Coast Choppers shimmed the springs located within the fuel injectors, increasing the pressure in which the fuel is introduced in the motor. Because of increased pressure, the radius of the fuel droplets decreases, resulting in a faster burn rate and higher attainable RPMs. Still, a little more "juice" was needed. Enter the propane-injection system.

"Adding propane to a diesel motor is like adding nitrous to a gas motor, basically," Kaiser said. "It increases horsepower."

The propane also allows Kaiser to shoot flames from the giant stacks rising from under the bike behind the seat. The entire bike, from the plasma-cut flame-shaped fenders to the stacks coming out the back, brings to mind an image of a colorful big rig - part machine, part fantasy.

The motorcycle's look is big, boastful and loud - pretty much everything Kaiser's not.

He casually mentions that he's known as "Cowboy Joe" because, in the past, he's been a bullrider, and he also teaches pottery, making him a bullriding, chopper-building potter with a degree in mechanical engineering from one of the country's most prestigious engineering institutions. That's a little out of the ordinary, but then again, it's not exactly routine to see flames coming from the guy in front of you at Wal-Mart, either.

Kaiser, who currently works for the state, is hoping to put his engineering degree - and his experience as a custom chopper builder - to work later this year by starting a business catering to recreational vehicles.

"I'd love to build choppers, but there isn't a big market in Alaska," he said. "But I can do a lot of engineering with other recreational vehicles. Snowmachines, that kind of stuff. I learned more than I ever thought on this project."