Spinal Tap famously had an amplifier where the volume went to 11 instead of the standard 10. If custom choppers were amplifiers, the Grind Hard Monster Chopper would go to at least eleventy-seven.
It all began when Grind Hard Plumbing Co, whose previous builds include a snowmobile-powered mountain scooter, a Suzuki Hayabusa snow bike, and a Mazda RX7-powered drift trike, partnered with an unnamed celebrity for yet another wacky build. This celebrity backed out partway through the project, leaving a half-finished mud bogger powered by a KTM 1190 Adventure engine. Grind Hard did what any of us would if we were in this common situation. They decided to take the engine, combine it with two of the 46-inch tires from the mud bogger, and turn it back into a motorcycle. The original concept was to simply take the KTM engine, drop it between two wheels, hook it all up, and it’s done. How hard could it be?
As it turns out, very. Motorcycles are typically not designed to use ginormous 46-inch mud tires, and the KTM 1190 Adventure is no exception. The Monster Chopper is a custom build from the ground up, designed for the sole purpose of uniting these parts into at least a somewhat functional motorcycle. The frame is entirely custom, with the chain carefully threading through the middle of it to turn the back wheel.
A typical motorcycle steering system doesn’t work, so they fabricated a hydraulic system to turn the front wheel. It looks closer to the system on Matt’s Off-Road Recovery’s World’s Largest Off-Road Wrecker, with hydraulic rams and such, than anything I’ve ever seen on a motorcycle before. Also, the tire tread was flat since it’s intended for a four-wheeler and not rounded like a motorcycle tire, further adding to the handling issues (please don’t start a “Dark Side” flame war in the comments over this). In this case, the solution was easy: grind away the outer parts of the tread blocks to make them round.
More than seven months of hard work later, the Grind Hard Monster Chopper is still not done, but it’s getting close. If you have some time to burn, this playlist has more than seven hours of build content. I am quite sure that the end result will be so heavy and bulky that its off-road capabilities will be far less than those of the KTM 1190 Adventure that powers it. But the Monster Chopper will certainly be more awesome.
