To celebrate Steve Wyrick’s 1,000th show at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, the Teutuls of Orange County Choppers built him a custom chopper for an epic reveal that he would be doing for an episode of the TV reality series American Chopper. When they were designing the bike, Steve Wyrick challenged them to make one part of it invisible. Together, they created a secret gas tank to be hidden in the rear wheel well so that the bike would appear to have an invisible gas tank.
With only a short period of time to complete the project, headed by Rick Petco, the focus is on the gas tank. The first time around, there was a problem with the water jet – the jet didn’t end because there were some holes in the tank that shouldn’t have been there. But after putting some scraps of aluminum and steel inside the tank, everything was working out great.
Magic Chopper
magic chopper
Rick cuts out the bottom of the tank but there are problems there as well initially because the design is too busy and it is hard to see the Steve Wyrick logo that is supposed to look like it was floating inside the tank. So work continued on that. Paul Jr. had just gotten back from vacation and with the frame, motor, and transmission of the chopper completed and the wiring started, he began to organize the pieces that would be inserted into the wheels.
In the middle of all this, Mikey decided that he wanted to try an impersonation of someone who could really do magic so all stopped work as he asked someone to give him a coin and he did some very elementary magic tricks. He then called Paul Sr. over and asked him to pick a card and then hold that card against his ear as he visualized seeing Phil float at least three inches above the ground. Senior admitted being scared to death to begin with but when Mikey said “Abracadabra” and suddenly a loud horn blew, Senior admitted that he had to go change his underwear.
It was then back to work with Robb, who painted the gas tank yellow with red edging, giving the appearance of flames floating on top of it, and Jason, who designed it, had a meeting of the minds and completed it. The hidden tank went in first because of its position along the rear tire, then the rear fender was placed over it.
For more information on choppers, visit Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
