#Harley easy rider movie#

While the Captain America copy was one of the main attractions of the Guggenheim Museum's blockbuster 'The Art of the Motorcycle' exhibition in the U.S. A correct brass-body Linkert carburetor was found it wears two signature Billy Bike items: an air cleaner made from a drilled distributor cap and a long looping throttle cable left dangling in the breeze.

#Harley easy rider movie#

The fuel tank is from a Mustang motorbike, for instance, but had to be heavily reworked, and the pearlescent yellow flames were applied three times before Chandler and crew were finally satisfied they matched the movie bike's paint job. Just like the Captain America recreation, it took many hours of research to get the Billy Bike clone up to Chandler's expectations. The Billy Bike looks like it was made to ride.' Captain America looks fragile, like a gazelle. 'But afterward, the more I thought about it, the Billy Bike is the one I imagined myself riding through the countryside. 'Watching the movie for the first time, my eyes were riveted on the Captain America bike,' he remembers. It was simply a more restrained, more rideable custom.īeau Allen Pacheco was editing Big Twin magazine in the mid-1990s when this recreation of the Billy Bike was commissioned by Los Angeles Times publishing tycoon and inveterate bike/car collector Otis Chandler. The Billy Bike even ran a front brake while the other motorcycle made do with a stopperless spool hub. Mufflers were shorty duals, not zoomy fishtails. The sissybar was barely there – certainly not the high-rise cloud-scratcher fitted to Fonda's ride. Where Peter Fonda's iconic chopper was all stretched out and gangly-looking, the 'Billy Bike' was tighter drawn, with a conservative 6-inch fork extension compared to the Captain's 12-inch-over setup. The Billy Bike might not be as extreme as the Captain America, but stands as a reproduction snapshot of late-‘60s custom culture ready to head out on the highway.While the 'Captain America' chopper got top billing in the movie Easy Rider, it was the sidekick machine ridden by the late Dennis Hopper's character Billy that won the hearts of real riders. A teardrop tank was fabricated and painted into a flame-job finish with the frame painted to match the original, featuring extensive use of chrome plating on components from headlight to fenders.

This replica Billy Bike’s hardtail frame was altered and raked for installation of the elongated fork tubes and straight drag-bar handlebars. The former stockers were transformed into future chopper icons by Ben Hardy and Cliff Vaughs in Los Angeles for the movie. The introduction of hydraulic front forks on the 1949 Hydra-Glide was an improvement and proved so popular that the springer front fork was discontinued in 1950. Legend has it the motorcycles used to build the original movie choppers were purchased at a police auction. The replica Billy Bike is based on a 1950 Hydra-Glide, ironically a favorite of police officers and highway patrol. The Billy Bike and Captain America choppers were genuinely connected to the Southern California custom-motorcycle scene and representative of the counterculture era. This Billy Bike-replica chopper was constructed using the same techniques as the motorcycles used for filming the movie in order to duplicate then bleeding-edge chopper design. Duplicates of both choppers were built prior to filming, but after the movie was shot, the remaining motorcycles were stolen at gunpoint and sold for parts. While the red, white and blue theme chopper ridden by Captain America may have gone onto greater fame over time, the custom chopper ridden by Hopper known as the “Billy Bike” played an equally pivotal part in the film and motorcycle history. Dennis Hopper directed the 1969 film classic “Easy Rider,” also starring as Billy alongside Captain America, or Wyatt, played by Peter Fonda.