Andy's wacky '95 883 Sportster build thread.

[imofftothemoon]

hi, i'm andy, and I ride a '95 883 sportster that's been thru some shit. my bike has gone through a lot of changes and a number of adventures, enough to where i feel like it deserves a thread. Partly to show the world, partly to collect feedback, partly because i need somewhere to mentally keep track of whatever the hell is going on with this thing.

follow this bike and its wacky adventures (until i inevitably crash or destroy it) along on instagram, @imofftothemoon

anyway
Back in 2017 i had a sweet little ratty xs650 that i rode up and down the california & oregon coast with. pdx, joshua tree, lots of fun. i miss that bike. that bike wasn't quite my build though, i bought it from a builder in sacramento and made a couple of my own changes to it, like building my own bars, built a ball joint foot clutch linkage system and ran a jockey shifter on it. eventually blew it up heading up the california coast after i ran it low enough on oil that an exhaust rocker snapped in half from overheating after loosing oil to the head. yeehaw.

may have also chopped up a peugeot 103 moped for fun.


anyway.

it started off as this horribly stock super goofy-ass 883. bought it dec 2019, an hour before i had to go to work. guy sold it to me on the cheap because 1, the rocker gaskets were leaking and he thought it was going to explode, and 2, there was an intermittent turn signal issue. if only he'd known what i was going to do to it.



fixed the rocker gaskets in an afternoon, ripped off the signals, cut the stock bars down, cool dude yellow grips and a hackjob rear fender, rode it for a week, got it blessed on new years day by a christian biker group in texas, then i crashed it while trying to flat tow it home behind a car with a very large piece of twine rope i found on the side of the road after my belt snapped. yay harley ownership.


ended up breaking my wrist, splinted it with the rear brake rod from the harley (that impressed the urgent care docs), my friend threw it into a tree at the bottom of a roadside ditch and then i had to help him get it out of said ditch next morning with my hand in a cast. a guy driving home from church helped me push it up my large hill i lived on.

[imofftothemoon]

got laid off from work shortly after, and found myself with a lot of free time to kill. i started building this thing out in an apartment parking spot behind my car, and welding/grinding on the balcony. yeah, neighbors must've loved me. the 10-overs were the first major modification i really did, and at that point i couldn't have been more enamored with the fuckin thing.

rewired the whole thing just because i hate extra wires, fabbed up a rudimentary foot clutch system, tc bros mid controls, sullys customs diamond stich solo seat, honda vtx1100 rear shocks (these work fantastic on these bikes btw, sprung perfectly and way nicer than stock harley shit), sparto repro tail, built a fender with a sissy bar, all this with a casted hand mind you, and as soon as the doc said i could move my hand again i was out ripping on my chop, happy as a octopus in fresh salt water. with no working front brake, of course.

[SaddleTramp98]

I think I saw your bike on R/choppers the other day and on TC bros in one of the reviews of something I was looking at today. Running 15 overs? Did you have it set up like a dual sport before going chopper with it?

I like the feel/look of over forks with no rake. I'm running 8 overs and I like the ground clearance and the leaned back feel of it. Some people on here don't feel the same way as me but that's alright, everyone likes what they like. Nice bike though!

[imofftothemoon]

rode it for a month, changing things here and there, built a shock mount gas can holder for a rotopax knockoff




threw on 8" of rise with some cut up risers i'd busted as extensions, new bars, then i got bored and decided to go socially isolate in another state in april with a tent. the actual story is that covid had wiped the plans for the usual spring motocamping trip i did with my buds, so i decided to go do it alone. at this point i felt like it was solid enough to take on a trip, the only thing that concerned me was if the sissy bar was going to hold all my gear for a few thousand miles. (spoiler, it did). i brought my hand clutch kit with me in case my foot-clutch operation broke or w/e. also packed a week's worth of food on it, trying my best to avoid going grocery shopping ya know.



set out from san antonio, tx, headed westbound on 10 for el paso. about an hour outside of san anto, i pulled over at a rest stop to check my straps, and there i met Max, an old rambling hobo who lived off his '15 fourty-eight. Said he had broke with his previous roomate ("cus he was being a dick"), and was bound west from New Orleans to Arizona in search of work and a new life. We agreed to ride together until one of us split ways, and we ended up riding together for 400 miles or so, filling our bikes up on the side of the highway when one of us ran out, soaking up the sun in deserted gravel parking lots and sharing stories until we reached El Paso, where he pointed to a parking spot in a truck stop lot and told me that would be his resting place for the night. i kept heading north into the night, rolling into a BLM campsite full of RVs at 1am on my straight piped hurley. hope you're still out there max, ramble on good buddy.



Attachment 106073

[imofftothemoon]

I think I saw your bike on R/choppers the other day and on TC bros in one of the reviews of something I was looking at today. Running 15 overs? Did you have it set up like a dual sport before going chopper with it?

I like the feel/look of over forks with no rake. I'm running 8 overs and I like the ground clearance and the leaned back feel of it. Some people on here don't feel the same way as me but that's alright, everyone likes what they like. Nice bike though!

that's me. i'll get to that part eventually, but yep, it's been both a scrambler and a chopper. 15 overs at the moment. i like stock rake, it's great fun being at the same seat height as a pickup truck.

[SaddleTramp98]

Sorry didnt mean to cut you off mid post! Didnt know you were gonna post again. Carry on I'm interested.

[imofftothemoon]

did some camping, got to ABQ, stayed with a friend in town for a few days, rode out into the desert to discover the meaning of life and had a fantastic minorly traumatic experience where i thought i was actually going to die (sometimes, fun guys can end up being a bit uhh too much fun).

[imofftothemoon]

Sorry didnt mean to cut you off mid post! Didnt know you were gonna post again. Carry on I'm interested.

all good.

at this point, i'd switched back to hand clutch to deal with the awesomeness that is 20 miles of muddy, rutted, deep sand washboarded road. it was 100% worth it. hand clutch saved my ass on the trip out of desert.

[imofftothemoon]

choppers are for offroading into backcountry campsites, duh.





made it back to texas in one piece. man, i hate riding through texas/east nm area. you turn left in Raton NM and it's the same god damn scenery for a thousand fucking miles.

for anyone wondering how i made the rotopax knockoff mount, it was fairly simple. 3 pieces of 7/8 handlebar welded together, 1/2-13 coupling nut in the shock side, m6 for t-handle side (the t-handles come with the rotopax knockoff kits), screw it on, tada.





idk why those pics are sideways but im sure you technology wizards can figure it out if ya hafta

[imofftothemoon]

rode it built out this way for a couple more months around texas. i was pretty happy with it overall at this point, but it wasn't quite perfect. made for a relatively cool club-style chop though.





moved to denver shortly after. built a trailer hitch from scratch (legitimately scratch, it's made of honda exhaust and left-over roll cage scrap) for my aw11 mr2 and towed it from san antonio to denver.

[imofftothemoon]

the bike took on some interesting changes throughout 2020. decided it needed to take on a scrambler/enduro direction, bought some chinese 15" shocks off ebay, they worked great for about a week and then one of them fell apart on the freeway after the plunger rod stripped and unscrewed itself from the bottom shock body. no idea how the other one was able to keep me supported. lesson learned there, you can only trust chinese products sometimes





threw the old vtx shocks back on, flipped over a lowering block kit i had to use it as a lift block and ran it like that for a while

[imofftothemoon]

did you know i hate fairings? i'm a tall fucker, 6'4 on a good day, and out of all the bikes i've ever owned (including a BMW R1100RTP with da cool electronically adjustable windscreen) i've never had a windshield or fairing that's worked a damn for me. all they usually do is cause serious issues with buffeting.

anyway, decided to throw a t-sport fairing on it for shits and giggles. fairings are chopper af, right guys?





camo wrap for even more shits and giggles





even had a cup holder n all on this thing for a minute. got rid of that thing after it broke and i lost my stanley thermos to i25.

[Down]

I've seen this on reddit, super cool bike! I like it in all its goofiness. That fairing just sends it over the top and I'm all about that.

[rockman96]

Different strokes, as they say.

[47str8leg]

Well, it’s s visual train wreck in my eyes but , who gives a fuck ?
You’re building everything and riding the wheels off the fucker ( though I don’t recommend Chinese parts on anything ).
Great read , have at it.

[cdwillis]

Seen this pop up the other day on Reddit or Instagram. Reminds me of a dog I used to have (so ugly you loved it). Keep posting pics as it changes.

[imofftothemoon]

oh lmao

got sidetracked and then forgot i made this thread for a solid month.

man.

back on track

yeah i dunno i rode it around the front range and explored colorado in various forms and stances. i couldn't really decide what to do with it. i tried making a touring bike out of it. sort of worked, but i wasn't really happy w/ it. didnt feel right. but as a chopper, it was kind of boring, ya know?







someone drew this sweet art of my bike. @navarrart on instagram. thanks dude.

[imofftothemoon]

mid-winter parts run. threw on some gold ebay dirtbike foot pegs, but since they're cheap chinese shit they sat a degree or 2 off camber, enough to where it bothered me every time i rode it. went back to the TC bros pegs shortly after.

pulled the fairing off because i hate fairings. never put it back on.

swapped over to some cheap tracker style bars on my 9" of riser, with acerbis handguards kind of mashed on/into the bars, just good enough to work. using random nuts as spacers, lol. funny thing is, the day after i threw em on, i dropped the bike in a way that would've broke some handlebar controls if the bark busters weren't on.

[imofftothemoon]

anyway so what's one to do when you want choppers, but also really like exploring backcountry roads? you build an enduro chopper, fucking duh.

do i know what i was doing here? not really, but fuck you, i'm off the beaten track here so anything goes at this point. nothing matters anymore. the world you grew up in no longer exists. who cares what you do with an old sportster anyway.

• a coworker at the ducati shop i worked at gave me an old triumph muffler so i shoved that into my shitty 2-1 exhaust that i welded up from the rusty dragpipes i had on the bike
• not one, but 2 fucking front fenders bro! thats choppers as fuck bro!
• 120/90-16 BattleAx AX41 rear tire. Why the fuck do they make this size? What bike would ever need this tire size? who the fuck cares, let's put it on the harley!
• i wanted to see how tall i could make this fucking thing. i already got 10 overs in the front, how tall can i make the rear end? turns out, tall. 17.5 inches of coilover shock tall, baby. when you can't trust chinese shit, and nobody else makes shocks tall enough, you turn to scouring marketplace for random snowmobile shocks. $150 FOX 17.5" snowmobile shocks? fuck yeah baby. fuck yeah. who cares that it rides like absolute shit because it's way oversprung for my bike even at the lowest preload setting? it's sitting tall and it's got a fuck-ton of clearance for all those curbs i'm hopping. fuck yeah.

enduro sportster choppers ftw.






Heres a lil walkaround video of it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CO0PKzzH..._web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQEcu7Es..._web_copy_link

[imofftothemoon]

now, i bet you're thinking 'what the fuck dude, that's like the most super coolest harley ive ever ever seen give me that I love it I need it I HAVE TO HAVE IT GIMMIE THE FUCKIN BIKE!!!'



well, that's exactly what some crackhead thought too, because the day after i took those photos, a crackhead stole it from me from right outside the motorcycle shop i worked at. left me a perfectly good stolen yellow Honda Superhawk in its place. i still to this day don't understand why you would ever steal this super weird harley that looks like someone fished it out of a magical motorcycle parts randomizer box when you already have an already stolen, relatively inconspicuous and much easier to ride sportbike in your possession already, but im also not a crackhead, so i guess ill never figure out that mystery.



anyway i blasted it all over social media, and some guy who saw my bike reposted by someone else on instagram or something spotted it at a gas station in the crackhead part of town, tried to stop the guy from leaving, crackhead pulled out a knife and tried to cut the guy, guy pulled out his CCW and held the crackhead at gunpoint til the cops got there. 5 hours from stolen to me seeing the bike again. crackhead discarded my discontinued chrome tool roll with like $200 of the best vintage roadside repair tools i've ever laid hands on that i kept on the bike. yah, dumb to keep em on the bike, but i thought my bike was in a safe spot. RIP tools and tool roll u will be SEVERELY missed. :'(




he did leave me this neato skull & crossbones, and i got a set of cheap pliers that he left, so i guess that's cool. im using those pliers for holding shit im welding these days.