The divide between metric and imperial bikes is more than just different tool sets and measurement standards, as you're probably well aware. Still, this video from Paul Sr. and his crew at Orange County Choppers, as they get stuck into working on their build-off bike, makes the differences painfully clear.
If you haven't been keeping up, OCC is participating in a six-week bike build off with Bikes and Beards and the Bearded Mechanic, with all proceeds going to a charity they have yet to determine. It's also not clear if they're planning to auction the completed bikes off to obtain proceeds in the first place, or honestly what the entire plan is. Or maybe they've discussed it amongst themselves, but haven't yet made it public.
In any case, each builder in this challenge is dealing with a different handicap. OCC has been building custom bikes for a long time, but generally sticks to American iron for its creations. The Bearded Mechanic, meanwhile, primarily deals with vintage Japanese bikes, though sometimes he'll get an oddball European or other machine (think Pulse Autocycle) come through his garage.
And Sean from Bikes and Beards doesn't usually wrench on anything, which means he might have the biggest challenge of all.
To at least slightly attempt to even the playing field a bit and make things more interesting, all three YouTube channels agreed to have their viewers vote on what region of the world the base bikes for each project should come from. Paul Sr. got a Japanese bike, Sean from Bikes and Beards got Europe, and Craig from the Bearded Mechanic got America.
That puts each competitor outside of their comfort zone. In Sean's case, to be honest, that was probably going to be true of any bike from any nation.
But the other two more experienced wrenches also each got something they're less familiar with. As he recently showed off, Craig ended up with a deal on a V-Rod. Sean got a super crispy, burnt Triumph Bonneville. And what did Paul Sr. choose?
Remember Yamaha's V-Stars? This is a 2007 Road Star Midnight Silverado. It's powered by a 1,670cc (or 102 ci) air-cooled V-twin. It has a five-speed gearbox, rolls on a pair of 16-inch aluminum wheels that came wrapped in Bridgestone rubber from the factory, and has disc brakes all around. The rear shock gets some preload adjustability, but the stock suspension is pretty standard.
When Paul Sr. chatted with a local bike shop that he'd dealt with before, and he told them what they were doing for this build-off, the owner knocked a little money off the asking price of this bike so that Paul Sr. could get it for the $3,000 that all competitors had agreed to spend on their base bikes.
In a previous video, he even commented on how nice and clean this bike was, and that it would almost be a shame to cut it up because it's in such good shape. That context makes what you'll see in this video all the more jarring, to be honest.
Paul Sr. gets his son Mikey to help him in the shop, since they're about three weeks behind and only have three weeks to complete the job. They wheel the bike onto the lift, and then prepare to start taking it apart.
So first things first, they make a big show out of finding their metric wrenches in the big rolling tool chests that line the walls. And then ... they can't get the seat off, somehow?
Read the comments, and you'll see some folks suggesting that you just need to turn the key to pop the seat off (that's definitely how it works on most Japanese bikes I've ever owned, as well as the Triumph Street Triple I've talked about here a bunch).
You'll also see some folks speculating that this, too, was part of overplaying the drama of working on a bike that's outside of OCC's comfort zone. That's certainly also a believable possibility. No matter why they did it, the fact remains that you're going to see some serious violence done to what looked like a perfectly nice seat in order to get it off the bike.
When they started, the seat cover wasn't so much as scuffed (at least, not in any way that showed on camera). It looked to be in quite nice shape, and even if they wanted to replace it with a different seat, could probably very easily have been sold to someone else or else kept in reserve as a spare part for a future build.
I'm thinking like a non-professional bike builder though, clearly. Instead, I'm thinking like a DIY-er, the kind of person who'd seek to conserve the things I take off a bike, either for my own future use or for the use of someone else who needs the part down the line. Get someone else a part they need, and put a little cash back in my bike parts budget, you know? Things you probably don't need to worry about if you're a big professional shop, I guess.
Apparently, the thing to do if you're a pro is literally rip the seat fabric and foam padding off with your fingers, destroying the entire thing in the process. And then take an angle grinder to the plastic seat pan to get it the rest of the way off, rather than use a key to pop it off, or maybe consult an owner's manual to see what the seat removal process should be for the bike in question.
Oh, and also have it take up most of the 7-minute total video length in the process? Seriously, it's not hard to see why some people think this was done expressly to heighten the drama since they're already starting out behind on time. You know, I kind of hope that it is a questionable strategic choice, because if it isn't, there's no telling how the finished bike is going to turn out.
