Nickens' handiwork to be featured on American Chopper
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By Rob Geiger, NHRA.com
3/8/2004
The Discovery Channel's wildly popular television show, American Chopper,
will feature former NHRA sportsman world champion David Nickens and
Dan Smith on an upcoming episode.
An engine builder by trade, Nickens, who supplies powerplants
to numerous sportsman-level racers, was contacted by American Chopper
stars Paul Teutul Jr. and Paul Teutul Sr. to fabricate a special piece
for one of the theme bikes they were making at their renowned Orange
County Choppers shop in Rock Tavern, N.Y. Nickens garnered the pair's
attention with some of his recent handiwork, which he had built out
of necessity for one of his friend's custom choppers.
"This all started when I was looking at the induction
system of one of my buddy's Harleys," Nickens said. "I thought
it was just about the worse design I'd ever seen so we made our own.
Well, it turns out the bike picked up power right away not to mention
the fact it looked better and when he entered that particular bike in
a show he was literally run over by the questions people had about the
new induction system.
"We realized pretty quickly that we should be
making and selling these things. As that product line grew we started
getting requests for special one-of-a-kind designs. Once we produced
a few of those I guess one of the Paul's saw one and realized we might
be able to help them on a project they were working on. They got in
touch with us and we helped them out."
The project used a design theme that honored the Statue
of Liberty. Using his imagination, Nickens went to work and created
a one-of-a-kind carburetor that looks just like the torch on the original
Statue of Liberty. It even lights up in the appropriate place.
"It's a perfect match," Nickens said, "right
down to the coloring and dimensions. It was a fun project and the TV
folks came to the shop here in Conroe [Texas] and filmed us making it
and fitting it to the bike. I can't wait to see the finished product."
When completed, the bike will be showcased at the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, D.C. The edition of American Chopper featuring
Nickens is tentatively slated to run in April.
Men and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Is there any boss worse than your dad? Or any employee worse than your
son?
by Michael Tortorello
BY MICHAEL TORTORELLO
AMERICAN CHOPPER: THE SERIES
Discovery Channel
various times
At some time or another, we all work for Dad, don't
we? We schlep the tools from the truck to the basement; we run off copies,
format crude spreadsheets, cover the phone during lunch; we jockey the
front counter and smile lazily at the customers. We don't have to like
it, we just have to do it. And if we don't work for the father whose
lover gave birth to us, we toil for some unmistakably paternal figure
whose rigid habits infuriate us and whose regular gestures of kindness
never quite overcome the resentment we feel for the authority he senselessly
wields. And then there are the hours of our lives that his job consumes,
hours we could have spent doing something--anything--else. This enlightened
despot is impatient that we don't do things the way he does them; he's
hurt that we don't want to learn how.
Paul Teutul Jr. works for a motherf***er of a father.
Paul Sr. is the proprietor of Orange County Choppers, an eight-man workshop
that custom designs and fabricates motorcycles. The two are the subject
of the Discovery Channel's documentary series American Chopper, whose
name suggests a viewership of wide-bodied and long-haired men who blow
$450 on chaps. I suppose Hell's Angels may be tuning in to fantasize
about what another $80,000 might buy them in hog heaven. But I'd bet
the actual audience is made up of bikers who want something to watch
after the latest AA meeting where they found themselves bawling--again--about
what it was like to come home to a father with an explosive temper,
and to feel totally vulnerable and alone. Forget any notions of Sturgis
debauchery--this show is a weekly version of The Great Santini.
A modest interest in motorcycles isn't a necessity
for appreciating the program: I never graduated beyond a 50cc moped
built during the Carter administration. But it wouldn't hurt, as a good
portion of every episode is devoted to welding gas-tank covers and mounting
pipes. The show's hour-long structure roughly follows the task-completion-under-deadline
model of the Discovery Channel's Monster Garage and TLC's Junkyard Wars.
("Reality TV"--the dismissive phrase that pundits and people
who don't enjoy viewing TV affix to any nonfiction programming these
days--turns out to be especially good at conveying process. Bravo's
Cirque du Soleil: Fire Within and C-SPAN's Road to the White House have
both proven that watching other people pursue their goals is a particularly
compelling thing to do on the couch while you're not pursuing your own.)
Here's a typical premise: The Teutuls will be setting
up a booth at Daytona in just 10 days, say, and the shop needs to build
a fantasy "Black Widow" bike for their main display. And so
we see Paul Jr. ordering custom chrome filigree in the shape of a spider's
web--an exoskeleton girding the whole bike--and then fusing the stuff
to the frame. He's got a temperamental aversion to picking up a pencil,
meaning that bike elements tend to go straight from his head into metal.
This leads to a fair number of parts that fit about as well as the Teutuls
would at a book club.
And that's where Father comes in. The old man knows
how to do things right--are there any more dangerous words in employer/employee
relations? And so he roils and fulminates and erupts volcanically--Dad
is kind of a big baby--throwing tools and issuing threats. Then he leans
back in a chair, plops his motorcycle boots on the table, and boasts
about the motivational power of planting one of those feet in someone's
posterior. Ah, Dad. The fact that no one in the shop seems to respond
particularly well to Teutul's Jesse Ventura management style doesn't
discourage him one bit. Nor does the high bluster content discount the
central point of his rants: that Junior wouldn't know how to follow
a production schedule if he were working on the McNuggets assembly line
at McDonald's.
Every week it's the same story of stubbornness and
crisis. And every week (save one) the bike gets finished. My favorite
episode found Teutuls Junior and Senior seated on a couch in the family
room progressing from verbal head-butts to borderline blubbering. They're
men and they're talking about their feelings. And then the dramatic
climax: a big father-son hug. I'd watch the show with my Dad if I could
stand to be in the same room with him.
