Cyril Huze Blog – World's Number One Source For Custom Motorcycle News

Building and riding the wild custom bikes you build in Switzerland is not an easy gig. Cops know very well what you should never roll in the streets of the Helvetic Confederation. In Bern, the seat of the federal authorities, it doesn’t prevent Danny Schneider from Hard Nine Choppers to be very creative at taking old vintage parts to turn them into contraptions with a purpose which is not exactly what the bikes have been originally intended for.

All stories behind each of Schneider’s builds are unusual. In this case, he met at a local bike show a cousin he didn’t see during the previous 20 years. He found out that his relative was collecting and restoring old British cars and also owned 2 old bikes, one of them being a 1951 Harley WLJ. Schneider convinced his cousin to let him work on the Flatty and obtained from him the agreement of building whatever he wanted. A dream briefing for any custom builder…

Danny Schneider’s canvas looked partly WLA, partly WLC but fitted with a vintage Triumph front end (!) and other parts he could not identify. Doing some online research, he found out that a Japanese entity named “Rikuo Internal Combustion Company” was operating in the early 1930s under the license and name of Harley-Davidson, using their tooling. Harley did not publicize this Japanese connection because the Japanese were helped in developing mass-production techniques in Japan just prior to World War II and after. Surprise, Schneider’s H-D WLJ had many Rikuo parts (Showa, the same company that supplies parts to H-D today bought Rikuo in the 50’s)

Danny explained to me: “The parts mismatch didn’t matter to me. I was excited and immediately went for a new old school look and imagined a simple vintage paint job. I fully rebuilt yje engine and 3-speed tranny. He took me quite a while to fabricate the gas tank tank, oil bag rear the fender. Because I had started making bars, I had to modify the gas tank shape like 4 times because they were not looking good and working well with what I was fabricating. The oil bag is conceived to house the battery. Because a a Swiss motorcycle regulation requires to be able to have your motorcycle lights on when your bike is not running I had to create 2 electric systems. The bike is running with a magneto and I have a 6 volt battery for the lights.

He added: “With this massive drum brake, the front end is one of the most stylish ones I have ever seen. I shorted it by about 5 inch. I fabricated the hand shift, a pain in the ass, because another road regulation is forbidding open primary drivelines. So, I had to cut the primary cover, and after several trials, found a way to make the hand fabricated shifter work. Because I avoid as much as possible buying aftermarket parts, I try to work with the original ones, even when it’s very difficult. For example the wheels that were very difficult to prepare for powdercoating. I don’t like chrome on old bikes, and prefers nickel all over and in the small details for more authenticity. Headlight is a modified Triumph unit and the exhaust is the original set that I modified. Paint job was handled by Herb from Monster Kustoms” Hard Nine Choppers (Photography @ Jonas Moser for Cyril Huze)


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