Chopper Daves LFR11X Story

This is a re post of a earlier story I did on Chopper Dave.  I just wanted to combine it into one post so I can make it a direct link  for archive purposes.  So for those of you who haven't seen it here it is in one sitting. 

Welcome to Chopper Dave's Street Tracker LFR11X story and photo gallery. This is a presentation of Dave talking about the LFR 11X and our day together shooting around Long Beach, Ca. Enjoy

Chopper Dave’s newest bike he built really isn’t that new. He started this project way back in 2005 and built it in a few months. As Dave tells it, “It came together because I had a lot of extra parts and I came across a Evolution engine. All the pieces kinda fell together.

The frame is my old panhead frame, my buddy, Frank Kaiser gave me the wheels. Another buddy of mine, Todd in Hawaii sent me the Ceriani fork pieces I needed.


I kinda mixed all the fork pieces together because it’s partially a dirt bike fork and a road race fork. The rest of the parts came from all over.”

“I ran it at Ventura, at the flat track. The motor was wasted. Ton of blow by. Like zero compression. It was impossible to start and of course I had to put a magneto on it.

But I raced it up there and did shitty cause I geared it up way to tall.

I mean, I was at the top of second gear, halfway through the straight, like buzzing, and it’s a short track and I couldn’t shift.

So I did really bad. I did better on my panhead in 2000, but it was super fun.” says Dave of the LFR 11X.

The following year Dave planned to take it to Japan, but he didn’t get the paper work fixed up on it so it didn’t go. Because he had other projects going on and he focused on finishing those the bike sat for 3 and a half years. Once he got all his other projects finished up he decided to finish up the LFR 11X. So around April of 2008 he started working on it again.

He sent the frame out to powder coating at Specialized and Harpoon did the paint. Motor is now 11:1 compression. “Tempermental” he says.

As Dave explains, “Only because it’s getting the starting combination. It runs fucking great. It’s a weird combination of cam and compression. So it’s kinda hard to dial in, but I’m getting closer and closer. But it runs super strong.

It’s just getting it fine tuned a little better.” Dave had a quick turn throttle on it, which made it twice as touchy. “You just turn it a little bit and your at full throttle. It was knarly. It’s also got tons of ground clearance, handles bitchin, it’s just fun as shit.” added Dave.

The LFR 11x was finished around the end of May of 08. Right now Dave finds himself more obsessed with the Flat Track stuff more so than the Chopper stuff right now.

“I’m pretty much over the whole chopper thing for the moment. I’m just over unfunctional choppers.

I’m just not in that mode anymore.” He is looking to build bikes that are more fully functional street tracker style as evident in LFR 11X and “The X Wedge” bike he also built recently.

The LFR 11x was something he wanted to build that was fast and functional.

The way he describes himself, “I’m just a motorcycle guy that likes stuff that works. I like something you could really ride and use.”


With the LFR 11X, Dave has acheived his goal for now. He already has been doing research on his next project build. Stay tuned.