Bobbed Bonnie

Triumph’s Bonneville isn’t the first thing custom bike builders consider basing an old-school American ‘bobber’ style chopper on, but ‘Da Trump Card’ from Bitter End Old School Choppers shows that it makes perfect sense.

Owner Kevin Cook from Wheeling, West Virginia wanted to recreate the look of big twin based bobbers, but with the smaller 790cc parallel twin from his 2003 T100 Bonneville.

Bitter End was chosen to complete the build, even though the shop has never built a bike based on anything other than a Harley-type engine.

‘Big Daddy’ Al Wilkerson was responsible for the build. Kevin’s fairly limited budget meant that as many original parts as possible needed to be retained, making the transformation from retro roadster to full-on chopper even more difficult. “This was a fairly challenging project considering that this was our first non-H-D platform build, and we had to marry SAE and metric parts at almost every turn. Nothing would bolt up without machining something.”

The frame was created from scratch using a hard tail rear with a sprung Chica Customs seat to provide a little relief from bumps in the road, and Johnny Goodson yokes hold modified stock forks, brake caliper, disc and front wheel.