Garage chopping my Harley: Yes you can!! Or, how to ruin a perfectly good bike .....

Customising your steel horse is a must imo and what bike is more suitable for it than Harley?
Loads of aftermarket stuff for these ploppers around and technique of these dino's hasn't changed for decades, so basic knowledge is sufficient. (newer bikes are a bit more evolved)
For all those garage choppers that get held back by regular forums.
Here's my sportster chop history. (including raking my triple trees myself)
As i bought it ....

First i experimented with raising the tank a bit and risers.

Now i got the taste of it and wanted more ..... more i say!

So i got started.
Ever since i was a small boy i wanted an "easy rider" (Capt America) like chopper.

But, steam-punk and "rat bike" appealed too later on. (will do those later i guess)
Oohhh, and did i mention i hate chrome and love black, matt black?
First of all i needed os tubes .... i went for the 14" ones.
But, first things first, strip the bike.

Now, pick up your grinder and get to it!
Pick the spot where you gonna cut the down tubes with care so that you don't have problems welding it and that the weld is strong enough.
In order to bend the top part of the frame make sure you pick the right spot again since the relation between tubes, head and frame needs to be correct. Use a 2x2 at the correct length to figure out where to cut the backbone. Here's how it turned out in my case.

Perfect spot according to me for cutting.
Just under the engine mount.

Place to cut the backbone depends on tube length and how you want your down tubes to connect.

I didn't want too much hassle with bending frame tubes or a weird transition ..... alignment of the tubes seemed the best way to go.

As you can see, the down tubes have their lugs in place already, but you can see the place i used to cut the frame to make sure the angle is correct for the bike to stay horizontally when OS tubes are mounted. To reinforce the obvious weak spot, i opted for inserting a thick steel plate to be welded in.

This is the plate. Cut to fit and provide as much reinforcement as possible

The reinforcement plate in place.
Just needs to cleaned up and welded.

Welded with gas tank support bolts in place.

I'm not a pro welder as you can clearly see, but as long as it holds, i'm ok ;)

Here the down tube "lugs" are in place.
Too bad i didn't take pic's of how i did the inner tubes and the reinforcement piece on the bend on top. But i inserted a thick steel piece of steel (same as backbone) at the right angle and inserted in lug and frame, drilled holes in the frame tubes and lugs and welded there for strength.
After that i grinded a piece of steel to make the engine support. This support also reinforced the lower weld.