Nerves of steel to be jumping this 814 lbs (369 kg) behemoth. Grind Hard Plumbing Co – View 13 Images –
What do you get when you cross a KTM 1190 V-twin wedged into a custom steel-tube trellis frame with 46″ off-road tires that has hydraulic steering? A Monster Chopper. This is the kinda stuff that happens without proper adult supervision.
Take it off any sweet jumps yet? Yes, yes they have.
Grind Hard Plumbing Co has gained YouTube notoriety over the last few years since cramming a Honda CRF 230 engine into a cute, pink, Power Wheels Barbie drift car back in 2018. These young creative maniacs have garnered enough views to not have to return to their day jobs, so now they’re free to build crazy one-offs for the YouTube masses all day long from their northern Idaho shop.
Recently, they began work on a new Franken-Creation for off-road-loving, YouTube-devouring, two-wheeled fabrication enthusiasts: The Monster Chopper.
If you take a peek at the picture above, you’ll see what appears to be a Speeder – levitating off the ground à la Star Wars – with some squiggly lines connected to ridiculously large tires. That would be a fully custom (and slightly rusty) steel-tube trellis, single-sided double swing-arm frame. If that’s not a mouthful, I don’t know what is. It was designed, cut, and welded together by the crazy dudes at Grind Hard. An absolute masterpiece. And those big round things are bona fide forty-six inch Mickey Thompson Baja Claw off-road tires at a mere 5 psi for “better handling”. Those are bigger than what an actual trophy truck uses.
As the single-sided front swing arm somehow has to steer with that ginormous tire on it, the boys had to fit hydraulic steering to throw that massive weight around. The best figure I could find for the weight of the tire was a warning from the tire seller saying “Large/heavy tires will be charged with handling fee.” Fair enough.
As for power, the KTM Adventure 1190cc motor they’re using makes around 150 hp and roughly 100 lb-ft (136 Nm) of torque at the crank, but with their custom jack-shaft gear reduction setup, Grind Hard reckons it makes around 3,000 lb-ft (4,067 Nm) of torque. After seeing what happens to the 1.25-in (3.2-cm) solid steel drive shaft, that’s semi-believable. I’d really like to see some dyno numbers though. Even if it were only half of their claimed torque numbers, that would be absolutely bonkers for any machine, let alone a two wheeled monster.
The guys at Grind Hard did weigh the chopper at one point in the video… 814 lbs (369 kg). That’s marginally less than a full-dresser Harley-Davidson – with a modicum more torque.
Since starting the project some seven-odd months ago, the frame has rusted over entirely, giving it some real Mad Max appeal. The Grind Hard lads say they’ll tear it down to nothing and paint everything – but only once they’re 100% sure they’ve got it dialed in exactly… My vote is for patina. We covered it in another article back in January when all the steel tubing was still shiny and new, and the current look suits the bike much better.
For now, the goobers over at Grind Hard Plumbing Co are still testing and modifying bits here and there. They think of an idea to improve the Monster Chopper, fire up CAD (Computer Aided Design) to create a new piece, then plasma-cut out a new sprocket carrier here or a chain guide there. Their limit is truly their imagination.
It’s one thing having all the tools anyone could ever want to build something from nothing, but it’s absolutely magical when you know how to use them. These guys really know their stuff.
Now that the bike’s more or less functionally complete, the team has been taking it out for some proper test riding around the GHPCo Sandpoint, Idaho property. Some saucy dirt drifts, a little tossage in the mud, some two-wheels off the ground action… And even an excursion through a fence – for a second time. There’s also a gratuitous amount of enviable tool-time sequences sprinkled throughout the video. Even if you’ve never fabricated a thing in your life, you’ll still be drawn in.
They’re fascinating videos – from rad design work, to making metal stick to metal elegantly, to aesthetically-pleasing visuals and editing to put it all together. At the time of writing, they have nearly 500 videos on YouTube with just shy of half a billion views. The ultimate off-road Tesla? Check. A snow-cross GSX-1300R Hayabusa? Oh, absolutely. What about a drift tricycle with an RX-7 rotary engine in it? Surely, they haven’t done that before? Yep, they did that too.
Either way, I’m excited to see the Monster Chopper – and any future GHPCo projects – fully completed in all its glory and out in the wild ripping some sweet trails. And more jumps. Check out the gallery for some more of our favorite screen caps from the two videos!
Now enjoy Grind Hard Plumbing Co’s videos on the Monster Chopper’s first ride, the subsequent modifications, and its recent attempt at a hill climb:
