IN-YER-FACE 'ONDA
Back Street Heroes|February 2021
BACK IN ISSUE 420, IN THE H-D SUPPLEMENT WE DID FOR THAT ISSUE, WE INTRODUCED YOU TO KNOCKER, AND HIS NO-NONSENSE IRONHEAD – A BIKE THAT GAVE THE FINGER TO BOTH TRADITIONAL BSH CHOPS, AND THE NEW SKOOL RETRO-CHOPPER CROWD TOO.
NIK
IN-YER-FACE 'ONDA

A few months ago, while down doing the two Essex NCC bikes that appeared in issue 438, Jim Ord, ex-SmileyMonkeyCustoms and, as you’ll’ve seen in the News last issue, one of the guys behind the newly launched Ashbarn Motorcycles, mentioned that Knocker had a new bike (well, two actually), and was coming down with it (them). Given how in-yer-face his Ironhead was, and the fact that Jim reckoned Knocker’s CB750 was ‘proper out there’, I was looking forward to seeing it. When he rode in on this slammed and minimal SOHC, the uber-low ’pipes blowing up the dust behind him, handlebars in his face, and headlight where it couldn’t possibly light the road, I knew I had to get this one photographed too.

He’d always wanted an old CB750, the proper single-overhead-cam Honda that was the first real four-cylinder Japanese bike, to build a chop out of, and one day was talking to his mate American Jon, who lives in California and does a lot of importing of bikes and cars to the UK. During the conversation, he mentioned he’d like an old 750/4. Two months later Jon rang him and said: “Yo, man, you in this afternoon? I got your Honda, it’s being delivered to you today!” Knock rang Jim to ask him if he wanted to come and see it that evening, and by the time he arrived, he’d already had the grinder to the frame. Jim said: “What the f**k are you doing, man? That bike’s mint!” Whereupon Knock politely told him: “This is what we do, we build choppers!”

This story is from the February 2021 edition of Back Street Heroes.

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This story is from the February 2021 edition of Back Street Heroes.

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