Biker Build Off - Matt Hotch
March 26th, 2005 at 9:44 pm by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider"Just watched a rerun of the Biker Build Off with Matt Hotch. I’ll admit up front that choppers are not my preferred form of two wheeler but Matt Hotch does some very nice work. I like the fact that he is entirely self taught, welding, metal work, everything. His bike, the V Lux, used a Harley V Rod engine and looked really cool. He created a single sided swingarm with the brake on the engine so it wouldn’t clutter up the looks of the wheel which was machined out of a solid piece of aluminum. The rear tire was HUGE, something like a 360/30, kinda crazy but I liked it. Air suspension front and back, the front was a modified springer, no kickstand, the bike lowered onto the frame when parked. Maybe I was just in the right mood but I really liked it. The other bike, built by Rick Fairless, was a Triumph chopper. He gets points for using a Triumph engine but, in my opinion, the chopper was ugly.
These build offs sometimes aren’t very interesting, this one was ok. Matt Hotch was last year’s winner, something I was unaware of, I don’t follow these shows or custom chopper builders, but Matt was impressive. He had to hide a lot of wires and the radiator for the engine and he did a great job. They did toss out one number during the show, that rear wheel was machined special for him and cost around $15,000. Was he serious? $15K for a wheel? Well, at any rate, the level of skill and engineering on his bike was top shelf. He deserved the win.
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One Response to “Biker Build Off - Matt Hotch”
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December 1st, 2006 at 1:34 am
I am a huge fan of Matt hotchs’ V-Lux. What a bad-ass! Matt is my creative hero. I build scale custom choppers (approx. 1:12 scale) mostly out of materials that used to be other things from around the house and/or carved out of wood, acrylic etc. Using this method I built a replica of the V-Lux that came out pretty nice. Some of my techniques are more advanced now so I’m planning to build a new one in a larger scale soon. I heard that Matt was offered $1,000,000 for the V-Lux when he won the Biker Build-Off Championship and wouldn’t sell because someone would kill themselves on it. Which was cool I thought; So what made him finally sell it at such a reduced rate? I mean, I respect the integrity behind his decision to not sell initially and that sometimes creativity needs no monetary reward,so what happened? Either way, he’s still my hero. I place high value on a creative mind who’s work screams ” Don’t tell me what can’t be done!”
Sincerely,
Eric E. Lilienthal