What are a father and son to do with a free weekend when Mom is away?  Let’s build a car.  Let’s build a rat rod. Start with a [poorly] chopped 1927 Ford Model T sedan body, purchased as an abandoned project, add 40 feet of 2X4x3/16” steel tubing in the garage, and a set of axles just laying around.  This was Father’s Day weekend 2013.  By Sunday night, the body was sitting on a frame and the suspension mocked up. 

While we love custom built high displacement bikes, there is still room in our fantasy garage for the right two-stroke.  Not just a ringy-ding-ding bike, but a cool urban hipster on which we can arrive at our favorite mid-town watering hole with a roar and a glorious cloud of fragrant purple smoke.

Chris Zahner (of NYC, natch) has built just such a bike.  This is his creation, built from the bones of a 1975 Yamaha DT 250.

Engineers would refer to this phase as “compression,” but we like “squeeze.” All valves closed and and the piston and ring assembly rushing upward to turn a little air and fuel into a horsepower-producing bomb. Ah, it’s a beautiful thing. In fact, we think its even art; the hardware is sculpture and the diagrams make the perfect wall deco for the aesthetically minded petrol head.

OK, technically the first stroke of a four stroke engine is called “intake,” but you know what we mean.  There are many ways to get air and fuel into the combustion chamber – we’ve picked out a few examples of intake systems that look as beautiful as they perform.  

Our friend Matt is in Wisconsin, where summers are glorious (and, if you are a hot rodder winters are for planning projects), sent us these pics of his latest project.   This looks like fun from start to finish.  Here’s Matt’s story.