Well, he did. The $1,200 he paid a friend - $600 now, the rest "when you get around to it" - led Shelton, 38, to a new hobby, a new lifestyle and, more recently, a new business, Independents Choppers near Newark.In 1992, when Shelton started putting the box of 1979 Harley-Davidson Sportster parts together, he didn't trick it out. He restored the bike to stock-showroom condition. But as he rode it around, he started to notice custom choppers that didn't look like all the other bikes on the road.To give his bike a little personality, he changed the seat, then the handlebars. Then he lowered the back end. "It was all downhill from there," he says.

Shelton was hooked on choppers.Shelton spent more time in his Newark garage at night and on the weekends. When he was finished chopping, the motorcycle didn't look anything like a Harley you would find in a showroom.Choppers are hot these days, thanks to television programs such as "American Chopper" and "Biker Build-Off," both on the Discovery Channel. But the style goes back 60 years, to the 1940s, when bikers started removing parts - called chopping - from heavy American motorcycles to make them lighter and more like the European motorcycles many had ridden during World War II. In those days, they used to call them "bobbers," Shelton says.Since chopping his first bike, Shelton has built two more , a black, blue and teal rigid-frame bike with a kick-start, big-bore generator shovelhead motor and what's known as "the gold bike," a big-tube, rigid-frame bike with an Evolution-style motor.

Shelton built the gold bike on spec - he's asking $30,000 - to show what the shop can do from scratch. It glows with orange paint, rainbow flakes and blue flames licking the gas tank. The front forks jut out, with plenty of rake, in true hot-rod chopper fashion.The gold bike is stripped down as far as you can go. "There's nothing that doesn't need to be there," Shelton says. "No saddlebags or big comfy seat." Shelton's custom-made choppers range in price from $20,000 to $40,000.An auto mechanic for 18 years, Shelton and his wife opened Independents Choppers last year in the Old Baltimore Pike Industrial Park near Newark.It's everything you'd expect in a chopper shop, with shiny bikes in various states of repair everywhere, stereo barking out electric guitars, gears and grease on workbenches, images of scantily clad woman on the walls and bearded guys in leather jackets helping themselves to cold beer from the fridge.

Shelton repairs and customizes bikes. He'll do whatever a biker wants, as long as it works. A recent client had a drawing of a devil's pitchfork. Shelton used it to make a chrome sissy bar.Zak Skibo, 29, has brought two bikes to Shelton for customization. Right now his black 2002 Dyna Super Glide Harley is in Shelton's shop to be stripped down and personalized.Shelton and Skibo changed the look of the Harley by painting the rims black, cutting the fenders, removing the rear shocks, installing new handlebars and tweaking the engine. All this chopping serves two purposes, Skibo says. "It's half aesthetics - 'Look at me!' - and half performance."Skibo has been interested in motorcycles since he was a kid, when his parents wouldn't allow him to buy one.

As soon as he moved out, he started saving money to buy a bike.When it comes to choppers, he prefers a lean, not flashy, bike. The bikes on the television shows - soap operas for men - usually have too much chrome, Skibo says.Shelton sees choppers as an outlet for his mechanical creativity, drawing inspiration from hot rods, airplanes, electric guitars and sometimes his own mistakes. "You might cut something the wrong way and find out it looks better," he says.

This spring Shelton and Skibo plan to hit the road, heading to the Iron Horse Smokeout in Salisbury, N.C., in June.In the meantime, they still have more chopping to do on Skibo's bike to get it leaner and meaner.Once you start, it seems it's hard to stop.Contact Kent Steinriede at 324-2894 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it