American Hardcore Customs' Hellbound

Story by Eric Bass, Photos by Todd Williams

It isn’t every day that a man comes face to face with his own tombstone. Jesse Fossum has… and the way he tells it, it was a pretty spooky experience. His painter, Brian Bossen had been tasked with creating a suitably sinister graphic design for Fossum’s new Hellbound bike. The builder’s only instructions to Brian were, “Sketch me up something with dead things all over it.” Jesse just hadn’t counted on one of the dead things being him.

Bossen dutifully dragged the un-colored custom off into his powdercoat pit of pain and conjured up a menacing menagerie of skulls, skeletons, and rustic chains against a blood red base coat. As Jesse strolled into the painter’s workshop, eager to see his freshly tattooed creation, he found himself stopped dead in his tracks. As the coup de grace, Brian had airbrushed a tombstone on the fender of the demon steed. The inscription read (you guessed it!):

“RIP Jesse Fossum”

Yikes!

When not suffering near heart attacks at the hands of smart-ass painters, our man Jesse is known for being the “big fish” biker in a little pond by the name of Brainerd, Minnesota. “I gotta make sure I got the biggest, the fastest everything at all times, so if somebody else does somethin’ then I just gotta do somethin’ bigger and faster.” It was out of that burning desire to roll on the baddest bike in town, combined with his morbid fascination for all things non-living, that the sinister spawn known as Hellbound was born.

Framework is American Hardcore’s specialty, and the chopper originated with a frame Jesse had previously designed for another build. “I really liked the way that bike turned out so I kept a lot of the same lines… everything is just bigger.” Tweaks included the backbone being raised an inch and a half to accommodate a larger engine, and the tail end of the rigid frame spread wider to accept a fatter tire. Jesse also pulled the front suspension out to a 50-degree rake. As a trick touch, they gave their specs to Fat Katz to create a rear fender with an oil tank integrated into it.

You’d never know by looking at it, but a mix up with a supplier had Fossum piecing together a grab bag of parts to make up the front end. The Accutronix Gothic 7-degree trees mimic the skeletal feel of the bike, and the headlight illuminates it on night rides to give the bike a “bat out of Hell” look. The dead-n-decayed theme carries over to knobby “finger bone-like” PM Contour hand controls and the skull shaped Pro Smooth foot pegs fashioned by Supreme Legends.

For a build that “went together pretty smoothly”, the pipes proved to be the biggest lil’ bump in the road. The initial plan was to create dual side-by-side pipes but there wasn’t enough clearance, so instead Jesse opted for a 2-into-1 ceramic pipe. Amazingly, Fossum claims the pipe configuration didn’t compromise performance: “I had this thing on a dyno and she’s putting out almost 175 horsepower through them so, it’s pretty impressive for a 2-into-1 pipe like that on a 145” motor to get that kind of power.”

Speaking of the big mill, Jesse decided on a naturally aspirated engine, a move to make the bike a bit more streetable than his previous nitrous and/or supercharged powerplants. “I didn’t have to worry about the supercharger coming apart and blowing up like I’ve done so many times in the past, and nitrous is fun but you’re always fillin’ bottles and that becomes a pain in the ass.”

Fossum claims that his shop is so close to Brainerd International Raceway that “I can smell nitromethane when the wind blows the right way.” Huffing the fumes of all that go-fast juice may have begun to work its way into Jesse’s brain. After all, this Minnesota mad man had a tether kill switch installed in Hellbound in order to make this show-caliber custom legitimate for racing. If it doesn’t find a new home with a fat cat buyer soon, it’ll be right at home on the drag strip burnin’ rubber for Jesse. Fossum acknowledges that the stylistic elements of the two-wheeled burners that rip up the drag strip across the street frequently work their way into his designs. Witness, for example, Hellbound’s flicked tongue-like seat inspired by the saddles of pro drag bikes.

Another nod to the strip is the chopper’s automatic clutch made by EFM. You’ll still need to pull in the lever when shifting, but the “automatic” can idle in first gear without having to engage the clutch up to an adjustable limit of 1300 RPM. A definite luxury, whether digging your toes in at the raceway’s Christmas tree, or stuck doing the waddle at a crowded rally.

Burnt out on the usual array of shiny billet wheels, Jesse asked Brian for something more unusual that accentuated the darker theme of the bike. Bossen outdid himself in creating the skull ‘n crossbones shaped rims, then powdercoating them blood red, airbrushing them into un-living color, and throwing down some clear coat to protect it all. The death dealer rolls around on an Avon Venom X front and a 300mm Avon Venom R rear rubbers, and to keep its night rider out of the grave, stopping power is provided by HHI 4-piston 11.5“ disc brakes.

And what of the bone chilling death wish that was Jesse’s tombstone? A little too bone chilling for Jesse… once he picked his chin up off of his boot tops, changed his underwear, and regained his ability to speak, he gently let Brian know that there was no way in…well, in Hell that he was about to ride off into the Brainerd sunset on a 175 hp chopper sporting his obituary on the fender. Realizing that dead customers pay no bills, Bossen begrudgingly painted over Jesse’s inscription on the tombstone so that it wouldn’t jinx him. And thus, with a slight last minute modification, Hellbound was unleashed upon our earthly realm.