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There are plenty of people who will tell you exactly how an Easy Rider Captain America replica should be built.
I know. I've heard from them.
When I built mine, I made a decision early on: I wasn't going to build an exact replica. I was going to build a Captain America motorcycle I could actually ride.
I wanted the unmistakable look and attitude of Captain America, but I also wanted a bike that would start when I wanted it to start, stop when I needed it to stop, make real power and cruise comfortably down the highway.
In other words, I built a restomod.
It had to look right. But it had to ride better.
The purists may not agree with some of the decisions I made.
That's okay.
I wasn't building the motorcycle for them.
I wanted something that captured the appearance and spirit of Captain America without forcing me to live with every limitation of a late-1960s custom motorcycle.
That meant changing four things that mattered when it was time to actually ride it:
Starting. Stopping. Power. Cruising.
Let's start with the obvious one.
My Captain America has electric start.
There's certainly something cool about walking up to an old Panhead and kicking it to life.
There's considerably less romance involved when the engine is hot, you're hot, your friends are ready to leave and the damn thing doesn't want to start.
I wasn't interested in proving anything every time I wanted to go for a ride.
Turn the key. Hit the starter. Fire it up.
Done.
This is where historical accuracy stopped making sense to me.
The original Captain America had a spool front wheel with no front brake at all. Braking was handled by a single drum brake at the rear.
It looked great.
As a braking system, it was woefully inadequate—and not something I was willing to depend on in modern traffic.
I was building a motorcycle that I intended to ride on real roads, around real cars and at highway speeds.
So mine got disc brakes front and rear.
Yes, that changes the appearance slightly from an exact replica.
I'll take the trade.
When somebody pulls out in front of you, nobody gives you extra points because your braking system is historically correct.
For a motorcycle that's going to sit on display, the original setup may be fine.
For one I planned to actually ride? Not a chance.
I absolutely wanted a Panhead.
That engine is a huge part of the character of Captain America. Take away the Panhead look and, to me, you've taken away part of what makes the motorcycle special.
But that didn't mean I needed original Panhead performance.
The engine in my Captain America is a modern, high-performance 88-cubic-inch Panhead.
It gives you the unmistakable old-school appearance, but it makes considerably more power than the original engine.
That's exactly what I wanted.
Old-school look. Modern performance.
I didn't want an old engine simply for the privilege of saying it was old. I wanted the visual character of the Panhead with the power and reliability to make the motorcycle genuinely fun to ride.
The original-style setup would have used a four-speed transmission.
Mine has a six-speed.
That's a big improvement once you're actually out on the road.
The additional gearing gives you the performance you want through the gears and lets the engine settle into a much more comfortable cruise when you're out on the highway.
Combine that six-speed with the high-performance 88-inch Panhead and you've got a motorcycle that doesn't just look like Captain America.
It's a motorcycle you can actually put miles on.
And that was the whole point.
That's probably the simplest way I can describe the entire build.
Looks right. Rides better.
I didn't want modern equipment hanging all over the motorcycle and destroying the character of the original design.
The changes had to make sense.
Electric start made it easier to live with.
Front and rear disc brakes made it safer.
The 88-inch high-performance Panhead gave it substantially more power.
The six-speed made it a better cruising motorcycle.
Every change had a purpose.
Because I wasn't building Captain America just to look at it.
I intended to ride the thing.
Long before I worried about brakes, transmissions or cubic inches, there was Easy Rider.
Like a lot of people from my generation, I saw those motorcycles on the screen and never really forgot them.
Other people watched the movie.
I saw motorcycles I wanted to build.
That image stayed in my head for years.
Eventually, looking wasn't enough.
I wanted one of my own.
So I built it.
That's the other half of this story.
The first video isn't really about specifications, brakes or whether every piece of the motorcycle is historically correct.
It's about what happens when something you saw decades ago sticks with you long enough that eventually you have to make it real.
And once I built Captain America, apparently one Easy Rider-inspired motorcycle wasn't enough.
But building the bikes was only part of it.
Some of my favorite memories aren't of Captain America sitting polished in the garage.
They're of riding it.
Captain America and the Billy bike out where they belonged—on the road.
And even better than riding these motorcycles was riding them with friends.
We'd meet up, fill the bikes with fuel and hit the road.
Sometimes one guy was ahead. Sometimes somebody else came past. We'd move around, listen to those engines and just enjoy riding the motorcycles we had built.
There was nothing staged about it.
There was no social-media strategy.
Nobody was thinking about views, retention or whether we had enough B-roll.
We were just riding motorcycles.
Years later, that old footage and those photographs mean more to me than another perfect picture of a motorcycle sitting still.
I didn't build Captain America just so I could say I owned one.
I built it because I wanted to experience it.
Here's the part of this story that probably makes the best argument for why I built my Captain America the way I did.
The guy who eventually bought my bike already owned an exact replica.
His had the old-school setup—including the spool front wheel with no front brake and the single drum brake at the rear.
In other words, he already owned the motorcycle the purists said I should have built.
There was just one problem.
He was afraid to ride it.
He lives near the Virginia-Kentucky border, where riding means mountain roads.
And he rides the Tail of the Dragon.
If you're not familiar with it, the Tail of the Dragon is an 11-mile stretch of US 129 famous for packing 318 curves into those 11 miles.
Now ask yourself a question.
Would you want to ride 318 mountain curves on a Captain America chopper with no front brake and a single rear drum brake?
Neither did he.
That's one of the reasons he bought mine.
My Captain America still gave him the look and experience he wanted, but now he had front and rear disc brakes, electric start, a high-performance 88-inch Panhead and a six-speed transmission.
He had a Captain America he could actually take into the mountains and ride.
And I think there's something pretty interesting about that.
A guy who already owned an exact Captain America replica bought my restomod because he wanted a Captain America he could actually ride.
I don't think I could make a better argument for the way I built this motorcycle.
The exact replica may have been more historically correct.
Mine got ridden.
Absolutely.
I'm not against historically accurate motorcycles.
If your goal is to reproduce Captain America exactly as it appeared in Easy Rider, build it that way. There's something pretty cool about getting every little detail right.
That just wasn't my goal.
I wanted the visual character that made Captain America one of the most recognizable motorcycles ever built while making sensible changes that allowed me to actually enjoy owning it.
So I gave up some authenticity.
I added electric start.
I added front and rear disc brakes.
I used an 88-inch high-performance Panhead.
I installed a six-speed transmission instead of a four-speed.
And then, instead of worrying about whether every nut and bolt matched a motorcycle built more than half a century ago...
I went riding with my friends.
I'll take that trade every time.
So here's the question.
If you were building your own Captain America, which way would you go?
Would you reproduce the original as closely as possible—even down to the spool front wheel, no front brake and rear drum?
Or would you keep the Captain America look and make the changes that allow you to start it, stop it, make more power and comfortably put miles on it?
I know which one I'd choose.
Looks right. Rides better.
And more importantly...
Mine got ridden.
If you enjoy real-world classic cars, motorcycles, restorations, restomods, garage projects and the stories behind them, there's plenty more at VTwinsToV8s.com.
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This site documents real builds, tools, and shop work from my own projects. Some pages are showcases. Some are how-tos and tool reviews. If you’re working on a project and want experienced guidance, I offer one-on-one coaching.