American Chopper viewers who tuned in for the Teutul family fights also watched Cody Connelly move from a high-school job into a full-time fabrication role at Orange County Choppers. After leaving the shop, he eventually moved from motorcycle work into excavation and demolition.
Search “what happened to Cody from American Chopper” and you get a pile of guesswork, most of it copied from other guesswork. Below is a timeline built only from what is actually documented, with the date attached to each claim so you can see how fresh it is, plus an explicit list of the popular claims that no record supports.
Cody Connelly Timeline: What Is Actually Documented
| When | What is on the record | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Starts at Orange County Choppers while attending Valley Central High School in Newburgh, New York | Distractify, updated April 27, 2020; FanBuzz profile |
| March 31, 2003 | American Chopper premieres on Discovery Channel after a 2002 documentary pilot | Wikipedia series record; Discovery series page |
| 2005 | Finishes high school after OCC sponsors his training at the American Motorcycle Institute, then stays on as a working fabricator | FanBuzz profile |
| 2007 | Leaves OCC and joins former OCC fabricator Vinnie DiMartino at V-Force Customs | SlashGear, January 30, 2026 |
| July 2009 | Sues OCC, saying he never received the Old School chopper promised to him on camera | Wikipedia series record |
| 2010 to 2012 | Makes sporadic later appearances in the franchise, including work with Paul Teutul Jr. at Paul Jr. Designs | SlashGear, January 30, 2026 |
| 2011 | Secondary coverage says the civil action is settled and dismissed; the report does not cite a court record | Distractify, updated April 27, 2020 |
| By 2026 | A secondary cast roundup identifies Connelly as running Revel Ranch Excavation in Pine Bush, New York; the company site confirms the location and services but not his surname or ownership | SlashGear, January 30, 2026; revelranchllc.com, read August 8, 2026 |
| February 21, 2026 | Orange County Choppers Original premieres; Connelly is not in the announced cast | TVmaze; cast coverage published early 2026 |
Four things that timeline does not include, because no record supports them: a stated reason for the career change, any claim about his relationship with the Teutuls today, any offer or refusal tied to the 2026 series, and any appearance in the 2018 Discovery revival.
From Valley Central High School to OCC
Connelly started at Orange County Choppers in 2001, while he was still attending Valley Central High School in Newburgh, New York. He came in young, and he became a fan favorite fast, partly because he was the only crew member who had to work around a class schedule.
OCC sponsored his attendance at the American Motorcycle Institute, where he picked up formal fabrication and welding training alongside the on-the-job hours he was logging at the shop. By the time he finished high school in 2005, he was a working fabricator on a show pulling millions of viewers a week.
His role was the grunt work fabrication actually consists of: cutting, shaping, mocking up, fitting, then doing it again because the build changed. Much of that labor sat behind the show’s family-drama edit. Nobody hands an eighteen-year-old the tank.
What He Did on the Show
Connelly worked as a fabricator through the peak Discovery years, the run that produced the themed builds people still remember. Those builds were absurd in the best way: a firefighter tribute, a military tribute, builds for sports franchises and beverage brands. Each one needed custom sheet metal, custom mounts, custom everything. Connelly was one of the people doing that while the cameras stayed on the family arguments out front.
He was also, briefly, a character in his own right. The show followed a personal project bike for him, which is a large part of why the lawsuit that came later mattered to viewers who had watched it get built.
For the shop’s side of the story, our breakdown of what happened to Orange County Choppers and Paul Sr. covers the business, the litigation, and where the company sits now. Our Billy Lane profile covers another builder from the same era of cable motorcycle TV, and the Detroit Choppers build roundup shows what a shop from that generation looks like when it stays small.
Why He Left OCC in 2007
The honest answer on motive is that nobody outside Connelly’s circle knows, because he has not given the long-form interview that would explain it. Anyone presenting a reason as fact is filling a gap with a guess.
What is documented is the sequence. Vinnie DiMartino, the shop’s most experienced fabricator, left OCC in 2007 to start his own business. Connelly left the same year and joined him at V-Force Customs. Reporting published in January 2026 puts both moves in 2007 and describes Connelly’s later appearances in the franchise as sporadic rather than a return to staff.
The broader context is worth stating without pretending it explains his decision: bike-show television is not a stable career. Shows get cancelled, revived, and cancelled again. Crew pay rarely matches what the public assumes cable money looks like. Plenty of builders from that era ended up somewhere other than a custom shop once the boom cooled, which our Exile Cycles retrospective touches on from the shop side.
The Lawsuit Nobody Mentions
In July 2009 Connelly filed a civil action against Orange County Choppers. The core of it was the Old School chopper, the bike Paul Teutul Sr. had promised him on the show and that Connelly said he never actually received, along with claims over the use of his name. Secondary coverage says the action settled and was dismissed in 2011, but that report does not cite the court record. These were civil claims, not criminal charges.
That is the whole documented record of the dispute. There is no published settlement figure, no admission of anything by either side, and no statement from Connelly about it since. Treat any article that gives you a dollar amount as fiction.
Revel Ranch Excavation
A January 30, 2026 SlashGear cast roundup identifies Connelly as the person running Revel Ranch Excavation, a demolition and excavation company in Pine Bush, New York, and describes the business as founded over a decade earlier. That is a secondary report, not a statement from Connelly or a public ownership record.
The company’s own website, read on August 8, 2026, states ten years of experience including a background in utility work, says the company is fully insured, and lists a Dig Safely New York 811 certification. The service list is a working small-business catalog:
- Drainage. French drains, gutter solutions, stormwater management.
- Septic and waterline. Repairs and installations, with 24/7 service listed for emergencies.
- Grading. Land leveling, grade correction, runoff control.
- Site work. Foundation digging and utility installation.
- Land clearing. Lot clearing, stump removal, tree cutting, driveway installation.
The stated service area covers Hudson Valley towns including Newburgh, Montgomery, Walden, Washingtonville, New Windsor, Cornwall-on-Hudson, Marlboro, Middletown, New Paltz, Gardiner, Wawarsing, Kerhonkson, and Ellenville. Testimonials on the site name a Cody, but the site does not print Connelly’s surname or identify him as the owner. The link between Connelly and the company therefore comes from the secondary cast reporting, while the official site confirms only the business details above.
The 2026 OCC Series, Without Cody
Orange County Choppers is back on television. Orange County Choppers Original premiered on February 21, 2026, running on MotorTrend and Discovery Channel, after Paul Teutul Sr. announced the series on social media in November 2025. The shop itself now operates as the OCC Road House in the Clearwater area of Florida rather than in the Hudson Valley.
Cast coverage published in early 2026 lists returning members for the new series and notes that some original cast members are missing. Connelly is not among the named returners. That is the accurate statement: he is absent from the announced cast, not that he refused an offer, because no offer is on the record either way.
If you are building bikes in your own garage rather than on a call sheet, our t-shirts and hoodies are cut for riders who actually own a welder.
The Claims You Will See That Nothing Supports
This is the part most “where is he now” pages skip. These four claims circulate widely and none of them trace back to a primary record:
That he ran the shop floor as OCC’s lead builder. He left in 2007. Whatever the shop’s build hierarchy looked like after that, he was not in it.
That he appeared in the 2018 Discovery revival. The January 2026 cast rundown describes his post-2007 appearances as sporadic and ties them to the Senior versus Junior era and Paul Jr. Designs, not the revival.
That he holds specific welding certifications or moved into industrial fabrication. This one is repeated confidently across cast-update posts with no document, employer, or interview behind it.
That he spent roughly two decades at OCC. Six years, 2001 to 2007, is what the record supports.
Where the sourcing is thin, the honest move is to say so rather than round it up into a sentence that reads well.
Where the Rest of the Shop Crew Went
Connelly’s name usually comes up alongside three others, and the same sourcing rules apply to all of them: cast rundowns published in 2026 are the best available record, and none of them are primary interviews.
Vinnie DiMartino worked at OCC from 2002 to 2007 and was the fabricator who turned Paul Jr.’s designs into rolling motorcycles during the peak years. He founded V-Force Customs with Connelly, later worked with Paul Jr. at Paul Jr. Designs, and now runs DiMartino Motorsports, offering car, bike, and truck repair and maintenance.
Paul Teutul Jr. runs Paul Jr. Designs, has collaborated with Ruff Cycles on an electric bike, wrote a book, and launched a podcast in 2021. He is the cast member who most successfully converted television exposure into a durable business of his own.
Michael “Mikey” Teutul was the shop’s comic relief rather than a builder, and no dated report places him back in the motorcycle industry.
Put those careers side by side and a pattern shows up that has nothing to do with talent. The people who stayed in the trade were the ones whose names were already attached to design and fabrication work independent of the OCC brand. The ones defined on screen by their position inside someone else’s shop had no role left once that shop stopped being a television production.
That is worth remembering the next time a builder becomes a personality. The show gives you an audience. It does not give you a business, and it does not transfer the audience with you when the format changes.
For the wider arc of how motorcycle television shaped what riders expect from a build, our motorcycle culture guide is the pillar for this cluster, and our motorcycle TV show roundup covers the shows that came before and after OCC.
Hit the Hudson Valley
Connelly is one of the few American Chopper alumni whose post-show pivot is boring in the best possible way. No comeback tour. No nostalgia-driven shop reopening. A business with a phone number and a service map, in a trade where nobody cares whether you were on Discovery.
We would rather link to that than to another recycled rumor. If a real interview ever lands and he explains the move himself, this page gets rewritten around it. Until then, the timeline above is the whole story, and the blank spaces in it stay blank.
Sources
- Here’s What Happened To The Cast Of American Chopper After The Show Ended - SlashGear, January 30, 2026. Secondary source for the 2007 departure from OCC, the move to V-Force Customs with Vinnie DiMartino, the later work with Paul Jr. Designs, the description of his later appearances as sporadic, and the identification of Connelly as running Revel Ranch Excavation in Pine Bush, New York.
- Revel Ranch Excavation official site. Primary source for the company’s location in Pine Bush, New York, its ten-year experience claim, its utility-work background, its insured status and 811 certification, its service list, its Hudson Valley service area, and testimonials naming a Cody. The site does not state Cody Connelly’s surname or ownership. Read August 8, 2026.
- What Happened To Cody From American Chopper - Distractify, updated April 27, 2020. Secondary source for the 2001 start at OCC while still in high school, the American Motorcycle Institute training, the move to V-Force Customs, and the claim that the civil action settled and was dismissed in 2011. The report does not cite a court record for the disposition.
- American Chopper - Wikipedia. Series broadcast record, including the March 31, 2003 Discovery premiere, and the record of Connelly’s July 2009 suit over the Old School chopper.
- Orange County Choppers Original - TVmaze. Network and premiere-date record for the 2026 series.
- Orange County Choppers official news page. Primary source for the shop’s current Florida location and the new Orange County Choppers Original series.
- American Chopper on Discovery. Series page for the original Discovery run.
- Cody Connelly biography - FanBuzz. Background on the Valley Central High School years and the OCC-sponsored American Motorcycle Institute training.
