A former Hells Angels president explains why checking under his truck became part of daily life

Former Hells Angels Chicago president Mel Chancey says the most dangerous period of his time in the club was not necessarily the kind of violence people picture from biker wars, where rivals meet face to face and everyone knows where the threat is coming from.

Speaking with former Navy SEAL and podcaster Shawn Ryan on the Shawn Ryan Show, Chancey said the most frightening stretch came during the war between the Hells Angels and the Outlaws, when bombings created a kind of daily uncertainty that followed him everywhere.

Chancey described a period when turning a key, opening a door, or walking back to a parked vehicle could feel like a gamble, because the danger was no longer limited to a confrontation in the street or a fight with someone standing in front of him.

“You flip the ignition and the car was going to blow up,” Chancey said, describing the fear that surrounded that time. “You opened up a door, the door was going to blow up.”

It is the kind of detail that strips away the mythology of outlaw motorcycle clubs and leaves something colder behind: a life where routine tasks became security checks, and where danger could be hidden under a wheel well in a parking lot.

The Question That Brought Back The War Years

Ryan introduced the subject through what he called a “hot question,” explaining that he had used an AI model to scrape interviews, viral clips, and controversial moments tied to Chancey and the Hells Angels before asking about the most dangerous moment of Chancey’s time in the club.

The question referenced the long-running conflict between the Hells Angels and the Outlaws, a war Ryan described as one of the bloodiest biker wars in American history. It also brought up former Outlaws boss Kevin “Spike” O’Neil, whom Chancey said he knew.

Chancey said O’Neil is currently serving a life sentence, but when Ryan asked him to identify the single most dangerous moment he lived through, Chancey did not point to one shootout or one night in a bar.

Instead, he pointed to the bombing era.

The distinction matters because Chancey’s answer was less about bravado than about the psychology of living under a threat that could arrive quietly. A face-to-face fight, however violent, at least gave a person something to react to in the moment, but explosives made every parked car, door handle, and dark driveway feel suspicious.

Chancey told Ryan that when the bombings began, the threat “could have came from anywhere,” and looking back, he considered that stretch the most dangerous time of all.

Why A Mirror Stick Became Part Of The Routine

Chancey said he eventually developed a routine that would have looked strange to anyone who did not understand the context.

He described coming out of a store, opening the trunk of his Corvette, pulling out a long stick with a mirror attached to it, and then getting down on his knees to inspect the wheel wells and underside of the vehicle.

At the time, Chancey said, he was about 290 pounds, which made the scene even more noticeable to bystanders who might have simply seen a large man crouched beside his car, checking underneath it like something out of a movie.

“They probably thought I was a lunatic,” Chancey told Ryan, imagining what ordinary people must have thought if they saw him doing it outside a grocery store or gym.

Ryan asked whether he literally did that every time, and Chancey answered yes.

That answer gives the story its weight. It was not a dramatic one-time check after a warning, and it was not just a habit before long road trips. Chancey said it was part of daily life because he never knew what might have happened while he was inside a store, at the gym, or away from the clubhouse.

He gave the example of training for two hours in a gym while his vehicle sat in a wide-open parking lot surrounded by stores. In that time, he said, someone could have gone underneath the truck or car and attached something.

The same concern applied to buildings. Chancey said he worried about devices being wired to doors when no one was at the clubhouse.

An Explosive Device Found Under A Truck

Ryan asked Chancey if he ever found anything under his own vehicle, and Chancey said he personally did not, but someone in the club did.

According to Chancey, one of their members found an explosive device under the wheel well of his truck, which Chancey believed may have been a Bronco. The member noticed something that did not look right, with wires hanging from it, and contacted local police.

Chancey said the police then called in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and a bomb squad responded to the scene.

As Chancey described it, the device could not be safely removed or deactivated, so authorities built a perimeter and used a water cannon to blow it apart.

Ryan reacted with disbelief as Chancey explained that the device had to be destroyed in place. For Chancey, though, it was the kind of incident that confirmed why the checks were necessary.

He said he never found anything under his own vehicle or attached to his house doors, but he always looked. When he arrived at one of his homes at night, he said, he would get out of the vehicle with a gun already in his hand, not simply tucked away where he could reach for it.

His reason was simple: he did not know whether someone might be hiding in the bushes or waiting somewhere nearby.

That is not a normal way to live, and the point is worth stating plainly. Whatever someone thinks of biker clubs, their conflicts, or the choices that brought people into that world, Chancey’s account describes a life where suspicion became survival.

Face-To-Face Violence Was Different

Chancey told Ryan that if members of rival clubs ran into each other face to face, then “whatever happened happened,” but bombings were different because they removed the direct confrontation.

That difference shaped his answer to Ryan’s question. It was not that face-to-face violence was safe or predictable in any ordinary sense, but it carried a different kind of risk. A person could read the moment, react to the person in front of him, and understand where the threat was coming from.

Bombs, as Chancey explained it, changed the rules. The danger could be under a vehicle, behind a door, or waiting in a place that looked ordinary until the moment it was too late.

That was why he checked under his truck, looked around when arriving home, and treated normal daily movement like a security operation.

There is a grim practicality to the way he described it. He did not tell the story like a person trying to make the routine sound glamorous. He told it like someone who had accepted an exhausting reality because he believed the alternative could be fatal.

The Patch Question

Ryan followed with another question, asking what would happen if someone was caught wearing a Hells Angels patch they had not earned.

Chancey said there had been an incident involving a man who had his entire back tattooed with a Hells Angels patch, even though the club did not know him.

According to Chancey, the man came into their neighborhood and claimed he had once been a member in Oakland, a particularly serious claim because of Oakland’s place in Hells Angels history. Chancey said the club checked with Oakland, and no one there had heard of him.

Chancey explained that when a member leaves the club, an “out date” is placed on Hells Angels tattoos, marking the month and year the person left. He said he had one himself after leaving, though he later covered it up.

The man in question, Chancey said, had no such out date, and after the club confirmed he was not known in Oakland, Chancey said it became their job to remove the tattoo.

He described the incident bluntly, saying they found the man in a bar, took him out against his will, put him in a van, and removed the tattoo with irons.

It is a disturbing account, and it also shows how seriously those symbols were treated inside that world. Chancey said members had given their lives for the club, and to him, wearing the insignia without earning it was not just pretending. It was claiming something tied to sacrifice, loyalty, and violence.

The Dangers Of Pretending

Chancey told Ryan that fake patches and fake club insignia are easier to find now, with replicas available online, including patches, officer tags, and full sets of club-style gear.

He said he had recently seen a video that appeared to show a Mongols member taking a Hells Angels patch off a man on a motorcycle, but he believed the clip was fake because there was no real altercation and the supposed Hells Angel did not even get off the bike.

Chancey also said that in his time, tattoo artists in their neighborhoods knew not to put a Hells Angels death head or club tattoo on someone unless the club itself had sent the person.

When a member earned his patch, Chancey said, getting tattooed was often one of the first things that followed. But he said some tattoo artists had to be “schooled” after putting club imagery on people who simply walked in with a stencil and claimed they belonged.

To an outsider, the idea of risking trouble by pretending to be part of an outlaw motorcycle club may seem absurd. Chancey seemed to agree, saying that even if someone thought the clubs were cool, he could not understand why a normal person would want to put that insignia on themselves without having earned it.

A Life Defined By Consequences

Chancey’s conversation with Ryan was brief, but it covered two subjects that point to the same underlying reality: in the world he described, symbols had consequences, and so did routines.

The mirror stick in the trunk was not paranoia for the sake of drama. In Chancey’s telling, it was a response to real explosive devices, real bomb squads, and a real period when members worried that opening a door or starting a vehicle could be the last ordinary thing they ever did.

The tattoo story, meanwhile, showed another side of the same culture, where identity and reputation were guarded with violence and where claiming something unearned could draw a response most people would never imagine.

Ryan’s question asked for the most dangerous moment of Chancey’s time in the Hells Angels, but Chancey’s answer was not really one moment. It was an entire way of living, day after day, with danger hidden in the places most people never think to check.

That may be the most revealing part of the interview: the danger was not only in the war itself, but in the way the war followed people into parking lots, driveways, gyms, grocery stores, and every quiet moment when a person had to decide whether the vehicle was safe enough to start.