The shoemaker without boots — Yaroslav Lutytskyi decided that old line was not going to be his story. After years of building motorcycles for other people, he sewed a pair to his own size and taste. The donor was a Harley-Davidson Rocker C, a mass-production custom that, once the work was done, you could recognise only by the oil tank, the under-seat frame section and the silhouette of the fuel tank. Built in our Kharkiv workshop in 2013, back when Iron Custom Motors was still called I.C.M. And built to ride: a proper custom looks one hundred percent only in motion, with the rider as part of the design.
Riding on air
The factory frame stayed, with minimal changes — the softail rear did not. In its place went a cantilever setup around a WarEagle single-sided swingarm, modified in the workshop, with the stock shocks replaced by a Progressive Suspension Airtail pair: one spring unit, one pneumatic. Ride height and stiffness adjust from a compressor, the whole system hides in the under-seat space, and the control buttons sit flush in the air-filter cover. Speaking of which — the filter is an Arlen Ness Stage II, which breathes twenty percent better. If you believe the advertising.
Nothing shows
The front end is an American Suspension B-17 upside-down fork, the same model BossHoss, V8 Choppers and Paul Teutul Jr.'s PJD build with. Its brake calipers are integrated into each leg, and the brake line runs inside the fork, exiting through the top triple clamp — the maker ships the legs already assembled with the triples. The same discipline runs through the whole bike: a smooth chromed ape-hanger bar by Custom Cycle Control Systems, its grips flowing straight into hydraulic cylinders, every wire, hose and cable hidden inside. A cylindrical oil cooler sits ahead of the engine with a pressure gauge set into its end face. Twin RBS Custom ellipsoid lensed headlamps light the way; Kellermann passenger pegs carry integrated turn signals; the wiring was done in-house. The stock seat was recut and retrimmed in leather at Sinelnikov Design.
Twenty-six inches of canvas
The wheels are Thomason Performance solid billet discs — 3.75×26" front, 7×20" rear, wearing The Monster rubber in 120/50R26 and 200/40R20. Brake discs are Thomason too, with a DNA sprotor kit at the rear, disc and sprocket in one. Those solid discs became a canvas: skulls woven into floral ornament, airbrushed in contrast style across wheels and bodywork — and the paint was the workshop's own work.
Sound and nitrous
The engine — Harley-Davidson, 1,573 cc — stayed stock inside; it was only stripped and repainted. Its voice did not. The exhaust is a Bassani Covington HotRod 2-in-1, from a company that has built exhausts since 1969, and Yaroslav called the sound simply unreal. Then there is the part nobody expects on a chopper: a ZEX nitrous-oxide system with a polished aluminium Edelbrock bottle. It will not chase sportbikes, but it gives the bike an unheard-of briskness for a Harley.
The result
In May 2013 the team packed its suitcases for Essen, Germany: Fetish became the first Ukrainian custom ever entered in the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building, held on 10–12 May. Whatever the judges' scoresheets said, the bike had already entered the history of the country's custom building — it took a Kharkiv workshop to the world stage for the first time. While Fetish flew to Essen, Cocktail, our white bagger of the same year, quietly waited its turn at home. The magazine put the build at $65,000.
