In 2012 a Harley-Davidson Night Rod Special 2009 ABS came into our Kharkiv workshop and left as something else entirely. It was the first bike we took apart this deeply, arguably the first of its kind in the country, and the reason Iron Custom Motors exists as a custom brand. Back then we signed our work I.C.M. Everything since starts here.
A brief that argues with itself
Yaroslav Lutytskyi, who directed the project, wanted a motorcycle laconic and showy, brutal and technological all at once. As the only one of its kind in Ukraine it also had to move along what we politely called our roads, post-war vintage style. And a crate of parts from a dozen makers is not a Lego set.
Stock inside, unmistakable outside
Nobody ever called the Night Rod engine weak, so the internals stayed as the factory built them. Chasing dragster brutality rather than lap times, we only pumped it up a little: a K&N free-flow filter, a Vance & Hines 2-into-1 exhaust and a Vance & Hines fuel controller. Twenty newton-metres more torque, and a voice that arrives before the bike.
Air at both ends, and a computer of our own
Air suspension is routine on cars, rare on motorcycles and almost always American. Yaroslav wanted it at both ends. The hardware came from Tricky Air & Billet Inc., Tennessee: rear air shocks and a front fork with its triple clamps. The shocks are unremarkable; the fork is not. Three existed in the world then — two with Fred Kodlin, one with us. Upside-down, pneumatic, 55 mm tubes, Yamaha R1 forks shortened and adapted case by case.
What made this a motorcycle and not a parts list was the control system, and that we built ourselves: computerised ride height, stiffness and inflation sequence. There was nobody to buy such a system from, and the country got its first bike with adjustable ride height.
How it actually rides
American low-riders park lying flat on their belly, no side stand. We declined that on purpose: our roads would not forgive it. So it sits 2 cm off the ground at rest, 12 cm on the move. The rest came out of the calculations, the hardest part — reduced trail, reworked ergonomics, a shifted centre of mass. The First does not wander: composed to 180 km/h, steady even with your arms spread wide. In a hard corner its 330 rear tyre traces the line a standard Night Rod traces on a 240. Air was the only way to make a low-rider rideable there.
Matte black, and what refuses to stay black
The bodywork is built from No Limit Custom parts; the German house makes complete kits and separate pieces, and combining them well is how bodywork becomes yours. The wheels are NLC too — 3.25×21" front on an Avon Venom 120/70R21, 12×17" rear under a 330/30R17 — plus NLC discs, HHI calipers, Joker Machine bars and risers, Rizoma mirrors.
All matte black, and nothing looks dull thanks to what refuses to be black: polished cylinder fins, discs, bolts, hoses, suspension parts. Almost nobody notices the holes in the wheel spokes rhyming with those in the radiator cover. Airbrush by Dmitry Dmitriev; on the airbox our lettering sits in black gloss, as if scratched with a nail.
The debut, and what it started
The First went public at MotoBike 2012, on the MotoDrive magazine stand, taking part of the floor and more of the attention. The magazine put the build at $80,000. Our firstborn, as Yaroslav called it — and the bike that fixed the kind of workshop we would be: modernise a Harley as deeply as you like, it still has to survive real roads and be serviceable anywhere. A year later came Cocktail, our white bagger, and Fetish, the first Ukrainian custom at the AMD World Championship — both its children.
