ICON and ICON 1000 customs are intrinsic to our gear. The gear we design influences the bikes we build, and the bikes we build in turn influence the gear we will make. Every ICON bike is built by us in our home office of Portland, OR. The Iron Lung was no different.
She laid in the garage for multiple years waiting for a second breath. With the Spring apparel launch approaching in February 2014, it was finally time to resurrect this Sportster. The design brief was to replicate the bikes that Harley Davidson dared to build in the 1970s – world beating endurance and circuit racers. We have big plans for the ICON 1000 line of apparel so her bombastic approach would be deemed necessary.
The heart of the Iron Lung is a 1200 big bore kit that we used to transform the original 883 motor into something with a little bit more of a left hook. Supertrapp exhausts were grafted on so she may declare her independence through two smoking barrels.
Significant fabrication work went in to giving her the unique stance she currently flaunts. The front end features wide glide forks suspended by one-off billet triple clamps -exceedingly rare, devoid of worth, and loved by only the few and the awesome.
With the front end lowered and widened, a custom subframe was fabricated, and Progressive 970 shocks were added on the rear. The fairing was then halved by the hands of our resident King Solomon and then widened and reattached. The end result is an exceedingly wide, ridiculously low bike built for the smoothest, fastest road you can find.
Finishing touches include Fat Boy wheels replicating the blue tinge of vintage magnesium racing wheels, hand painted details by Garage 31, and custom seat by New Church Moto – resident Portland artisans we call on regularly.
Once completed, we headed down to an oval in Southern Oregon and kicked ‘er in the guts to be featured along side of our Spring 2014 ICON 1000 apparel collection – coming soon. Her handling was as questionable as the grandstand snacks, but she bore the brunt of torture with aplomb. It wouldn’t be an ICON 1000 bike without a true trial by fire. In Iron Lung’s case this was literal as she burst into flame after her initial shakedown run just a few weeks prior.
We build them, we thrash them, and then we build them again, all in pursuit of inspiring and being inspired by the apparel we build.
(Via:http://www.rideicon.com)
