Rational Radical
Rational Radical
AIN'T NO COOKIE CUTTER CUSTOM
WENDY F. BLACK
CONTRARY TO POPULAR OPINION, BOLT-ON BILLET parts and splashy paint do not a custom make. Just ask Mike Maldonado, owner of Heavy Cycle Customs in San Clemente, California. A virtual
unknown in the custom world, he created the elegant hot-rod pictured here, the antithesis of the overdone creations recently seen on the showbike circuit.
"Some people are going back to a cleaner look, getting
away from the graphics and real loud paint jobs,” Maldonado says. “They are looking more at the lines of the motorcycle. Customization is at a weird turning point.” Almost completely hand-crafted, Maldonado’s purple bike combines the clean, innovative lines of a radical with aesthetic subtlety.
“To really build a custom you need a well-thought-out concept,” he says, “and then you have to follow through-from the front of the bike to the back of the bike. I always say, if it doesn’t flow it doesn’t go.”
True enough. What with some builders trying to top themselves with each new showbike on one extreme, and the bolt-on bandwagon on the other, the time has come for a more rational radical. Maldonado’s may be it.
“My bike has very liquid lines,” he says. “They’re real curvy, like a surfboard. I designed the bike so that it looks
like it was one thought.”
The surfboard analogy is apropos. Raised in the quiet Southern California beach-front community of San Juan Capistrano, Maldonado admits his first love was not motorcycling. His early years were spent riding waves in the Pacific Ocean. Motorcycles didn’t enter the picture until he was 17.
Almost 20 years later, the 3 5-year-old retains the air of a surfer, but it’s been diluted with the demeanor of a biker.
He stands a stocky 5 foot, 10 inches tall in his Dr. Martens, and wavy, black hair cascades down his back. Relaxing in the living room of the home where he grew up, Maldonado gestures toward his bike, which stands sentry in his parents’ foyer. “The way I get lines for a bike is the way I used to shape boards,” he says. “I shaped the tank out of surfboard foam, made a mold, then made the tank out of kevlar and carbon-fiber.”
This bike is only his third effort, but he began fabricating parts and painting Harleys in the mid-1980s after being inspired by customizing experts such as Arlen Ness. “It’s hard when you’re starting out,” he says. “I’m trying to play with the big guys. I’m basically coming out of nowhere right now.”
For an unknown, though, he’s done pretty well. His creation won Best in Class at the Del Mar and Laughlin shows,
and drew rave reviews at the Oakland Roadster Show, although Maldonado admits that people have been tentative about approaching him with commissions. “I still don’t have a name like Arlen Ness, but my bike speaks for itself.”
Indeed it does. With a few exceptions, like the Boyd Coddington wheels and the 96-inch (1650cc) S&S-built motor, the motorcycle is all Maldonado.
Wrapped around the engine is a hand-formed steel-tube frame that, unlike most customs, incorporates rubber mounts for the engine/transmission unit. Unwilling to accept the handicaps of a rigid rear end, Maldonado also worked a single, fully adjustable Öhlins shock into the equation.
The swingarm is his own design, and it houses the taillights/running lights/turnsignals, derived from old Volkswagen Squareback lenses. He has a patent pending on the swingarm, which also incorporates covers to hide the axle and axle adjusters.
He also has a patent pending on the combination rear brake/belt-drive pulley. Frustrated with spending big money on custom wheels only to have them camouflaged by a brake assembly on one side and a sprocket on the other, Maldonado bolted a stainless-steel brake rotor to a machined aluminum beltdrive pulley, and attached two modified JayBrake calipers to the inside diameter of the rotor. “It’s cleaner, it’s compact and it doesn’t look like a big monster hanging out here,” he says.
The front brake-a single-disc affair with one two-piston JayBrake caliper ahead of the fork tube, another behind-is less complicated. But after eyeballing the finished product, Maldonado decided the setup required some additional ornamentation. So he machined an aluminum, crescent-moon bracket, which he calls a “Spanner” because it “spans between the two calipers.” The front fender is Maldonado’s own design. Because it is so low to the ground, driveways and potholes require caution and a smooth hand.
He also lays claim to the designs of the delicately angular handlebar, the gracefully sloping headlamp dome and the gently rounded fork cover, although the internals are stock Harley-Davidson. In an attempt to keep the bike’s lines as clean as possible, Maldonado integrated the tumsignal controls into the polished aluminum handgrips.
The only bone of contention from some of the bike’s more conservative admirers lies with the oversized floorboards. Critics claim they spoil the bike’s otherwise slim lines. The flat, polished-aluminum blades became scratched after Maldonado started riding the bike, particularly in sand-blown Daytona Beach, so, “The night before the bike show in Daytona, I stayed up all night and made these little tribal-style pads and threw them on there,” he says. As it turned out, they were keepers-detractors be damned.
Maldonado also executes his own bodywork and paint jobs. This bike wears a Lapis Blue base with a coat of Candy Purple on top. Although he admits a fondness for flames, the overly complicated graphics currently en vogue on the showbike circuit would have detracted from the lines of the motorcycle. Besides, “I really don’t like that foo-foo stuff,” he says.
Further enhancing the bike’s lines are its curvy, side-byside shotgun pipes. “That was very hard to do,” he says with a trace of pride. “You can’t just buy these bends. I designed the pipes and a friend built them. We bought pre-bent muffler bends and straights, then cut ’em, welded ’em and mitered ’em together.”
As lovely as those pipes look, however, they create the one custom fly in this bright-purple ointment. When it comes time to actually ride this motorcycle, the exhausts slam the ground if the rider so much as glances at a tight comer. With just a few inches of daylight between pipes and pavement, right-side cornering clearance is next to nothing. This dilemma is due, of course, to the bike’s showbike mission, and can be remedied-will be remedied, says its owner-now that the show season is coming to a close. “The bike’s just too low,” admits Maldonado. He waits a beat, then adds with a grin, “But it sure does look cool.”
Pavement-scraping pipes aside, this is a motorcycle that can be ridden. “You could ride it everyday,” Maldonado says. “Actually, I ride it more than I tell people, because I can’t find anyone to insure me right now.”
An electric-starter switch is located beneath the easily removable black-leather-and-suede seat. Upon ignition, the engine rumbles raucously to life. And with a flash of polished
aluminum, a thunderous exhaust note and an electrical storm of sparks, Maldonado’s creation tears off down the boulevard.
All told, this was a six-month project: two months of planning and rounding up parts, and four months of construction. Price, if the bike were for sale, would be $75,000. While Maldonado acknowledges that’s quite a chunk of change for any motorcycle, he feels it’s a viable figure given the bike’s one-off custom nature. Besides, truth be told, he really doesn’t want to sell it.
Maldonado’s long-term goal is to create his own motorcycle company. Uninterested in joining the growing ranks of Harley-clone manufacturers, he has something more exotic in mind. “I want to build like Ferrari,” he says, going on to describe, “a limited-production turnkey concept bike where a guy doesn’t have to spend $100,000. I want a bike that costs about $30,000, that you can just turn on and ride off
the showroom floor.” When pressed about the kind of engine that might power this machine, Maldonado only smiles and says, “It will definitely be a V-Twin, but with four valves and double overhead cams. I want an 80-inch motor that makes about 100 horsepower.”
For now, Maldonado will have to be satisfied with tinkering about in his small shop (225 Calle Pintoresco, San Clemente, CA 92673; 714/489-4389). At a time when customs are fast becoming impersonal bolt-on bikes with nothing more to individualize them than a fancy paint job, Maldonado maintains that his motorcycles are the result of his affinity for doing things a little bit differently. “This bike has got a lot of me in it,” he says. “The tank, the rear brake, the swingarm-those are my signatures.”
And judging by what we’ve seen, Mike Maldonado’s penmanship is impeccable.
