Custom Builder Ron Finch and Captivator

The beauty of Sturgis is you never know who you’re going to run into. Case in point.
 
I’m checking out the motorcycles entered in the Seventh Annual Metzeler Custom Bike Show at the Buffalo Chip when I see a crazy bike with twisted rodwork everywhere and psychadelic colors covering every inch of its exposed frame and handlebars. In place of a padded seat sat a curious collection of perfectly bent and shaped rods, each one cleanly welded to the rails of an offset frame. A fluted pattern, like tin cookie cutters, is integrated throughout the build. There’s no tank above the Crazy Horse V-Plus engine, leaving an unobstructed view of the chrome bottle cap-shaped heads.
 
Quirky but creative, I walk away to check out the bobbers, baggers and assorted radicals. My circles within the building housing the show and Michael Lichter’s Rebel Rousers’ exhibit keep leading me back to this crazy custom. I pause to take photographs, circling the bike, try to count the number of times the bottle cap design is woven into the build. Four are in the top of the frame itself, two large ones welded between the two tubes of the backbone over the cylinder heads, one in the pattern of the seat area, and one more opposite to it. Bottle caps serve as floorboards, as pipe ends, and as an oil tank. The homemade exhaust pipe stretching from the front cylinder snakes through a bottle cap before bending back and down the left side. The builder even snuck one on the metal guard he created for the Evil Engineering 17-inch extended primary.

The motorcycle is the antithesis of the bling bike, which is probably why I keep inspecting it, looking to discover the subtle secrets to its uniqueness. The front fender is completely made of rodwork formed in the shape of an eagle, its beak curling over the spoked front wheel. Peek between the steel tubes of the frame and the downtube and you’ll see the small silhouette of a woman on her back in gold hidden in between the rods of the fender. The rear fender is just as unique, broad and swooping in the same manner as hot rods made back in the day. Besides serving as a palette for an artistic array of geometric shapes, eye-catching colors, and intricate pinstriping, it doubles as a fuel tank. Again the bike’s stripped-down design works to put the full craftsmanship of the rear fender on display as it sits mounted between the twin exposed shocks. The builder has set-up a creative housing for the Works rear suspension, with the top fork mounts built into the end rails of the frame and the bottom mounts connected to a swingarm made of twin steel tubes.

Finally the owner of the bike walks over to me, a man of modest build with tufts of hair sticking out from a smooth, well-tanned head, deep-set eyes like Yoda from Star Wars. A long Confucius-style grey beard stretches down his chin, sits below an accommodating smile. He asks me if I want to see Michael Phelps in the tank. I can’t tell if he’s serious or joking, so “Sure” I say. He untwists the cap in the center of the rear fender, and sure enough, smack dab in the middle of the tank sat a small, metal man molded in a swimming pose.
 
“Mike Phelps’ girlfriend is on the fender, and Phelps is in the tank on the rear fender swimming to his girlfriend. He was all over the news for smoking that bong when I was building Captivator and I couldn’t believe they were making such a big deal out of it, so I did it,” he said.

He would continue by telling me the bike was named Captivator because of all the bottle caps used in the design. He made the bottle caps to match the shape of the heads of the 100 cubic-inch Crazy Horse V-Plus engine. The engine is mated to a Baker 6-Speed transmission that he raised two inches to fit the bottle cap-shaped oil tank. The oil tank was cut from a street pole. Besides using the bottle cap heads for inspiration, a gold chief’s head is molded onto the top of the handlebars above the headlight, looking out over the path of the motorcycle, another tribute to the Crazy Horse engine.
 
I had to ask him about the seat made of rods, wondering if that was all there was to it. He confided that he does bring along ‘My Dog,’ a piece of black padded sheepskin for rides more than 30 miles long. The bike stretches the boundaries of form and function, so I asked him “How do you respond to somebody that says, ‘That ain’t no motorcycle. There’s no way that thing runs?’ or ‘It’s a piece of art, but it isn’t a motorcycle?’”
 
“I’d tell them, ‘Well, son-of-a-bitch, let’s go for a ride. And then I’d piss ‘em off when I go flying by him, because most of my bikes run a lot faster and smoother than stock bikes,” he replied.

This straight from the mouth of Ron Finch. Ol’ Finch has been bending rods, raking out front ends, and building fat-tired choppers while most of us were still riding Big Wheels. He’s been building custom motorcycles since 1965 when he opened Finch’s Custom Styled Cycles.

“When I started, they didn’t have a book, we made it all with our own individual style,” Finch said.
 
He put a fat 16-inch tire on a chopper way back in ’69 on his 1966 BSA chopper called Kaleidocycle. He’s been locating gas tanks in rear fenders since the early ‘80s. He decked out scoots with 80-spoke wheels long before spoked-out wheels became en vogue. He’s constructed an asymmetrical frame that crosses over the motor in a build called Double Cross. He doesn’t follow trends, he sets them.

I think that Finch got a kick out of the fact that I was totally oblivious to his career in custom building. How was I to know that I was talking to a man whose work is featured in Tom Zimberoff’s Art of the Chopper II, has been displayed at the Clinton Presidential Library, and was awarded the 2008 House of Kolor Prestigious Painter Award for the paint on his bike called Finicky. His low-key demeanor was no indication that a bike he built, Odin’s Axle, remains one of the most iconic examples of ‘70s-era choppers.
 
Though he’s been recognized at the V-Twin Biker’s Ball in Daytona with the Lifetime Achievement Award, Finch doesn’t plan on calling it quits anytime soon. He’s currently working on a sidecar, and if you’ve ever seen his adaptation of a trike called Trilogy, one can only imagine what he’ll do with a sidecar.

“People tell me I won’t like a sidecar, but we’ll see. It has an off-set rear end, and the swingarm will have a dogleg. I’m using another Crazy Horse engine, and the side-car is all rod work.”
 
See what I mean.

A Quick Interview with Ron Finch
 
1. So what events led you down the path you chose? Did you start working on bikes right out of high school?
Pretty much. Even while I was in school I tried to convince my parents that I needed a bike. I kept buggin’ em until finally they gave me the choice of a car or a motorcycle, thinking for sure I’d take the car since we lived where it snowed all winter. But I got the bike, and rode it all winter long, sometimes with snow caked to my legs by the time I got to school. A 1967 BSA 650 with a plunger frame. It wasn’t long before I started to do some custom work and paint on it.

2. Where’d you learn your metal working skills at?
Nobody really taught me. At first, I started out as a pinstriper. I kept bugging a local guy with a shop to hang out. After telling me to get lost enough times, he finally let me stick around the shop, and I’d sweep floors, clean up, and do whatever I could do to get my foot in the door before he’d finally start showing me how to pinstripe. Then a motorcycle dealership opened up shop and I started working for them. I did pinstriping for them and they let me display my bikes there for about three months, but soon they weren’t giving me what my work was worth, so I opened my own shop. At first, it was a full-service shop and I had around 18 employees, but it eventually began to become too much and got to the point where business was getting in the way of creativity so I cut the whole staff and went back to basics.

3. At what point in your career did you realize that you might be on to something, that you had found your calling in life? It’s just something that I wanted to do, no matter what.

4. You’ve been at the forefront of custom building and have seen styles change over the ages. What do you think of the work they’re doing these days compared to back when you started?
To me, there’s no comparison. Today I see a lot of cookie cutters. They buy a frame, an engine, some wheels, throw it together and call it a custom bike. It’s as simple as following directions in a book. When I started, they didn’t have a book, we made it all with our own individual style.

5. What are some of the biggest challenges blending form and function, because your bikes are artistic works yet are still built to function as a motorcycle?
It can look nice, but it has to have function. They’ve got to ride. I like to run fast, so they’ve got to handle, too. Captivator handles excellent.

6. Where do you source your parts from?
Wreck yard sales, junk yards, and people bring me stuff all the time now. If I buy anything now, I know exactly what I am going to do with it before I buy it.

7. What do you want your legacy to be? As an artist, a custom motorcycle builder, as a painter, what are you most proud of?
Basically, all of them. I get bored if I do just one thing, and I’ve always got to be doing something. I’m lucky in the sense that I’m able to do more than one thing.