The Great Divide Sportster

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that, in the media at least, bikers’re always portrayed as hard-living, hard-drinking, hard-fighting people who, when they’re being generous (the media, that is), are rough diamonds with a heart of gold, but’re mostly seen to be leather-clad thugs on two wheels.  

We know, though, don’t we, that that’s not the full picture – yes, there are those out there who’d rip yer ’ead off an’ spit down yer neck as soon as look at you, definitely, but, equally, there’re also a large number of us hairy (and, these days, not so hairy) folk who have more sensitive and artistic souls and only look, on the outside, like the images foisted upon us by those with a desire to sell sensationalist films and TV series and the like.

That fact is particularly true, I think, amongst the denizens of the custom bike world where folk who might look as though your granny’d cross the road to avoid ’em are amongst some of the most artistic and creative anywhere, turning out motorcycular conceptions that, in a different, often more relatable, way, are the equal of anything in any art gallery anywhere, and’re actually functional and useable, too, not just cold, soulless items on a clinically clean wall.    

Jussi ‘Lunkka’ Lundelin is the president of Aliens MC Helsinki, the Finnish club mentioned elsewhere this issue who are well known for being talented chopper builders. He’s been putting chops together for in excess of twenty years, and has a host of top-class custom bikes to his name, the latest of which is this, his The Great Divide Sportster, named, as many of his bikes are, after a song by his hero Willie Nelson. It was already in his head while he was building his previous bike, another Sportster called ‘Seahorse’ (which you’ll see in BSH in a few months’ time) – an asymmetrical chop that made people stare in amazement as it looked as though it had no straight lines to its form at all, but was still perfectly rideable as, I’ll let you into a secret, the front end and rear axle’re completely in line.

With The Great Divide he took this approach even further. Besides choppers, you see, he also appreciates art, and first started thinking about this project after seeing a painting entitled ‘Flower of Death’, of a hybrid girl/lily, by Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela, who created it while mourning his daughter who’d drowned. Lilies, I don’t know if you know, are the flowers most commonly associated with funeral services as they symbolise the innocence of the soul of the departed and epitomise sympathy. Lunkka has a connection with death in his everyday work – he makes and sells coffins, so deals with the bereaved on a regular basis, and so has an appreciation for such things. “Building another asymmetrical bike was the original idea, but I wanted to add some organic touches to it using inspiration from the flowers; how the stems vary in thickness, and grow in all directions.” 

The main focus of this bike is, of course, the frame. It’s been built so it looks good from any angle (during the process it was mounted on a rotary jig so it could be spun to see how all the parts worked out). It… well, the whole bike really is a joint effort between him and silversmith Isto Kotavuopio, of Blackheads MC Tampere (also an internationally-known chopper builder), and it started with a section of an original Sportster frame, along with a pile of steel tubes, machined into cone shape by his friends Sami Lahtinen and Veikko Sikiö, that allowed him to achieve the flower-like look he was after. Lunkka and Isto’ve worked together on so many projects they no longer need to explain ideas to each other – things just happen as if they were one mind. 

The build involved a lot more planning than can be seen in the finished bike. For example, all the wiring’s hidden inside the frame tubes – even the (one-off, natch) tail-light’s wiring goes all the way to the top of the sissy-bar through multiple curves and tube joints; and to keep the lines flowing outside the frame, a urethane buck was made to get the shape of the petrol tank perfect before it was copied in steel. On top of the tank the gas cap is one of Isto’s silversmithing masterpieces, a handcrafted brass butterfly that looks like its flying towards the very different lily-shaped headlight (also made by Isto). The front end is equally clever. Juho of Spok Motor, another of Lunkka’s long-time friends, made the fork tubes out of 40mm hard-chromed hydraulic piston rods and, if you look closely, you’ll notice they’re not of equal length – the right-hand leg’s longer than the left. Lunkka and Isto made a clay model of the design of the yokes they wanted, but it took them some convincing, as it was such an out-there design, to get Juho to make them out of aluminium.

That amazing, again asymmetrical, seat was made by them and covered by Satula-Ilkka, whose handiwork’s been seen on more bike show podiums than anyone else’s in Finland, and has a small Bluetooth speaker in it so Lunkka can listen to his hero, Willie Nelson, by a campfire after a long day on the road. Yes, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is purely a show bike, but it isn’t – he rides all his choppers, and he doesn’t mind the little inevitable nick or scratch here and there… “They just add to the character of the bike.”

After four years, and hundreds of hours of work, the bike looked like it might be finished in time for last year’s Norrtälje Custom Bike Show in Sweden – a deadline for many Finnish builders. Robin Backman, who’s painted most of Lunkka’s bikes, still had to work his art over this one though, but managed to get it all done, in multiple shades of green, and delivered to the Aliens clubhouse, in early spring where Lunkka and a host of friends and club mates pulled out all the stops to get the bike ready on time – he can’t, he says, thank them enough for all their efforts. Despite this, it was still only a couple of days before he was to board the boat to Sweden that The Great Divide rolled under its own power.

Lunkka’s bike, I think, shows that, despite what many people say, there are still some fresh ideas in custom building – to adapt the words of the two US reviewers listening to Willie Nelson’s ‘The Great Divide’ album to Lunkka “…the best moments are the ones in which he just does his thing all by his bad self…”

Spec:

H-D 883 Sportster engine (aftermarket carb, one-off bell-mouth, one-off exhausts, one-off hand-change, engraved cases)/rear pulley (modified)/rear brake, one-off asymmetrical frame, one-off forwards/foot-clutch, multi-spoke 21-inch front wheel, one-off asymmetrical forks/yokes/’bars, one-off asymmetrical fuel tank, one-off seat, aftermarket rear mudguard (modified), one-off sissy-bar, one-off oil tank, one-off battery box, solid 16-inch rear wheel, one-off brass rear foot-rests, one-off loom, one-off brass headlight, one-off tail-light

Finish:

Paint by Robin Bakman, engraving by Pete Pihlajamaa, polishing by owner & Isto

Engineering:

Bike built by owner & Isto, machining by Juho, welding by Tompaa

Thanks To: 

“Everybody who helped!”