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 hen the Legend Air Suspension was named “Most Innovative Product of the Year” at the 1998 Indianapolis Trade Show no one let out a bigger sigh of relief than Jesse Jurrens. “By this time,” Jesse says, “I’d spent every penny I had and every one of my credit cards was maxed out to the limit. By Indianapolis it was do-or-die. I had an old Chevy Suburban with 275,000 miles on it and I would stuff my bike and my display of suspension pieces into the back of that thing and go to those trade shows hoping for the best, sleeping in the truck once I had it unloaded. It really was a do-or-die situation, and to tell you the truth I think I’m still tired from 1998! If we hadn’t won that award when we did I think Legend Air Suspension would have just gotten mixed in with the crowd and the whole project wouldn’t have gone any further. It would’ve stopped right there.”
And of course it didn’t. That first award was followed by even more recognition. Jesse Jurrens was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” in Rapid City, he won the V-Twin Magazine “Best New Product of the Year” award, “Trendsetter of the Year,” and just last year the Independent Cycle Hardlife/Lowlife chassis was named V-Twin Magazine’s “Frame Design of the Year.” “We’re finally starting to rack up some momentum,” Jesse says. “We’re moving forward to the point where I think this whole thing is really going to click in the next few years.” Back in ‘96, though, all that seemed pretty doubtful. Back then Jesse Jurrens had a dream, a good idea and little else.
The way all this really got started, Jesse says, began back when he was going to college for Business Administration in Rapid City. Right around that time, though, his father got really sick and during his second year at school Jesse moved back home to Watertown, South Dakota, to work a couple of jobs and try to help out the family, help his parents meet their mortgage and pay their bills. At the same time, Jesse says, he was riding a Softail Harley. “I really liked having that thing sit extremely low to the ground,” he says, “but the lowered suspensions I tried just beat the tar out of me.” Looking around the aftermarket for something to cure that problem, some sort of air-ride suspension similar to what he’d seen used on hot rods, Jesse found nothing. “There simply wasn’t anything available, and I looked.” So he started on the project himself, designing up an air suspension system of his own and then making up multiple samples to try on his own Harley-Davidson Softail.
And Jesse tried everything. He got air springs wherever he could find them, even using units taken from under the air seats of a tractor-trailer cab. By late 1997 he had an almost workable system designed, and with all the time and effort already invested in this project he thought he might as well try and build something that he could sell, feeling that if he was looking for a motorcycle air suspension other people probably were, too. To perfect the unit he’d designed Jesse hired a professional mechanical engineering and prototype shop in Rapid City to help refine his system into something that was not only workable, but something that could be manufactured. Jesse and that prototype shop worked on the project for another six-months plus, coming up with a handful of new and different sample systems to try out, to road test and evaluate. And then the one commercially available air spring that Jesse and his design team eventually settled on turned out to be unworkable, too, at least from a reliability standpoint.
Today, Independent Cycles, Inc. operates out of this shop in Rapid City, South Dakota
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In his humble beginnings, Jesse ran Legend Air out of this basement. He's come a long way since...
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“That setback forced me to go directly to the Gates Rubber Company,” Jesse says. “They’re the premier manufacturer of air springs for all sorts of applications and I had to plead my case. I had to try and convince them to make up a sample air spring specifically for this new, motorcycle application. What I needed wasn’t in their inventory.” But Gates Rubber, accustomed to dealing with big industry and huge orders from companies like BMW, Land Rover and General Motors didn’t want to hear about this small potatoes motorcycle plan brought to them by some guy from South Dakota. “It took me at least six more months just to get my foot in the door,” Jesse remembers. He’d brought along the most comprehensive business proposal he could put together and really tried to sell them on the idea, but they still weren’t interested.
One engineer at Gates, however, was. He believed in this idea and against company orders met with Jesse at an airport layover in Denver. He agreed to make up a few sample air springs to Jesse’s specification, something he was also told he shouldn’t do. So against what everybody at Gates had said Jesse got his sample set of air springs for a motorcycle suspension system, and they worked perfectly. They were exactly what were needed. And they were strong. “What Gates does,” Jesse explains, “is construct their air springs by wrapping an Aramid fiber, Kevlar, into the rubber of the air-spring and then bonding it all together with heat. This limits the air spring’s growth rate to less than 3-percent in diameter, exactly what we needed to fit in the Harley-Davidson frame and the suspension hardware we’d designed.” Previous air springs tried had a growth rate of up to 10-percent over a few thousand miles, allowing them to eventually rub against the hard metal in the air-ride mounting system itself, eventually failing.
With Gates finally on board agreeing to supply the specialized air springs, by July of 1998 Jesse was ready to debut his Legend Air Suspension at Sturgis. He followed that by sending out sample units to a few of the major magazines and to some name bike builders like Ron Simms, Jim Nasi and a few other to see just what kind of feedback he’d get. And then came that Indianapolis Trade Show and the “Most Innovative Product of the Year” award. Jesse Jurrens and his Legend Air Suspension had begun to get some recognition. All this time Jesse had been working out of his basement, and in July of 2000 he moved the fledgling company to Rapid City for a number of reasons. First of all, he liked the place. That’s where he had gone to school. Rapid City was also home to the engineering and prototype firm that helped design the suspension system in the beginning. And the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology is there, too, the facility where Jesse had done a lot of his early testing. “There’s an excellent workforce in and around Rapid City, as well,” he says, so in early-2000 Jesse made the 400-mile move and set up Independent Cycle, Inc., a corporation encompassing the new Legend Air Suspension and the Hardlife and Lowlife frames along with all the other products that, by now, Jesse knew he wanted to make.
“Once Independent Cycle, Inc. really got going,” Jesse says, “I knew there were other things in the motorcycle field I wanted to do.” Like hooking up with Michael Prugh and building those frames, the ones now winning all those awards. So as he’d pay off one or another credit card from his original startup expense he’d go to Daytona or some other event where he’d see guys like Arlen Ness and Dave Perewitz, “And that would just burn me from the inside with a desire to keep going,” Jesse says, “It made me do more. I knew I was supposed to be in the motorcycle business. I had to make this work.” And he did. Legend Air Suspension quickly became a must-have piece for custom builders everywhere. Jesse and a few helpers assembled and shipped those air-spring systems out of his basement in Rapid City trying to keep up with a growing demand, but the daily string of UPS trucks picking up and delivering everything became impossible for his neighbors to ignore. “We were pushed to move into a regular industrial building,” he remembers. And while that was a real financial hardship at the time it turned into a blessing in disguise. “That’s when we really started to expand,” he says. “That’s when we bought our own manufacturing equipment and started making all of these parts ourselves instead of jobbing them out to vendors and then assembling the package.”
Today Independent Cycle makes more than just those Legend Air Suspension systems that started it all. In addition to the air suspension systems, Jesse and Independent Cycle, Inc. now produce four styles of frames, two styles of gas tanks, headlights, handlebars, a complete primary drive system to go with those Hardlife/Lowlife extended frames, there are custom foot controls for those frame packages, forward- or mid-mount and Independent Cycle is producing wheels now, as well. A total of 25 employees help make all this happen. “And right now,” Jesse feels, “this company is poised to really make a big jump. We’re getting our feet back under us again, getting organized for the next move forward.” Two years ago Jesse started that move by hosting the Legend Top 50 motorcycle show, a premier event during Sturgis. Originally staged in the parking lot at Independent Cycle, it’s become an acclaimed showing for the best-of-the-best. A definite high-end bike show, the Legend Top 50 is a part of the Sturgis experience. And this year it’s moving. This year that show will be staged at the new Top 50 Rally Park Jesse has just built, a 12-acre facility on I-90 halfway between Sturgis and Rapid City. A brand-new venture, this vendor’s showplace will open for the first time in 2006. The Top 50 Rally Park is designed and constructed with a series of multi-level terraces allowing high visibility for all vendors, even when viewed from the Interstate. It’s all in a park-like atmosphere with lawns, trees and extensive landscaping. “What I wanted to create,” Jesse says, “is a premier area where all the custom bike guys and all the best products in the business could be together and showcased in one location. I wanted to make the place as cool to be at as the parts and bikes on display.”
Independent Cycle Inc.'s Hardlife Chassis.
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Jesse and the Independent Cycle Inc. crew recently built this cool custom for a yet-to-be-aired segment of the Discovery Channel's "Biker Build-Off."
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Michael Prugh, head designer at Independent Cycle, is also a talented fabricator and was an integral part of the Discovery Channel bike build.
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And Independent Cycle has made it to TV, just completing a yet-to-be-aired “Biker Build-Off” segment. Naturally using one of their own frame kits as a beginning, Michael Prugh and the team at Independent pulled out all the stops. For this Discovery Channel build they used the just-released Avon 20-inch rear tire, mounting it on one very special wheel. “We started with a 600 pound block of aluminum,” he says, “whittling it down to 37 pounds.” That was just the beginning. Jesse’s brother operates an aerial photography business and he was tapped to fly the wheel to the plater’s. “And by the time we were all done with that wheel,” Jesse says, “done with the heat treating and the machining and the plating and polishing, it ended up costing us something like $12,000 total. For one wheel. The cost of the wow factor, apparently, is high!”
Higher, almost, than what it took back in ‘96 to get all this rolling. But Legend Air Suspensions, Lowlife and Hardlife frames and chassis packages, the gas tanks, the controls, the primaries–Jesse’s rolling with it all now, even putting on top-flight motorcycle shows and inaugurating a brand-new trade show venue. Jesse Jurrens once said he felt he was supposed to be in the motorcycle business, and now he is. He grew up on motorcycles, riding dirt bikes by the time he was four. “I could ride a motorcycle before I could ride a bicycle,” he says. “My older brother would prop me up in the seat and push me off. And away I went.” He hasn’t
stopped since.
Independent Cycle's Lowlife frame is a popular choice for builders as a great start to any custom. The Lowlife/Hardlife Chassis was named V-Twin Magazine's "Frame Design of the Year" for last year.
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 esse Jurrens calls this the “next generation of custom motorcycles, something slightly to the left of insanity.” Independent Cycle’s Lowlife Chassis Kit starts with a stretched and radical drop-seat frame that’s entirely constructed of DOM tubing with smooth, radial bends everywhere. At its heart this is a triangulated high-strength design built around that Legend Air Suspension. An ultra-low seat height combines with an extended primary for a radically stretched appearance. There are narrowed bottom frame rails for improved cornering clearance–even with that low air-suspension ride height–and the engine and transmission mount right in the centerline of the bike. The Lowlife features an outboard final drive, too; fitting the biggest 300-Series tire requires no extra work. Drag Specialties offers all of this along with the tin, front end, wheels, lights, seat and engines to complete one of the most stunning customs imaginable. 
 or 2006 Legend Air Suspension has updated its L3 and L9 air-ride suspension packages making them better than ever. They’re easier to install and the switching and controls have been streamlined for ease of use. These air-suspension systems fit all Softail model Harleys from 1989 on (the L9 kit is for the ‘89 through ‘99 models, the L3 fits the ‘00 through ‘06 bikes) and everything needed for the conversion is included. The air compressor, the twin air-suspension units either chrome plated or black anodized, the control switch and solenoid valve with on-the-fly operation along with all mounting and connecting hardware and full instructions comes in the box. Everything’s CNC machined from 6061-T6 billet aluminum and 303 stainless steel and the both systems flush-mount with the frame for a good-looking installation. The Legend Air L3 and L9 systems are a direct fit on stock bikes and now all the electrical connections are direct plug-ins, too; there’s no soldering or wire connecting required.
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