Jay Abington had never heard of a fighter before he built this bike and subsequently found Customfighters. com. We’re very glad he did, as he’s shown us something very different. Jay is a down-to-earth, unpretentious guy. In speaking with him, it became clear that this build was done for his own pure enjoyment, and nothing else.   He wasn’t out to impress anyone or prove anything, he simply wanted to build something he could be proud of — something he had made with his own two hands. Building and creating is Jay’s life. To say that he is a gearhead would be an understatement. Putting things together is something he says has been part of him since he was a kid, and he expects it always will be. Jay just cannot stop; he has to constantly be working on something — to the extent that he literally built the wooden bed he sleeps on, AND the hand tools to carve it with! “Idle hands do evil things, so we’ve got no time for that,” he said.

When he was 10, Jay began to work on tractors and equipment, learning from his father-figure neighbor. By the time he was in high school, he was working for an auto parts store, building engines and doing machine work.  Back when working auto parts meant really knowing the stuff, not just reading the parts fiche. His love for tuning led him to work at a high-performance BMW motorcycle shop in the Bay area of California, making parts and building winning race bikes.  The eight years spent there, he says, taught him more than he’d ever learned in terms of performance tuning.  Years later, he moved on to hot rod engines and sprint cars.  He’s spent time alongside people like New Zealand’s John Britten, but he has no “holier-than-thou” aura about him. More recently, Jay has done heavy equipment repair (ask him about his customized work-truck), which he is stepping away from a bit while working for a local business owner — building race cars in one of the nicest home facilities I’ve ever seen, including a personal dyno! Suffice to say, just about everything Jay does revolves around motors and/or having fun.

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