Showing posts with label BMW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BMW. Show all posts

Monday, July 28, 2014

Steve’s R80RT

Posted by on Jul 28, 2014 in Shed Builds | No Comments
Steve's BMW 1
Sometimes life has a habit of sitting you down on your arse and forcing you to reassess, as happened to Bike Shed regular contributor, Steve, who has had a few dramas, that ultimately led to him build bikes like this, his latest, R80. Steve was riding his V-Max and suffered a huge heart attack. He managed to keep upright and ended up in hospital for two weeks while the ticker mechanics worked out if a top end rebuild was required. Steve didn’t fancy having his crank cases split so lay there waiting, wondering what to do with the Beemer sat in the garage. Then it struck, “Soul’d Out” – “fuelled by passion”. Steve followed his recalcitrant heart and got to work designing a custom build, but before work could begin he needed slightly more practical surroundings, so discharged himself from hospital, deciding to see out the summer before going back in for an overhaul.
Steve's BMW 2x
If bikes could talk then this one would have a tale or two. Originally it was owned by a vicar who rode it to Russia and back, before a school teacher from Swindon bought it.
Steve's BMW 3x
Once out of hospital Steve relaxed for exactly no hours before stripping the old air head down, curing oil weeps and leaks with a new gasket and seal set. The comprehensive service records showed that the clutch was only 3000 miles old so that was left alone, the output shaft was also good so reunited with the engine, using the correct Castrol Optimax grease of course. Once painted and topped up with fresh oil the engine was ready to be installed, but not into the original frame, that needed some jazzing up.
Steve's BMW 4
An extra frame rail was grafted in to accommodate the handmade, fully adjustable, twinshock saddle. Tank mounts had to be removed and relocated, all other unnecessary appendages were ground off and smoothed. A local outfit took care of the loud, pearl orange paintwork on the tank, frame and hugger whilst Steve entrusted the black parts to his own hand. Apart from the yokes, wheels, battery box, front engine cover and top cover, these are coated in fresh black satin powder.
Steve's BMW 5
With a considerable amount of the original bike missing this R80 is evenly balanced at exactly 97kgs at both ends. Braided hoses add a bit more feel to the brakes and Continental TKC 80s give just enough grip for enthusiastic riding.
Steve's BMW 6
A daydream in a hospital bed to reality in just a few weeks, that’s perseverance personified. Steve, must be pretty proud of himself.
Steve's BMW 7
Whilst the parts were at the paint shop everything that could be cleaned, greased, oils and refreshed was and readied for the fun part, assembly.
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Steve spared no expense when ordering parts and carefully put everything back together using new fasteners and plenty of diligence. The new owner can rest assured that this ride isn’t going to fall apart on the way home. Cat out of the bag!
Steve's BMW 9x
Yes, Steve needs the loot so is sadly having to part with his pride and joy. If you like what you see get in touch, you might need to be quick though in case he changes his mind. Click here for Steve’s contact details. You can see Steve’s previous R100 Boxer-build Here and his CB750 Here.

First appeared in http://thebikeshed.cc

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

‘84 BMW K100RS – Paul Hutchison

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The late 70s was not an easy time for poor old BMW Motorrad. With mounting pressure from the European Union regarding emissions, and their all-too-slow awakening to the fact that Japanese motorcycles were eating their lunch, the Germans were staring down the barrel or irrelevancy. Suddenly, water-cooled fours were all the rage; the 70s journo’s penchant for top speed tests always left the boys from Bayerische with das ei on their faces. What they needed was a unique, powerful, water-cooled platform - and quick. In a classic piece of outside-the-square engineering, they began experimenting with a Peugeot car engine which they decided to lay down in a ‘longitudinal four’ configuration not seen since the pre-WWI-era. And the rest is history – a history which Paul Hutchison from Melbourne has successfully reinvented with his über K100RS.
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“I’m Paul Hutchison (Hutch) from Melbourne, Australia. I’m an airline pilot, with a military flying background. I was inspired by Robrock’s K100 build I saw on BikeExif and started looking. I found one unregistered, in Adelaide. I bought it sight unseen, and did a 1600km trip to collect.
Kicking the build off, I wanted to blend the café racer style with street fighter, taking what I thought were the best elements of each. I had no clear plan before starting, it evolved as the build progressed.”
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After countless hour of internet trawling, Paul made the decision to spend that little bit of extra cash and go top shelf. The BSK SpeedWorks rear sets were made to order, fitted perfectly, and look like works of art.
Paul was keen for the bottom line from the tank to flow smoothly through to the tail-piece. After making some rough drawings, he mocked something up using old plastic chopping boards. Then his local fabricator managed to magic it into a perfect aluminium replica of the plastic piece.
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“My mate Pete of Peter’s Panels offered to do the paint job for a couple of bottles of scotch on the condition I did the preparation work. The colour is from a new range called ‘vibrance’. It was a nod to BMW’s 70s colours, but with added metal flake. It turned out the colour I chose is called “hornet orange”. As I flew hornets in the RAAF, the bike now had a name, ‘The Hornet’.
About four months after completing the build, I took it to Tasmania for a week of riding. On the third day my good friend Kev managed to lose the front end while braking into a corner. The resulting low side caused enough damage for the bike to be an insurance write off.”
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Down but not out, Paul bought the wreck and used the rest of the pay-out money for a full rebuild. Not wanting to put in all the extra time and effort just to end up with the same bike, he decided to do some upgrades. Again. He found out he could get four-spot calipers on the front if he could manage to install a complete K1100 front end. “I decided that if it was worth taking the bike five years into the future, why not something more like twenty years?”
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Paul searched the wreckers for a clean upside-down front end. He wanted a 3 spoke front wheel to match the K1100 rear wheel he had sourced. A ‘00 Yamaha R1 was deemed the best solution. He went back to Valley Engineering, his fabricator, to mate the Yamaha clamps to the BMW post. Despite the myriad issues involved, the end results couldn’t look prettier. And as a finishing touch, the headlight was replaced with a Yamaha MT-03 unit from the UK.
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Paul says that the finished bike is better than he could have ever hoped for and notes that it now rides like a modern motorcycle. No doubt the Pirelli GT tyres and the new front end have truly transformed the handling, and those brakes are probably more than equal to any modern K1200R. Lucky bastard.

First appeared in www.pipeburn.com/

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Jerikan MC R90 Mono

BMW R80 RT (1987) Jerikan #9
JeriKan Motorcycles is another custom builder who has thier own take on the BMW Boxer custom. Based down in Nice in the South of France Jérémy & Mark got going after meeting John & Nico from 4h10 in Paris, and the rest is custom-building history.
“This bike started the day when one of my clients wanted to sold his BMW R80RT 87. Personally, I am not a follower of monolevers but certain occasions can not be missed , so I bought this machine without really knowing what to do. Unlike the BMs I’ve made before, it was impossible to conceive of a cosmetic monolever approaching what I used to do. So I used this base to try to do something different than anything I had done so far.”
BMW R80 RT (1987) Jerikan #9
Jérémy felt that the monoshock setup leaned the bike towards a cafe racer design, but with the emphasis more on ‘cafe’ than ‘racer’ and to offset the modern rear-end he wanted to add a vintage feel to the bodywork and paint. “I opted for keeping some parts “neo” (modern) changing the entire rear frame loop, using flexible LEDs for the taillight that perfectly follow the shape of the loop and rear turn signals that are integrated into the fairing near the rear shock in little cone. A design that was also adapted into the bar end.”
BMW R80 RT (1987) Jerikan #9
Fitting the Martin bikini fairing with twin headlights was such a pain that Jérémy almost abandoned the idea, but he persevered with a lot of modification and clever bracketry, which was well worthwhile as this feature really defines the bike and helps it stand out from a pretty large crowd.
BMW R80 RT (1987) Jerikan #9
“I also opted for the “retro” by choosing a simple cream with gray lines paint in matt finish, saddle in genuine leather recalling the tank, aluminium signal switches of an old Honda CB,  full polishing all aluminum parts of the machine which some have the patina of time, deliberately leaving the foot holds original rather than rearsets and customizing the speedometer with my logo and the number of the machine’ #9.”
BMW R80 RT (1987) Jerikan #9
Jérémy also wanted to avoid black in any elements of the bike, which meant lots of extra work. “…the frame has been repainted, the cables were all covered with braided stainless steel sheath, the damper has been polished and the spring has been painted, the speedo as well as the battery and the original air box (hideous!). I wanted to embellish the flux in the color of the engine so that the machine keeps its origins performance. Other parts were covered with aluminum tape and we even repainted the spark plug covers, and gas taps.”
BMW R80 RT (1987) Jerikan #9
“Chrome mufflers were polished to a matte finish, the cylinder heads were removed, the manifold lengthened then covered with a triple layer of cream coloured thermal tape to match the bodywork and to keep a maximum visual coherence.” The small fender is a reworked item from a Honda Goldwing.
BMW R80 RT (1987) Jerikan #9
Unusually Jérémy got rid of the side stand (keeping the centrestand) on the basis that starting up a Beemer that’s been leaned over for a while gives off a big black puff of smoke (true) which he found annoying. Fair enough.
BMW R80 RT (1987) Jerikan #9
So how do they feel the bike turned out? “The result is ultimately what I expected with a vintage rather typical machine a little sporty but vintage. A quality finish and a few innovations that I like to bring such as the sheath or blind fairing bolts for example while remaining in sobriety.”
BMW R80 RT (1987) Jerikan #9
On a website full of custom Boxers (with many more to come) it’s great to see how far they can be stretched into different looks and vibes. The monoshock seems to work really well without ruining any retro vibe, and with Jerikan’s attention to detail in the finish this bike is completely ageless as well as dripping with class. See more from Jérémy & Mark on Facebook or here on the Bike Shed.
The pictures are made by Pierre Turtaut

First appeared in thebikeshed.cc

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Down & Out Tom’s R80


Having seduced us all with their BMW scrambler “Gold Top” a few months ago, Down & Out Cafe Racers have been making an annoying habit of building better and better boxer customs, firstly for themselves, and now of course for a growing line of customers asking for variations of what they’ve seen online.

I guess we can’t complain as it means we get a steady supply of great looking Boxer builds to write up on the Bike Shed, but knowing that there are two more in the works after this one (one of them in particular will blow you away) I may have to assign someone else to write the next couple of D&O features in case my raw envy starts to cloud my writing ability.

The story is now become all too familiar… “We had a call from one guy out of the blue, ‘can you build me a bike like Dutch’s?’ …He was after a virtually identical copy of Dutch’s bike which we were not prepared to do, so we threw a few ideas around regarding the style and worked from there. The following testimonial from the customer broadly covers the remainder of this particular build…”

“I work and live aboard a boat based in northern Tuscany, Italy. During the winter, me and guys aboard were looking on the net for bikes to ride in the near by Apennine Mountains. I saw Dutch’s bike on Bike Shed, and after a month of thinking (wasted time) I got in touch with Shaun, from Down and Out Cafe Racers and got them started.”

“My idea was no different from Dutch’s as I figured that if one is over in Italy, it’s unlikely the two should meet. But Shaun and Carl have evolved it, using new dial mounts, indicators etc all of which look fantastic. I also wanted a taller riding position as i am 6foot 4inch tall, and I also required a longer seat as I would like to ride the bike 2up so Shaun and Carl made me a bespoke sub frame to fit my requirements. As far as the seat covering goes I ordered my own cow hide and sent it to the guys at D&O to use and requested a diamond stitch pattern. I have to say I’m really pleased with how its turned out.”

“All in all I think it’s awesome and it will definitely turn some heads over here. Its not easy for Englishmen to out-style the Italians in their own back yard but I reckon I will be doing just that. Thanks Guys for your excellent service, attention to detail and amazing bike you have built for me. Cheers Tom”

While these Boxer customs do seem to follow a familiar drill at first glance, no two are the same, but what is also great for the customer is that by getting to know a model over multiple projects, builders like D&O (and their peers on the Boxer scene) evolve their skills and knowledge as they go, so each bike is better than the last.  The trouble now is finding affordable donors.

Hats off to Shaun & Carl for turning out another Bavarian beauty. We know another R series boxer is around the corner, but we also know there’s a w650 in the works, a Dominator and the other Beemer will be something else entirely. Watch this space.
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…See more from Down & Out Cafe Racers on The Bike Shed, their Website and Facebook Pages, …and thanks to Simon Krajnyak for the usual quality Photos. You can also see five new customs from D&O in the flesh at the BSMC III exhibition later this May.

First appeared on thebikeshed.cc

Monday, April 21, 2014

Johnny Angel’s Gara Al Cafe

BMW R80 GARA AL CAFE 1
What is your dream job? A flippant question that seldom requires any thought to deliver an equally flippant answer. Me? A Motorcycle Racer. You? Probably the same. Or potentially a pro bike builder. Meet Johnny Angel, Ex Racer, new Pro Builder. In his 2 and a half year racing career Johnny achieved 64 podiums in 70 races, claiming top spot on the podium 37 times. If you were amongst the 40,000 spectators at Snetterton for the 2007 British Superbike meet you would have witnessed his greatest victory, 1st place in the Superstock class. Now he builds custom motorcycles. Legend.
BMW R80 GARA AL CAFE 2
When financial circumstances curtailed Johnny’s Racing career it was inevitable motorcycles would feature prominently in his next venture. He teamed up with his father who like him was a graphic designer by trade (any other skills Johnny?) to form Johnny Angel Customs. Here they present their third project, hot on the wheels of a pair or XS650 Bobbers, a BMW R80 named GARA AL CAFE.
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GARA AL CAFE translates as “race to the cafe” and hints at Johnny’s racing pedigree which the pair aim to instil in their bikes. Based in the Kent village of Hawkhurst the duo set to work on redesigning and improving the venerable R80. The frame, wheels, and shaft drive were stripped and repainted and the existing good condition of the engine was refreshed with a service.
BMW R80 GARA AL CAFE 4
The rear frame was modified and delugged to accommodate the new seat unit that features a removable cowl that hides a pillion pad trimmed to match the white piped brown leather of the primary perch. Repositioned custom pillion pegs hint at the tail sections secrets. Dropped bars provide the cafe racer stance and are finished with classic low slung mirrors.
BMW R80 GARA AL CAFE 5
The new seat along with the tank, battery box, shortened mudguard, headlight mounts and clocks received the full benefits of the graphic design wing of the company, Angel Design & Print. Royal White was the chosen colour, combined with orange and gold flake graphics topped with a coat of lacquer. The white and orange livery and race number 4 recall the bike Johnny rode to victory at Snetterton that glorious day.
BMW R80 GARA AL CAFE 6
Here at the shed we love welcoming a new builder to the stable and wait eagerly to see the development of Johnny Angel Customs. The Ducati Monster concept displayed on their website www.johnnyangelcustoms.com shows that like in his racing career, Johnny is anxious to get to the front of the pack.
BMW R80 GARA AL CAFE 7
You just know if Johnny was riding, this is the only the view you would get of Gara al Cafe…

Firs appeared in thebikeshed.cc

BMW R90/6 Custom

BMW R90 7


The BMW R90/6 was introduced in 1974 alongside the R90S – a motorcycle that would go on to win the first ever AMA Superbike World Championship in 1976. Both bikes utilised a 900cc air-cooled boxer twin, commonly referred to as an “air-head” and both sent power to the rear wheel via a 5-speed transmission and shaft drive.
We’ve been seeing a trend in recent years towards older, air-cooled motorcycles and the BMWs from the ’70s have been amongst the most popular. That said, I don’t think we’ve ever seen one that looked quite like this. It started life as a stock 1976 R90/6 before being customised in the Blitz and Brat schools of thought, this didn’t last long however as it was decided that the bike had the potential to be modified further – into something truly unique.
A slim Honda CB360 fuel tank was sourced, modified and fitted, the tail section was then cropped and a new seat was fabricated. The seat was designed to flow on from the fuel tank in a continuous line and interestingly – it was decided to forgo upholstery. A new set of shocks were added, necessitating new mounts lower down on the cropped frame. The standard exhaust was binned and two new upswept, nickel-plated pipes were added, both exiting under the seat and out to the side. The rear hub, kickstand and foot controls were also nickel-plated – personally I prefer this to chrome as it has a warmer, less blingy feel to it.
That eye-catching headlight was found on an old American truck from the ’60s, it was sourced from Garage Company in Inglewood and was powder-coated and polished before being mounted.
This is the second bike we’re featured from Ken and Brian at Spirit Lake Cycles, the first was the retro-tastic Garelli Monza GT. Both bikes are excellent in their own right, as well as remarkably different from one another, so we’re looking forward to seeing the next creation from the Spirit Lake Cycles workshop.
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BMW R90 10 BMW R90/6 Custom

BMW R90 9 BMW R90/6 Custom

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BMW R90 13 740x493 BMW R90/6 Custom

BMW R90 11 740x493 BMW R90/6 Custom

BMW R90 9 740x493 BMW R90/6 Custom

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BMW R90 4 740x493 BMW R90/6 Custom

BMW R90 2 740x493 BMW R90/6 Custom
First appeared in silodrome.com