Merry Christmas from Pipeburn

We want to wish all our readers, builders, commentators, critics, keyboard warriors and even the spammers a Merry Christmas from everyone at Pipeburn. We would also like to give a special thanks to all our sponsors who help keep Pipeburn upright. If you are wondering who they are, check out the right hand side of this post and you will see some of the most passionate and awesome moto companies from around the world – we heart you guys.

We have some big plans for 2013, so watch this space, Pipeburn will be going in for a complete rebuild – don't worry, we won't be using vintage Firestones. Over the next few weeks we will still be posting motorcycle goodness but we are on holidays, so they may be a little less regular than normal.

Wherever you are on this planet, be sure to have a great holiday and if you're lucky enough to be able to ride in your part of the world, ride safe...

The above photograph was taken by our good friend and fellow Australian Cafe Racer member, Smelvis Broholm. Art direction, set build, styling and cat wrangling was performed by Nixie the Xmas Pixie Skobier. And the handsome talent is Rogue the cat and the bike is Smelvis's XS650 he calls Thor's Hammer – you can check more on this project here.

Rudy Banny’s '86 BMW R80RS - “Brafé Racer”

Rudy Banny's college career began with Petroleum Engineering. That's the art of getting crude oil out of the ground and in to pipes. But that was only for about ½ a semester, after which he found out that several calculus classes were involved, and promptly dropped out. Amen to that. Afterwards, you could say he did complete u-turn and got into a little Petroleum Deconstruction. “I've always been a huge fan of Brat Style. After landing a job in advertising, I fell in love with BMW's when a buddy of mine let me ride his 1965 r60/2 and 1972 r75/5 for a week when I was shooting in LA. That was it. I fell in love with airheads. I wanted one, but just couldn't get into the purist mentality that seems so prevalent with Bimmer owners. I’m more of a custom guy. So, I started looking for the cleanest, most pristine airhead I could find, so I could deconstruct it.”

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BCR Ducati 'Monster Tracker'

Cops and donuts. Politicians and corruption. Musicians and drugs. Benjie Flipprboi and café racers. Some things are just synonymous with each other. So when Benjie from Benjie's Café Racers (BCR) sent us his latest project, we presumed it would be another top class cafe racer from his garage in New Jersey. To our surprise, it wasn't a café racer at all, it was this Ducati he has named the 'Monster Tracker'. The bike was used by Benjie as a commuter for about a year until he got bored of its stock looks. "The bike started off as a 07 Ducati Monster S2R 800 with a little over 8K miles on it." says Benjie. "First we were going to make it into a café racer, but we wanted to do something different for a change. We decided to take the bike apart, and turn it into a tracker/urban scrambler with a little steam punk flare." 

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Anvil Motociclette’s '85 Moto Guzzi SP 1000 - “Mille ELR”

It's been quite a while between drinks for Milan's rather talented Marco and Phonz and their shop, Anvil Motociclette Costruttori. We featured them in an interview in April of 2011 and they teased us with some whispered, golden words concerning the next few projects they were undertaking. One of those was a slight departure from their Nihon-centric portfolio, a nice big Moto Guzzi. Excited, we made them promise to give us first dibs on the bike once it was finished, and low and behold, here she is. Meet the creama de la creama (see what I did there?) of Italian custom bikes, the "Mille ELR".

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2012 Ural Yamal Limited Edition Sidecar Motorcycle

By guest writer Ian Lee.

The Yamal Peninsular on the northwest tip of Russia is cold. Mind numbingly cold. Temperatures of minus 60 degrees Celsius have been recorded there, even in summer the arctic winds will bring on a chill. It’s definitely not the sort of place you want to find yourself locked out without your keys. It takes a hardcore form of transport to get around such an area, one of these being the nuclear powered icebreaker Yamal, named after the peninsular which it sails around. With a giant set of cartoon jaws adorning it’s prow, most pictures tend to show the Yamal leading other icebreakers through fields of ice, showing what it takes to traverse these waters. When Ural were looking for a name for their new special edition, Yamal seemed the perfect moniker. We present to you, the ultimate ‘go anywhere’ bike and sidecar unit, the 2012 Ural Yamal Limited Edition, complete with sidecar mounted oar. 

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Honda CB550 - Bridge City Cycles

Portland, Oregon is not only one of the 'craft beer' capitals of America, but it's also one of the 'craft motorcycle' capitals as well. There seems to be so many great custom shops, motorcycles and events coming out of Portland – there must be something in the Portland water beer. One such shop that we've been keeping our blurry eye on is Bridge City Cycles. Started by Anthony Mautemps and his wife 2 years ago, their business is going from strength to strength. "We'll be moving to 5,000 square foot facility in May" says Anthony. "Fortunately, the move is just across the street." Bridge City Cycles specialize in vintage and classic motorcycles from Europe, America and of course Japan. Their latest build is this super lean and clean Honda CB550 café racer...

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Studio Motor's Honda CB750

By guest writer Ian Lee.

I went for my first ride in a tuk tuk this week. Do you think I was in Singapore? Nope. Laos? Not even close. Thailand? No siree… I was actually in a workshop on the outskirts of Sydney. I got the idea of it though, garishly decorated and loud, a simple means to get around. Hailing from the same part of the world, comes a bike that is the healthy opposite to the idea of a tuk tuk. Well thought out aesthetics, the note of 736cc of Honda quad cylinder power, and a race fairing beat out of galvanised plate come together to show (once again) the talents of Donny Ariyanto at Studio Motor. If only as much thought went into tuk tuk design as went into this. 

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1986 BMW R80RT - 'Bopper'

Australia has a tendency to claim things and people that are actually originally from our closest neighbours, New Zealand. For example, Russell Crowe and Keith Urban, who most people think are Australian are in fact both born in New Zealand. So when Michael Dobson sent us this radical R80RT build, part of the conditions were that we made sure our readers knew the bike was built in Australia New Zealand. Of course we reluctantly agreed.

Michael has one impressive resume, which includes being a motorcycle mechanic for 34 years, specialising in servicing and primarily building BMW police bikes for over 20 of those years. That in itself is impressive, but the list also includes a stint as a successful race mechanic in BEARS and production racing, a workshop foreman at Motorad and a "semi famous Ural pilot". So if there was one guy who we would choose to build us a custom Beemer, Michael is the perfect candidate.  

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2003 Honda GL Max - 'Café Latte' Clubman

When you get given the job to build a café racer for your local Mayor, you don't want to screw it up. So when Eric Caprin from Caprin Racing in Indonesia was approached by Heru Bambang (the Mayor of Balikpapan) he knew he had to pull out the punches for this build. It became even more daunting when he was given the brief of building a 70's styled clubman café racer, using the very uninspiring 2003 Honda GL Max 125cc motorcyle as the donor. "He give a me a challenge to build a 70's café racer from this little motorcycle" says Eric. "This concept is a daily rider that is a bit more mild and not very wild." The theme and name for the bike comes from the Mayors favourite drink and daily caffeine fix – the 'Cafe Latte'.

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