1982 Kawasaki Z1100ST 'Big Z' by Maccomotors

Written by Ian Lee.

Some families are close. Sometimes family gets together to start a business, or to work on motorbikes, or to just hang out. Today’s feature bike is a product of all three of these, and as the first build, this custom workshop is off to a great start. Maccomotors is a family based operation, with two brothers working out of a shed in Chiclana De Frontera, Cadiz at the base of Spain. This is their first build, the ‘Big Z’, a customised 1982 Kawasaki Z1100ST, built in a small workshop, by two brothers armed with big passions and great ideas.

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Kawasaki Z750B by Street Tuff Customs

Written by Ian Lee.

Isn’t it great when ideas just work together? Concepts that aren’t easily conceived, but when enacted turn out awesome? Like using a Mini SU carb on a Kawasaki engine, or using stainless dairy pipe for an exhaust system. Graham Braid of Street Tuff Customs is one man who likes using different ideas that work together, and the latest example of this is this tough looking Kawasaki Z750B street tracker. With three years of work, and a little help from some friends, Street Tuff Customs has produced one mean machine with customisation up the ying yang.

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Kawasaki KZ400 - "The Bolo Shit"

Ok, let's not beat around the bush. There's an elephant in this custom bike room and we'll need to get it out in open right now. I haven't got the slightest idea what a "bolo shit" is. I've Googled. I've Bing'd, why I even tried an Alta Vista search by travelling back in time. Nada. Now according to the always amusing urban dictionary.com, a "bolo" is a itself a term for pooping, so that would make it's name "shit shit" which, while quite funny, doesn't make any sense at all. Then I saw the gun on the tank. Bingo. Another Google search of "bolo gun" tells me that bolo is a nickname for the Mauser C96, better known as "the gun that the Nazis always have in war films." Except that the gun on the tank looks nothing like C96. So where does that leave us? I'd suggest we just all don these here special glasses that make white elephants invisible to the human eye and click that "read more" link below.

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1992 Kawasaki KZ1000 - Silver Bullit Cafe's

Albert "The Chief" Hurt comes from a long line of automobile mechanics. His grandfather, father and all his uncles worked as mechanics in the family shop. At the age of 12, Albert earnt his pocket money by sweeping the shop floor. "After I had worked there six months I was able to scrape up enough money for my first street bike, a 1972 Yamaha DT1 250," he says. There have been many bikes since then, but it took a marriage breaking down and being diagnosed with stage 3 cancer to really motivate Albert to build his dream bike. "I have found a passion that I always had," he says. After surviving his battle with cancer, Albert decided to build the 'ultimate cafe racer.' So he got to work and managed to find the perfect donor bike, a beat up old KZ1000 in El Paso, Texas. After 7 months of wrenching, including many nights in his garage during winter he has finally finished. We're pleased to introduce you to Silver Bullit Cafe's KZ1000.

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Brauchi's Kawasaki W650 - ‘JagdBobber’

So, we've just had a sweet BM tracker. Let's continue the Germanic thematic with a bike not made in Deutschland, but perfected there. And with a Red Baron theme, no less. It's interesting to note that Germany and Japan have an intertwined engineering relationship when it comes to new automotive developments. For almost all the most important road safety developments of the last 50 years, it was the Germans who developed the technology and the Japanese who perfected it. Take ABS as a great example. An electronics system created by Bosch and then installed by BMW on their K100 in 1988 was the starting point for ABS on motorcycles, but it arguably took Honda and their current generation ABS system available most notably on their CBR1000RR to perfect it. Many a professional motorcycle reviewer noted that in their minds it was the first truly unobtrusive ABS system that functioned on track as required without sacrificing lap times. You can see a similar development path for other technologies such as EBD, seat belt tensioners, and traction control. So what happens when you feed motorbike through the system the wrong way around? Oh, don't worry - the results are better than you think. Meet the JagdBobber.

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Kawasaki KZ200 - "Ulah Adigung 002"

Here's something that doesn't happen too often. A bike update report. Way back in July, 2010 we showed you a great little Indonesian Kwaka from an obviously talented guy by the name of Gilberto Manoch. The bike has a beautiful back story regarding Gilberto's dad, Tommy, winning the 1963 Indonesian Grand Prix on a bike he's painted the words "Ulah Adigung" on before the race - Indonesian for "Don't be Arrogant." In honour of his father, Gilberto created the bike you see here. This version is it's second incarnation, and Gil has updated pretty much everything, creating a bike which we think is looking pretty damn winning.

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Kawasaki W650 - Wrenchmonkees #32

I have a confession to make. I've been having a relationship with another girl for years behind my wifes back. I keep her tucked away in a garage up the road and I'm always making excuses to go see her. I could ride her all day long and most of the time I do. Then at other times, it's just a quickie up to the shops - but always satisfying. You could call her my mistress. My metal mistress. So when Wrenchmonkees sent me an email saying they were building a bike for the Mistress Gentlemen's Motorcycle Club (MGMC), I instantly related to the clubs name. Not because it sounds like a strip club (that helped), but because I like the idea of a motorbike being a 'mistress'. MGMC is a fractional ownership club for luxury motorcycles in Lisbon Portugal. You pay an annual fee and you get to choose from the bevy of 'Mistress motorcycles'. The more you pay, the more quality alone time you get to spend with these bikes over the year. "We have a Ducati Diavel, a BMW S1000RR and a GS 1200, but we needed something unique to complete our fleet" says part owner Gonçalo Henriques. "Our goal was to have a dream garage for our members. First we were thinking of a Harley but we contacted Per from Wrenchmonkees, that we found in a Portuguese magazine called Rev and project Mistress was born!"

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1981 Kawasaki Z200 - Darizt Design

Imagine not being able to afford to buy any type of motorcycle. Not even the rustiest, crappiest, lowest of the low displacement bike that you wouldn't even play wee-wee firemen with it if an English rioter had agressively flambéd it. Then imagine living in a country that has a very limited selection of bikes. Then imagine (stay with us here) you have a dream to become a great custom bike builder. What do you do? Well, Agus Darizt from Java, Indonesia faced this problem a few years ago. So he worked out the only thing he could afford to customize was small scale model kits. He got so good at handling the super glue and plastic a friend asked Agus whether he would be interested in building a real bike for him. Of course he jumped at the chance and he hasn't looked back since. "I started from scratch," he says. "I learnt how to weld, how to use a bench lathe machine and refined my metal shaping techniques, and 5 months later the Preambule Orange CB100 (pictured below) was finished". Now three years later and Agus is up to his ninth bike, or "attempt number 9" as he humbly calls it. 

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2001 Kawasaki W650 - Tangara

Anyone who has visited our fair city of Sydney in the last 20 years will have probably had the dubious pleasure of riding on our mass transit system. Known as CityRail by it's employees and ShittyRail by the rest of us, it's main train is the once shiny but now fairly lack-luster 'Tangara', which is an Australian Aboriginal word meaning to go. Which they do, sometimes. Put simply, the trains are old, well-used work horses that are a little dangerous, fairly dirty, jury-rigged and manned by a bunch of nasty-looking guys who aren't that accustomed to being helpful or courteous. Which brings us to Seoul's Denver Cho and his well-used, dangerous, dirty, jury-rigged W650 "Tangara" Kwaka - which is more often than not manned by his good self, and by the look of him he's probably not that good at being courteous either.

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