We had a street cruiser double craddle chassis to begin with, which was hacked and rebuilt to match an effective caferacer design. The entire rear frame was reworked and redesigned. 12″ wide tripple T held unpraged 42mm short travel telescopic suspension to keep the retro vibe alive and a stiffer front-end performance. The rear double spring set-up was replaced by a Gabriel mono-shock unit with preload adjustability. A custom swingarm was developed to match ‘caferacer’ lines and offer better stability. Every body part was hand-built out of raw metal sheets, including the rear cowl, tank, front number shield, bash plate and under body exhaust pipe. The engine was an engineering process by itself – we had a 220cc block, which was further bored and mated with a new overhead camshaft and a shorter stroke – a bigger carbaurator with a KnN fliter was fitted to squeeze out every ounce of power the new engine could deliver – we recorded 35bhp at the rear wheel at the final stage of the engine rebuild. The stock drum-disc brakes were swapped with brembo 2 pot single caliper units with new petal rotors (front and back) with steel braided lines . A hand-stitched custom leather seat and a Monza gas cap were amongst the many of the final details. A 7″ wide alu rear rim shod with a190mm Pirelli angel GT tyre section made sure the bike looked the part and had enough rubber to scrape corners. Stealth indicators and headlamps were added for practicality. I went for a steam punk inspired patina paint finish, where the paint would eventually reveal fine lines under the laquer mimicking wrinkles of her rider’s aging process, almost humanesque. Every decal was carefully painted to the last detail (there are no vinyl anywhere). The tank was dressed with a custom hand-stitched leather jacket with copper buckles finalising the retro vibe. The front rim was upgraded from a Royal Enfield interceptor rear 4″ light weight alu rim with 120mm Pirelli rubber. The battery was pushed back under the seat to maintain an even weight distribution across the chassis. The clutch and brake levers were sourced from eBay with improvised oil-reservoirs (front and back). The pedals were sourced from an R1. The dash shods a single unit digi-analog set-up with a built in fuel gauge. The clip-on bar and switches are motogp controls look alike with a short throttle, to provide an eager character to the ride. The design follows a certain level of asymetricity, a full 360 degree view would reveal element-differences running across the sides celebrating the ‘one-off’ character of a thorough bred custom motorcycle
