Italian customizing specialists Gallimoto have recently presented three new Triumph Bonneville specials that they’ve put together. Called Bonneville Six Days, Goldenboy and Bullitt, the English bikes with an Italian feel are pretty much the same, but oh so very different.
The Bonneville Six Days is based on the current Bonnie and stand out thanks to a khaki green paint job, black wire wheels, biturbo twin shocks and new indicators. The bike pays tribute to Steve McQueen who competed in the International Six Days Trial in 1964 on a Triumph and costs approximately $16.5K.
The Goldenboy started as a stock Bonneville SE, but now features black finished mag wheels, low fitted handlebars, an aluminum front mudguard and seat unit and megaton exhausts, but also Dunlop sportsmax-tires, sintered pads and adjustable twin shocks. Finished in red and gold, this special one also costs around $16.5K.
The Bullit gets mag wheels and Biturbo twin shocks as well as an alloy fuel cap and control levers and pressed aluminum chainguard, sprocket cover and front and rear mudguards. It is finished in silver and with a cost of approximately $16.8K it is the most expensive of them all although the difference is inconsiderable when you’re paying that much for a Bonneville.
Although these bikes don’t seem to have undergone radical customizing processes, they’re whole different stories than their standard siblings and we’re glad to see that café racer influences still catch on to the European motorcyclist today.
If someone had taken a look at KTM’s RC8 superbike and tried to build one in his own garage couldn’t have done a better job than the one done by Ian McElroy when, inspiring from the Austrian firm’s race-spec bike, has turned a 1987 Honda CBR 1000F into the nasty looking thing pictured above.
The custom bike features angular lines and aluminum hand-crafted fenders as well as a new subframe. In fact, welded sheets of aluminum form the bodywork, while the original 998cc, DOHC 16 valve inline-four was given a tune up using K&N filters and a custom-made exhaust system allowing the engine to breath much better and develop 130 horsepower. That’s worth of the Veypor gauges, which even records G-force, 0-60, quarter mile time and lap time apart from rpm and speed.
It is enough to take a look at the bike to realize that it required a great deal of work and dedication and the fact that it transmits that makes it even nicer. If we could only hear it go down the street…
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Although the Yamaha XS650 is a decades-old bike, custom builders still spot potential in the middleweight parallel-twin, SOHC motor powering it and still going strong today. For instance, the guys from a small shop called An-Bu in Nagoya, Japan have managed to transform it into a stripped-back custom that would make even Brad Pitt proud when sitting behind its short bars.
The bike was stripped off its unnecessary parts and while the frame was modified for a lower and more aggressive stance, the original engine and wheels were kept. We like the new exhaust and entirely black painted wheels, but there’s actually much more to this custom. Take a look at the custom-made gas tank, seat and modified rear fender, but don’t go looking for a front fender because they’ve removed that entirely. Performance wheels do come in handy despite the fact that this looks like a very light bike and they don’t mention anything about engine performance being increased.
Looking at the Yamaha XS650 by An-Bu, it is easy to see what the Japanese idea for a custom is.
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Harley-Davidson is a little too much into their style, so they rarely come up with a bike that is truly bad to the bone. But most of their ideas are taken one step further by people such as Mike Wilson of Dyno Mike’s Dynamic Chassis and Sandy Kosman of Kosman Specialties, who have teamed up to build what they call the Harley-Davidson XR124.
They’ve taken Harley’s sportiest ride, the XR1200 and made it look, sound and feel more appealing for the younger crowd, while still retaining the bike’s original style. In other words, they’ve mounted an S&S 124 cubic inch Evo engine on a twin shock rubber mount frame with a Buell XB12 front end (meaning upside down fork, front fender and six-piston caliper). The aluminum tank and rear fender were ordered from Evan Wilcox.
These guys aren’t just bike assemblers, so they’ve built their own exhaust and wheels. Overall, the thing weighs less than 500 pounds, which should make it flickable, while the power-to-weight ratio should make things at least very interesting.
As with most successful tuner projects, this bike looks like it was actually made like this by the manufacturer, but we can only wish H-D would build such a bike.
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The 2010 Kawasaki Z1000 is already one of the best Japanese nakeds around, but ways to make it better are always found either by riders individually or by tuners. These lasts have the habit of developing entire upgrade kits that set the bike miles away from its original state of new product that has just come out the factory gates.
Take the 2010 Roaring Toyz Kawasaki Z1000 case for example. The bike gets a set of Performance Machine wheels (17-inch front, 18-inch rear), 240-section rear tire, a custom-built braced swingarm and Brocks 4-2-1 exhaust, just to mention some of its most impressive new features.
The gold/silver paintjob does help at setting the bike apart from its standard siblings, but what we like the most about this project is the fact that it looks like that’s just the way Kawi did it in the first place. This is really one of those bikes that people see and ask “what is stock and what is aftermarket about it?” Click past the break to find out.
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