A few days we got in contact with Mischa, from the Dutch garage 77 Custom Bikes, who just finished a BMW R100 Cafe Racer. This is his story.
“Well over a year ago I bought a beautiful BMW R100RT ’80. I fell in love with it at first sight. The bike was black with double white pin striping and in reasonable condition.”
“After riding it for one week I was fed-up with not feeling the elements slamming in my face, no rain, no bugs, no face-scrub while passing a truck… Even though the fairing was freshly painted just before I bought the bike it had to go! The bike was stripped from it’s fairings, chanced the handlebar and painted the rims black I did ride this ‘naked version’ throughout the summer.”
“One night I had a beer with friends and we were discussing the looks of the bike. I always go for looks, they were all about performance. At the end of this night I made up my mind I was gonna turn this plain naked into a high performance caferacer with style! A brutal machine with stunning looks: the idea for ‘SlickBeast’ was born!”
That was the beginning of a 5 month journey.
“I joined up with one of my friends who has the technical skills. Because we are both born in 1977 we called ourselves 77CustomBikes from that day on. At first we took the whole bike apart and inspected any individual part for wear and tear. After that we made a list of what had to be replaced, refurbished or modified. The list was endless but I had the money, the time and for once the change to do this so we went full monty on this project.
Because we both had busy day jobs and one of u also had a family to run we only had the opportunity to work on the bike one evening a week and some rare holidays.”
“Biggest challenge was modifying the sub-frame, it needed to be a lot shorter and much more narrow. We spend ages to get this right (and straight!) especially the upstand. Off-course you can by these things aftermarket but what’s the fun in that.”
“So long we needed to stay with a rolling chassis.”
But now the real fun began!
Assembly time!
List of things that they bought, shaped, modified, had done, refurbished:
• Frame and rims powdercoated SatinBlack
• Upgrade brakes Venhill steel brakehoses
• Overhauled engine, transmission and carbs
• Bridgestone BT45 tires
• Shocks Hagon (back)
• Classic valve covers
• Refurbished shocks (front)
• Completely modified electric wiring
• Mono Café-seat & duo Scrambler-seat
• Custom GPS Speedo
• Brake light
• Modified handels & controls
• K&N airfilters
• Hoske muflers
• Turn signals
• Custom paintjob High Gloss Black with BMW M-striping
• All Alu glass pearl finish
“After this fantastic journey we did not had the time to enjoy the build-off… we bought ourselves a new project, BMW R100RS 1978 and we started our next project ‘ScramChique’ follow us on Twitter @77custombikes or Facebook/77custombikes“
Greetings
77CustomBikes Gouda – Holland
Mischa Straver Sales & Design
Robbert de Waal Technical & Engineering
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