Loud pipes save lives, fact. They also help make friends and money, potentially. Stephen Bentley from Dust Motorcycles got chatting to a chap during last year’s Bike Shed London show about a set of rude silencers from a previous build, The Gunshot. These token gestures towards decibel quelling had found their way onto eBay and said chap Matt won the auction. One thing led to another and Matt decided Steve would be the man to further an R80 project that was languishing due to the pressure of other commitments.
Matt is a BMW car nut, especially when it comes to the M-Sport department so the paint scheme was a relatively simple decision, take inspiration from 70s & 80s fire breathing touring cars – think Hans Stuck and Steve Soper for an idea of what makes Matt all wobbly at the knee. International rally driver David Wright (who won Goodwood Festival of Speed last time out) is also a great painter and took care of Matt’s tank. David races the ex-WRC Ford Focus in the last photo so you can be assured that these go faster stripes are really, really fast ones.
Despite an extra 30hp coming from the paintwork Steve wanted to treat this 1986 R80 to a few more Pferdestärkes so the barrels and pistons were swapped for a 1000cc setup. As Matt plans to do a few hillclimb sprints on the bike, a bit of internal fettling was carried out to keep times down. Steve knows a thing or two about persuading the Bavarian boxer to yield very decent power figures and he’s not a fan of pedestrian customs. These photos show a set of sedentary Bings on fuel duty but these were fitted for the shoot, proper flat slides are now in situ.
If you’re going to put effort into performance, you may as well shout about it. The four canons firing out form under the seat are slightly reminiscent of the early MV Agusta F4 and are apparently sound like fury, making naming the bike an easy task. Dust Motorcycles is based ooop north where roads were only recently introduced so a pair of Pirelli Scorpions dual sport tyres ensure adequate levels of grip.
Rather than forcing the rider to wear kevlar undercrackers Steve incorporated a heat shield into the seat base. The seat itself is thick, comfy and was upholstered in dark brown hide by local outfit Robshaw Leathers. With the pipes taking up all available real estate under the saddle and tank, electricity had to be banished below decks. An Earth X battery is mounted below the gearbox and a new wiring loom powers a Motogadget M-unit, speedo and M-Blaze barend indicators. The ignition is wireless and to further the clean look an older cable-to-hydraulic master cylinder lives under the tank.
The super-wide bars are a bit special, made from spun stainless and hand bent by the late Carroll Resweber – American flat-tracking legend. Steve picked these up from Thor Drake over the water at See See Motorcycles and they look the business.
After this photoshoot the bike was tailored slightly to fit Matt’s vitals, and rearsets were fitted. Along with the aforementioned carb upgrade a pair of floating 320mm brake discs have been added. Since then Matt has been enjoyed Fury so much that it’s become infectious, and now his employer wants one.
The thirst for Steve’s Beemers remains unquenched and Dust Motorcycles has a few more exciting projects on the horizon, which we will share in due course.
Images by Jon Brook via The Bike Shed
