DEEP CREEK ITALIAN BASTARD

“Deep Creek Italian Bastard” – When that title pops up one can be forgiven for expecting an aggressive, attitude packed, neighbour scaring brute of a machine to be revealed in the pictures, but not so. This elegant, gentlemanly Guzzi from Kris at DeepCreekCycleworks is so damn charming that the neighbours would more likely invite you over for tea and crumpets, or rather espresso and biscotti. So why the vicious moniker? As refined and simple as the finished product appears, the effort and journey to get it to this state was anything but, this Guzzi was a bit of a bastard to build.

We first encountered Kris Reniers when he submitted his Ducati M900 “Green Machine” to the ‘Shed. He is a graduate in Electro-mechanics and works as a technician in a steel plant but is currently back at school honing his already advanced skill set with the aim of building motorcycles full time. The owner of this Guzzi V7 750 Special from ’69 recognised the talent and seized the opportunity to have Kris work on his bike, and so the “bastard” build began.

“The owner wanted his bike to be restored, a bit altered but not much. He came to me with a sad story of his bike – a dude began to strip the bike, when everything was in bits and pieces the thing went on hold. Years later the owner wanted his bike back, the bike was still in bits and pieces. So he came to me, asking me to start and finish this thing. I got a frame, engine and 2 wheels, 3 boxes of stuff and thats it.”

The problem Kris had was that he had never before seen a complete V7 of the vintage and was unsure if the boxes contained everything he needed. Predictably, they didn’t. Kris guessed there was a boxful that had gone awol so the owner gave him carte blanche to get whatever he needed – he just wanted to ride his Guzzi again.

The process of collecting the pieces together began. They came from all over the world, this model Guzzi saw service as police bikes in the US so that became a prime source of the parts Kris required, the rest came from Italy – “Thank God for eBay.” The ambition for the build was for the bike to go back in time, it needed to be simple and clean, lower, black and white with a dose of chrome but not too much. Kris wanted a small seat leaving the deeply valanced mudguards to steal the show.

Dime City Cycles were the providers of many key parts; the shorter rear shocks, lights, handlebars, levers, grips and switches along with the look defining whitewall tyres all came from there. Kris inevitably has nothing but praise for Dime City, “They have a great shop and the service is excellent”.

For help with the seat Kris looked closer to home, to the gentleman of MotoKouture in his native Belgium. “I needed the seat to be exact because of the frametube, I welded a baseplate and some mountings and then went to MotoKouture for the leatherwork, they did a great job.” Kris dispatched the frame for powder coating and that was the end of the outsourced work as he set about the paint job himself – and what a job.

“An engine overhaul was needed so I did that. Everything on this bike I did myself, the billet (frontfork) was handmade so I could fit the original speedometer in it, it looks slick now! The back of the frame was cut of and altered so that it bends along the fender. The battery was replaced with a smaller one and new wires were put in place.”

We are seriously unsure if Kris really needs to be back at school…

Tracking down the bits and pieces may have been a bastard of a job but in putting them together Kris has created a classic gent of a machine. Restored beyond its former glory and singing through those fishtail pipes the owner must be revelling in finally riding his Guzzi again.

Kris has shown great versatility of style with the two builds he has shown us so far at the BikeShed, we look forward to seeing what he sends us next, complete with Deep Creek Cycleworks elegant email sign off – Peace and Grease…

via The Bike Shed