Dennis, or D as everyone knows him; is no stranger to the bike shed, but usually his work is shown on other peoples pro built machines. D is a custom painter based in Brighton, UK and works under the name D-Lucks Custom Paint. He paints for the likes of Spirit of the 70s and RB Kustoms as well as many others.
D has had an array of bikes over the last few years and grew up in both Germany and the USA, where motorcycles have always played a part in his life. For his own ride, D called upon RBK to prime their fabrication talent and spread it on thick. The donor is a BMW R80/7 from 1973, D bought it over a year ago as an honest cafed out bike to use over summer and Autumn ’13; come winter he decided he didn’t want to part with it, so chose to make it personal to him.
So the brief was set; get rid of everything on the frame that wasn’t good looking and replace or redesign the parts that didn’t live up to D’s eye for beauty, D says: “From the seriously cleaned up frame to the custom made tail end, to the new clean & streamlined front end it was all about keeping this bike looking tidy while showing off the slightly cleaned vintage engine and wheels.”
Now RBK’s Russ is a seriously talented fabricator and has no fear of the unknown; which is handy, because the tank got de-seemed and had about 2.5” taken off the bottom and staggered toward the back to give it a racy feel. Once the front and rear of the tank were sealed up, D asked for the huge fuel cap to be cut out to make way for a Harley neck.
The rear suspension was found in D’s loft, they are from a Harley he used to own. The sleek looking yokes were designed by RBK and a Dakota digi speedo completes the top shelf. Out front the bike wears a Halo headlamp… how Angelic! And the bars carry stunning ISR hand controls from Sweden with the levers shortened to visually fit. The ignition is neatly hidden away within the frame just under the bottom yoke.
Moving down the bike from the wrapped headers to the TYGA Moto Maggot end cans, we look up to the seat unit which hides away the battery and then onto the comfy area with diamond stitching; upholstered by The Trimming Centre in Brighton.
Tyres are Avon Road rider, they look great and D says they ride even better. The internals aka the electrics, wiring, coils etc are all new and modernised with things like mini coils and Boyer digital ignition.
Did we mention that D is a painter? Well there’s no prize for guessing who was behind the bikes elegant cloak; so to round things off let’s hear from the man himself: A lot of work went into this bike but it still comes across subtle in stance and that was the aim. The paint was simple, I wanted to stay away from the 2 tone paint jobs or not paint which seem to rule the roost with cafe racers and do something more interesting. It’s a personal paint job from D-Luck’s Custom Paint Workshop in Brighton and not everyone will like it, but like I said, it’s personal and I’ve always wanted to use the slogan “humble on the rumble” which defines me quite well! also it shows that you can have some fun with your paint regardless of what sort of bike you have.
Huge appreciation goes to RB Kustoms with special mentions for Russ and Tom… and some back street paint shop called D-Lucks Custom Paint! To see more from all involved check out RB Kustoms website and D-Luck’s Facebook page
