souvenirs d'Irlande

photos Pierre Xavier

SAVERIO’S Z400

A 1983 Z400J. The kind of bike your 50 year old next door neighbour commuted to work on in the early 90′s, when you were in your teens. The kind of bike you dismissed as dull, soulless, old fashioned, practical transportation. Now the kind of bike that when given the love like this one has, you would happily part exhange your girlfriend/boyfriend for. Funny how things turn out isn’t?

This build was carried out by Saverio, a graphic designer, illustrator and artist who goes under the name of  “DSdesign Aerografie”. He’d previously built a brat style BMW R65 with his pals in the workshop, Forcelli Meccanica. And when Saverio found an unloved Z400 lurking covered in dust in the corner of an old garage, he realised he’d found his next project.

The idea was to create a bike that sits somewhere between brat style and scrambler. To achieve this, it went through several major operations. The whole bike was completely disassembled. The frame was shortened, various appendices were removed to clean things up, then the frame was sandblasted and painted. The same paint love was given to the rest of the bike, including the engine block. A tank was nabbed from another Kawasaki, it was adapted to fit, then airbrushed with a special paint.

The tachometer has been slung on the side of the bike, and the clock face has been changed from black to white. Apparently Saverio has even added “Kawasaki z400 brat style” onto the dials.  We’ll have to take your word for it mate as we can’t see from this angle. Equally, we’ll have to work our for ourselves where you’ve managed to hide the battery.  (in that little hump beneath the rear of the seat is our bet.)

The headlight was purchased from an actual flea market instead of the usual online one. The rims have been repainted, tyres replaced, new seat base made and new handlebars fitted. The handsome bell mouths were handmade, as was the silencer. Oh and the entire electrical system was rewired. In short, this build took a lot of blood, sweat and tears.

Saverio says that this bike is now reluctantly up for sale as he’s itching to get on with his next project.  Now, what could it be?  What other bikes did  my next door neighbour use to wheel out of his garage and go to work on in 1993?

Thanks for sharing your work with us Saverio.  We’re impressed.

 the Bike Shed

on the road

HARLEY-DAVIDSON FAT TRACKER

The Harley-Davidson Fat Tracker is one of those unusual builds that I love to feature, it started life as a 2009 FLHR Road King and was acquired by Hal’s Harley-Davidson in New Berlin, Wisconsin in 2013. During the winter the team decided to set about creating something from the FLHR that wasn’t a bagger, a bobber or a chopper – they wanted to see if they could build it into a flat tracker – or a fat tracker in this case.

It isn’t everyday that you’ll find a flat tracker with an engine capacity of 107 cubic inches (1750cc), it’s been further modified with a Silver Moon crankshaft, a modified flywheel, Revolution performance heads, CP pistons, 598 cams and a Harley-Davidson Screamin’ Eagle cam plate. That serpentine exhaust is a hand-fabricated, stainless system made in-house by the guys at Hal’s with Supertrapp silencers.

An FLHX fuel tank has been modified to fit, the side panels were inverted and the mounts were moved forward 2 inches to fit the FLHR frame. The frame was further modified with a new aluminium subsection replacing the stock subframe, a mono-shock rear was adopted from a 1125R Buell and the front suspension was replaced with a set of 2013 V-Rod forks.

The belt drive was switched out for a chain drive, the headlight was replaced with an LED fitted number plate and a classic flat tracker tail section was fabricated from aluminium. The build team was made up of Jon Shearer, Jim Kopydlowski, Tom Fritz, Kirk Topel and Wally Klock, and surprisingly, none of them have yet been allowed to take the Fat Tracker out for a spin on the mud.

If you’d like to see more from Hal’s you can click here, if you’d like to see more flat trackers you can click here to take a look at some of our previous features.

via SILODROME