Cooper-von-Wankel, Moonshine’s Rotary Mini

One of the things I feel the most appreciative over about my experiences working for Speedhunters has been the opportunity to travel to Scandinavia a handful of times. In this strange land full of beautiful places and beautiful people I’ve learned to re-evaluate the way I look at the world. In a place where nothing is as it seems, you start to just stop questioning anything and just have a good old-fashioned look.

When I first saw the Moonshine Racing team vehicles, they were still strapped onto one of the official Gatebil.no support trailers. I went right up close and within seconds I released that these cars were pretty bonkers. I didn’t yet know anything about the owners, but after one look at the cars I could tell that whomever built them had likely done so while drinking Moonshine.

The outsides of the cars are all painted a matching primer grey color, with miscellaneous stenciling around the body; some hinting at possible performance upgrades while others were non-sensical and others yet simply lewd.

On this particular Mini Cooper, one of the stencils contained a combination of numbers and letters unmistakable to any petrolhead. It read simply 13B-REW. That’s right sports fans, this Mini is RWD and rotary powered. Now I’ve seen it all.

Speedhunters driver and resident rotary fanatic Mad Mike even stopped on track during our photo session to check out the mini, and the next day the owner offered him some time at the helm. Watching Mike wrangling the grippy-tired-and-ludicrously-short-wheelbased Mini into a drift was comical and incredible in equal parts; a memory I won’t soon forget.

With every Gatebil event we are slowly getting around to unearthing more and more of these builds, but try as we might, there are more being built all the time. It’s pretty mind-boggling at times just how many incredible cars are out there in the world and I often can’t help but wonder what future hotspots will be discovered. South America? Middle East? Africa? The search continues…

Sean Klingelhoefer

BUCEPHALUS BY LOADED GUN CUSTOMS

Bucephalus is one of the more unusual custom motorcycles we’ve had the good fortune to feature here on Silodrome, the bike is staggeringly complex but it can be summed up relatively simply: it’s a state-of-the-art race-bred motorcycle built around a vintage, air-cooled Triumph engine.

The idea of blending new with old is nothing we haven’t seen before of course, but this level of engineering prowess is rarely seen in the world of custom motorcycles, with most builders chopping some parts off, adding some other parts and slapping on a coat of paint. Bucephalus is about as far away from that kind of Craigslist special as it’s possible to get.

I’ll start by explaining the frame, which seems to be the part that people notice first. It’s a monocoque structure that uses the engine as a partial stressed member, the frame was cut from 7075 aircraft-grade aluminium and was designed as a lightweight means of connecting the swing arm to the forks. Rigidity is improved through the use of 5/8ths carbon engine plates and a discreet oil-cooler is installed between the two frame elements at the front, to catch clean airflow.

That flat black swing arm is a bespoke unit made from 4130 lightweight chromium and molybdenum (chromoly), this is bolted to that monoshock rear spring which joins to the aluminium frame at the base of the fuel tank.

Kevin (the builder and owner of Loaded Gun Customs) mentioned that he spent an afternoon chatting with Willie G. Davidson in Sturgis at the Ton Up display, Kevin found that people kept commenting on the thinness of the carbon rods supporting the seat and Willie recommended that he use wider, 1″ carbon rods instead, not because the bike needed them, but just because if people don’t trust the engineering, it’ll cost sales on the showroom floor.

The centrepiece of Bucephalus is that beautiful, air-cooled 1967 Triumph Bonneville parallel twin. A number of performance oriented modifications were made to the engine, including a 10 bolt head conversion, short stroke rods, Nic-a-Sil aluminium cylinders, custom JRC TT exhaust pipes and a pair of fast-breathing K&N air-filter pods.

To ensure that the finished bike would handle as well as it could, Kevin decided to use a pair of X1 Buell forks with advanced, Race Tech internals. The brakes are Beringer (4-pot) up front and Brembo at the rear with the front wheel being a Buell X1 unit.

If you love this bike and have decided that you need to own one I have some good news, Kevin will be building them to order. Frame #1 has been ordered by land speed record chaser Bart Boucher, who’s ordered a slightly modified Bucephalus that’ll be capable of 175mph unfaired and 200+mph with a full aero-fairing.

If you’d like to visit Loaded Gun Customs and submit your order, you can click here.

All images via the talented Erick Runyon.

via SILODROME

Ecurie Ecosse goes under the hammer

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to just go out and buy your own vintage racing team? Well, that’s exactly what happened at Bonhams London sale.

 £5.5 million pounds for a pair of Jaguars and just under £1.8m for the transporter to go with them? Sounds like Christmas came early for one lucky US buyer.

The talk of the event was the opportunity presented by Dick Skipworth’s splendid Ecurie Escosse going under the hammer as a whole. This meant that cars like the 1956 Jaguar D-type were available for purchase alongside matching team cars from earlier and later years. A final figure of £2.55million marked the successful sale of this beauty.

Startling prices all ’round were achieved at the sale, which marked the first of Bonhams efforts at their new location. Of course it was to be the aforementioned D-Type and it’s matching C-type (pictured) that would gather the largest sums, with the ’52 C-type changing hands for a cool £2,913,500.

It may never have ducked beneath a chequered flag itself, yet all eyes were on this 1960 Commer TS3 transporter. The price reflected its attention-grabbing presence, with the TS3 being purchased for a whopping £1,793,500, reportedly by the same US-based individual who took home both the C and D-Types. The converted ’60 Commer can actually carry three cars in total, meaning that the new owner has the option to expand his fleet if the urge strikes at a later point.

It wasn’t all bad news for those shopping with less than 7 figures, this gorgeous 1951 Jaguar XK120 tipped £707k.

…as well as the slightly more modern 1959 Tojeiro-Jaguar, which saw £382,300.

Further down the money tree was the 1962/63 Tojeiro EE-Buick at £214k, whilst the 1960 Cooper Monaco (below) saw the gong for around £5k more.

A bit of relative bargain, if you don’t think about it too much!

Whilst it had been predicted that the C and D-type Jaguars would collect larger figures than that which eventuated, there were those from the collection which surprised punters, such as the £62k paid for the team’s tiny 1961 Austin-Healey Sprite.

Of course, it always comes back to the weirdest and most wonderful, with the the 1960 Commer stealing the show. The transporter is desirable and rare enough to have been featured in its own ten-minute television clip. To grasp a full appreciation for how special this rolling piece of history is, take a look at this video:

via motorsportretro

Marco Moeller’s Hind Ki Rani

Marco Moeller’s “Hind Ki Rani” has already been celebrated online, but it was Marco’s wife Antje that brought HKR to our attention on The Bike Shed, with her take on the build; “from Trash to Treasure” and a new set of photos taken in the parched dry desert by Colin Handy.

What really stands out on this Enfield 500 Bullet is the work that has gone into the metalwork with hundred of hours spend hand-chiseling patterns into the raw metal, but take a step back and she also has a superbly balanced silhouette. We can see how “she” has made her mark on Marco & Antje’s lives.

Marco is German and based in Dubai. Having not ridden a motorcycle for years he took pity on the bike when he came across her three years ago in a very distressed state in his boss’s backyard. The desert heat hadn’t been kind to the little Bullet but Marco could see beyond the filth & grease. He wanted to build something unique, that suited him as a person, but also helped reflect 60 years of Indian heritage.

The bike was initially fixed-up and rebuilt to a decent standard, so Marco entered her into a local competition in Dubai. The bike won the best customized European category trophy at the Gulf Bike Expo 2011, but this was only the beginning, as Marco’s vision was far from complete. This was when all the craft-work started in earnest and the bike began to take on a far more exotic temperament.

The donor was built in 1994, a bike pretty much unchanged for decades, and the principle work was all about restoring her to to working condition and with the stance he wanted. Just getting the bike running was a bit of a mission but with plenty of help from the Internet Marco struggled through and bought her back to life. From this point onwards the guys at Classic Motorcycles sorted the engine properly and allowed Marco to start thinking about the cosmetic side of his build.

The front 19′ wheel was swapped to 18″ and the rear was reduced to a 15-incher to wear a fat back tyre, while paint was taken care of by a friend. Much of the carved metalwork is made of brass, sourced in India and then hand engraved by Marco using a hammer and chisel. Doing the same to the aluminium pieces took “an insane amount of time”.

Marco: “…it’s by far and away not finished yet. I guess you cannot put my modified Bullet in any category like bobber, chopper, café or anything else. However it was very critical that I maintained the basic features of a typical Royal Enfield as those are indeed what make her special and remarkable. I do enjoy it when people are coming up to me, showing interest, asking questions about the bike whenever I stop. But if anyone asks me, she’s not a show bike! She’s pretty much more that! She’s loud and furious, she’s moody and temperamental…”

Anyone who’s ridden an Enfield Bullet will relate to the sentiment behind this bike (and it’s temperament). It’s great to see a motorcycle inspire so much passion and dare we say it ‘love’, and even better to read about a bike that seems to have brought a couple closer together. Antje is obviously fiercely proud of Marco’s work and wants the whole world to see what her man is capable of. See more on their Facebook Page.

Antje:“HKR is anything else, but just an ordinary bike. This stunning motorcycle is loud and furious like a yob, moody and temperamental like a woman and beautiful like a fairytale Queen.”

…and who doesn’t love a fairytale ending?

Posted by Dutch@TheBikeShed.cc