When Kawasaki launched the W650, its take on the infant retro market that actually preceded Triumph’s relaunched Bonneville (1999 for the Kwak, 2001 for the Bonnie, according to Wikipedia), a lot of people didn’t realise quite how ‘retro’ it was. Pictures: Simon Everett You see, the ‘W’ in ‘W650’ refers
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Steampunk, as any fule nose, is just about one of the most fashionable lifestyle sub-cultures around at the moment. Flat/street-trackers are equally as desirable. Put them together and what do you get? Well, this bike here actually… Chris Vincent, the owner and builder of the black BMW cafe racer from
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With the advent of eBay back in September 1995 (it was actually called AuctionWeb back then, did you know that?), the biking world suddenly both expanded and shrank at the same time. What am I blithering on about? Well, it expanded in that us lot ’ere in Grande Bretagne (and
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Anyone who’s been to any of the bigger events this year (and a fair few of the smaller ones too) will no doubt have seen the two gentlemen responsible for the creation of this bike; Roy Gilby from Stondon Choppers, the builder, and Dave Harvey, the owner. They’re quite easy
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In much the same way as there are now reckoned to be more of the legendary Manx Norton race bikes today than were ever built by the Bracebridge factory in the model’s 16-year (1946-1962) history, there do seem to be a suspiciously large number of hardtail frames allegedly built by
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The bike started life as a hardtail frame I bought in 2006 with the vision to build a bike like my dad rode in the 1980s, writes Dale. Pictures: Simon Everett It’d been designed for a Kawasaki Z650 motor, but I’d picked up a GPz750 to use as a donor
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Ever since I was a teenager I’ve always wanted a chopper, writes Jim Tarry. I used to have pictures on my bedroom wall of ’70s-style choppers, but in those days I couldn’t afford one and, anyway, back then I didn’t have a bike licence! Pictures: Garry Stuart Over the years,
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Ger Merrigan’d become sick of modifying cars, as he had been for a few years, and came up with the idea of building a bobber, writes Ian Shipley. He managed to find a donor bike, a 1979 Yamaha XS500 that an old buddy of his had, which was duly swapped
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This bike really started when I bought a billet rear wheel from Krazy Horse Customs in far-away (well, from me anyway) Bury St Edmunds to do a fat back end conversion on my Harley, explains Kev Donald. I put it in and it looked great, but after six months of
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Way back in 2013, Back Street Heroes organised the first BSH Xtreme Custom Show, held in the exhibition halls at Donington Park. At the time, the editorial team of Stu and Blue had the idea of doing some kind of ‘Build Off’ at the event, whereby two builders’d create a
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