The Tridays is one of the largest motorcycle events in Europe. It’s held every year in the picturesque Austrian town of Neukirchen, and organizer Uli Brée traditionally reveals a one-off custom to celebrate. This year, he’s enlisted two considerable talents: Jochen Schmitz-Linkweiler of LSL, and Jens vom Brauck of JvB-Moto.

The Rumbler is designed to compete in the Tridays Rumble: a 400-meter sprint race on grass, open to all. So it’s an unusually practical machine. LSL fitted Öhlins suspension and Pirelli studded tyres to lift the Rumbler higher off the ground than a stock bike. Custom triple clamps tweak the steering geometry, and there’s a Magura Supermoto brake system—complete with 4-piston calipers and a radial master cylinder for tremendous stopping power.

The distinctive look mostly comes from JvB-Moto parts—including the headlight, fenders, side panels and bench seat. An Arrow high-performance exhaust completes the package.

I don’t know what other machines will be competing in the Rumble, but this one will be providing stiff competition. And looking good while doing so.

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The ZPsport 449 is powered by a Gas Gas single which delivers around 45 hp at 6,200 rpm, feeding through a six-speed ‘box. The bike is light at 130 kg fully-fuelled, and the 860 mm seat height is rider-friendly.

The chassis is tubular steel, with a single downtube branching into twin engine supports. I haven’t heard of the fork brand MUPO before, but the adjustable rear shocks are Öhlins. The rest of the components are top-drawer: the brakes are from Brembo, and the rims from Excel—21” at the front, 18” at the back.

The prototype is finished in the classic DKW colors of black, green and white, but the production machines will be offered in other colors. The bike is essentially hand-made, and when small-scale production starts in October, customers will be able to personalize their bikes to their hearts’ content.

All this comes at a price, however. It’s been set at €22,430, which is around US$28,000. That’s even more than Ducati’s range-topping Panigale 1199 S Tricolore. But the ZPsport 449 seems to be an attractive, capable and exclusive machine. I’m hoping there are enough enduro buyers who value rarity and vintage aesthetics.

Thanks to Lars-Hendrik Schneider for the tip.

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Decker has received some flak over this bike from Vincent purists. But his Black Lightning is not one of the 30-odd bona fide factory bikes. He assembled it using period-correct salvaged parts supplied by luminaries such as Marty Dickerson and Mel Helde, Jr., who was Rollie Free’s mechanic. And Decker has nothing to hide: “this bike really is a cobbled-together Frankenstein that I’m not ashamed of.”

At first glance, the Vincent DNA is obvious in this machine. Mostly in that huge engine. But park it next to a ‘real’ Lightning, and the differences become obvious. The rider sits a full foot lower on the Schwinn Sting-Ray seat than on the stock machine. The tank is several inches narrower: indeed, only the footpegs and bars extend beyond the width of the engine. The headlight is from a 1970s Honda ATC, and complements the oversized speedo better than the bulky original lamp.

Cycle World profiled this machine in an excellent article a couple of months ago, and after a barrage of criticism, printed an excellent riposte from Paul d’Orleans. As for me—I’d take Decker’s Black Lightning over the original any day. Would you?

Images © Horst Roesler. With thanks. See more of Jeff Decker’s work at his Hippodrome Studio site.

Bike EXIF is the world's #1 source for custom motorcycles, classic motorcycles and cafe racers. Produced in association with Icon.

So it’s surprising that we don’t see more DR650 customs around. This one is a new release from Deus Bali, and their logic in choosing the bike is impeccable: “The DR650 is a simple big motor and frame. It’s probably the biggest single-cylinder four stroke out there. The bike is very adaptable—once you strip off all the plastic, you find a frame and engine that is prime for customizing. They have power. They look great when stripped back and done up, and they’re fun as hell to ride. “

The donor bike here is a 1997 model, although you’d be hard pressed to tell it from a 2012 model. Deus dismantled the DR, pulled the engine apart, cleaned it up and painted it in a black wrinkle finish. They fitted a custom oil cooler and a reverse cone muffler “so you can hear her coming down the road”.

The suspension has been swapped out for Honda CRF bits, and the acres of plastic have been binned in favour of a custom tank and seat combo, enlivened with a splash of yellow. A fresh set of Heidenau rubber sits on wider wheels, with the rear upgraded to an 18” to match the front. Minimal instruments sit atop Ventura street tracker bars to complete the look.

The DR650 has always struck me as a bike you’d buy with your head—or wallet. But with a makeover like this, maybe there’s life in the old dog yet. See more on the Deus Bali website.

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One of them is the annual Modeler GP show, a competition for scale models of racing motorcycles. The standard of work is absolutely jaw dropping, and when I first stumbled across a page on the Modeler GP website, it was a full minute before I realized I was looking at a scale model of a bike rather than the real thing.

I could have picked any of those models to show here. But this Yoshimura Suzuki GS1000R (XR69) jumped out. Partly because it’s one of the most iconic racing motorcycles of the 1980s. And partly because it was steered to victory in the 1980 Suzuka 8 Hours by New Zealander Graeme Crosby—a neighbour of mine who I met for a coffee this morning.

Crosby was paired with Wes Cooley for this race, and counts the XR69 among his favorite bikes: “I rode the XR69 at a testing session and was impressed, because it had a lot of 500GP equipment on it—like brakes and forks,” he says. “I also knew Pops Yoshimura, so when Yoshimura Japan were handed the development part of the GS1000 I was stoked. We had fun with this bike.”

I’m not sure what scale this model is—I’m guessing 1/12—but the detailing is remarkable. Note the wear on the tires, and the intricate decals. Head over to the Modeler GP website and you can see a build diary too, which even shows the internals of the exhaust system being faithfully reproduced. The site is in Japanese, but as so often with racing motorcycles, the pictures are worth a thousand words.

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Parts are hard to come by in Argentina—indeed, fuel is often hard to come by in the second largest country in South America. But CMP Project’s Federico Lozada and German Karp have done an excellent job despite the difficulties.

They started by virtually dismantling a 2011-model Bonneville. The rear subframe was chopped and shaped closer to the 1970s original, and a new seat was built to closely follow the new rear frame tubes. The 17” back wheel was replaced with a 19”, so both wheels are now the same size.

As well as improving the looks, this raised the height of the bike a little—a useful bonus for CMP Project’s client, who is 6’5” (195 cm) tall. The tires are flat track, complemented by an Arrow exhaust system and Renthal bars bought from Japan.

Halfway through this project, the guys from CMP met Pedro García from the hot Spanish shop CRD (who we have featured before). “García had already built a custom Bonneville, so a lot of info and data was exchanged,” say Lozada and Karp.

This Bonneville now weighs 25 kg less than the stock bike, so it should be even more fun to ride. It was CMP’s fifth project, and they’re now up to #8. Keep an eye on their Facebook page for more inspiration.

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The starting point was a £370 ($600) Honda FT500C, and the magazine didn’t want to spend a lot on it. Luckily, they had Carl of CFM in Lincolnshire, England, on their side. He’s a local one-man do-it-all bike builder/fabricator, and he sorted the bike out.

One of the biggest jobs was removing the standard sub-frame and replacing it with raised seat rails. This was done to make the new tank sit parallel, and look good with the seat. The tank? It’s from a 1970s Garelli sport moped, while the seat is a repro Norton race unit, with a Steve Adams seat pad. The distinctive paint, based on an optician’s colour blindness test, was laid on by British cross-genre artist, Death Spray Custom.

The front forks were replaced with Yamaha TDR250 legs, with the stock triple clamps bored out to accept them. The puny and worn-out front brake was ditched for a Yamaha R6 caliper and custom-made EBC disc, while the rear is another EBC disc, with a standard caliper. Sideburn went to the bother of having one-off discs made to avoid caliper adapter plates—always ugly and best avoided. The rear shocks are British-made Hagon Nitros.

There are dozens of tasty little details. The footpegs are KTM beartraps, while the rear master cylinder is Yamaha YZ450. The stock headlight is on a cut-and-shut standard bracket; the front master cylinder is from a Honda CFR450, and the switches have all been moved to the headlight shell.

Want to know more? Grab yourself a copy of Sideburn #6.

With thanks to Gary Inman of Sideburn Magazine and Paul Bryant of Kinetic Images.

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Rossi often turns his hand to custom motorcycles, and this is his latest. He describes it as “An unconventional Sportster modified for mountain joyrides,”—hence the name Stellalpina (Alpine star).

The core of this bike is a 2004 Harley-Davidson XL1200 Sportster, but Rossi has modified the tank—now set lower and further back—and shortened the rear subframe. Large-diameter Fat Boy forks have been grafted on, and the tires are now Firestone scrambler-style rubber, 19” at the front and 16” at the back.

The back fender is a modified Softail fitment. The front light is Bates, and the rear is Lucas. The bars, diamond-stitched leather seat and exhaust system of Stellalpina are all custom-fabricated.

It’s a clean and purposeful look, as much about function as form. The bike carries its weight lower, and is better suited to the twists and turns of alpine roads.

“The top of the mountain now is closer,” says Rossi.

Images by Luca Merli.

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Cooper was a racing contemporary of John Surtees, and he knew how to build bikes. Motorcycle News bet that he couldn’t build a race bike for £100, and lost the bet when Cooper presented the machine to one of its journalists to ride at the Isle of Man TT.

Cooper built this Triton using contemporary parts, from the Miller light at the front to the Lucas tail light. The headlight brackets and triple trees are John Tickle, and the clip-ons are Manx. The megaphones are Dunstall, and the cylinder head is a sturdy T120 9-stud item. The rims are 18” Akront alloy.

This Triton is owned by Neil Williams, who was a DJ at the Ace Cafe before moving to the South of France. But not for much longer. Williams is selling the bike, and it will go under the hammer at Wheels & Waves on 15 July. It’s expected to fetch between 7,000 and 9,000 Euros, which is $9,300 to $12,000.

Seems like a very reasonable price, don’t you think?

Images by Benoit Guerry. Find out more about Wheels & Waves, which is shaping up to be the year’s premier European motorcycle event, here.

Bike EXIF is the world's #1 source for custom motorcycles, classic motorcycles and cafe racers. Produced in association with Icon.