Thursday 23 August 2018

We Have Not Posted A Motorcycle,

for some time,


 so here is one,

 whose style I like,

 it was crafted by Rob Chappell of Origin8or Custom Cycles in Ontario, Canada,

 it is the style that I really like, a board tracker,

 the basic mantra is,

 'if it does not make it go faster, do not bolt it on!'

 the bike was almost built from scratch, Rob used a MK7 builders kit from Dave at Voodoo Vintage but keen to set yet another challenge Rob decided “for this build I wanted to push every skill set I had, and in some cases learn some new ones. I wanted most of the bike to be hand built.” so he fabricated a rotisserie frame jig and downloaded the frame plans only to discover it was much longer than he’d wanted, spec’d to be 64 inches axle to axle Rob aimed for 56 and re-designed the frame before shortening the back end, narrowing the frame, changing some angles and altering the backbone, with his own drop-outs and engine mounts, she’s running 35° of rake with 8” of trail, all beautifully TIG welded together by the Rob himself,

Rob fabricated the risers that sit the bars out 2.5inchs forward in Board Track style, with those inverted levers and hand-wrapped leather grips,

 the forks alone are a masterpiece and Rob details their constructions, “I drew up all my measurements once again on the computer as vector 2D art to get the lengths and designs right. For the triples I passed those drawings onto my friend Mat Tobin who got it into Fusion 360 and CNC’d the top and bottom triple for me on his home mill. For the moving arms I sent my flat 2D drawings to be cut on a water jet out of 6061 – 1” thick aluminum. The finishing of them was done on my manual mill. I made the forks out of 1″ .125 wall DOM tubing and TIG welded it all together. All of the bungs and stainless front axle I also made on my manual lathe.”


in another collaboration Rob split the work on the seat with a friend, Adrian @8x6customworks in Scotland. “I warned him of the timeline I was under and he literally had shipped me back a leather seat pad in less than 8 days. On top of that he made me two, one with my logo and one without – what a champ!” and what a bike, to follow Rob here are his Facebook and Instagram pages, photography by Benn Quinn.


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