Ten years ago, if we’d told you that India and Royal Enfield would become the powerhouses of both the motorcycle industry and the custom bike scene, you wouldn’t have believed us. Heck, we wouldn’t have believed ourselves, but there is just no denying the incredible rise of the Asian nation and the two-wheeled company that has been synonymous with motorcycling there for generations. However, even the biggest brands rely on unique and successful partnerships to achieve remarkable things, and few relationships have borne so much tasty fruit as RE and Rajputana Customs. For their part, Enfield delivered a brand-new Shotgun 650 to the Jaipur-based bike builders, and Vijay Singh and his team have gone custom crazy, crafting a truly handbuilt bike, they call JetStream.
Credit where it’s due, Royal Enfield and their ‘Custom World’ program have been supporting bike builders around the globe for quite a few years now, and their approach is paying off big time. Part of their philosophy is to truly give creative freedom to builders, no requests to use the company colours or not hack up too much of the frame or change the silhouette. In fact, their vision for Vinjay Singh and the team at Rajputana was to simply “create something truly different.”And boy, have they, the finished product is out of this world and showcases just what a perfect engine the RE parallel twin is for going crazy on a full-on, one-off build.
But as Vijay explains, choosing the direction for the build wasn’t straightforward. “So, one of the challenges on this bike was that I could have gone in many, many directions. The standard 650 Shotgun itself is so versatile that you can make it into a bobber, a sports roadster, but we chose to go with a cafe racer. Having said that, it’s not just any cafe racer, we wanted to do something really different.” And having built some incredible cafe-style bikes using the Royal Enfield product in the past, this meant the team would really have to get creative to go above and beyond what they’ve done before.
To achieve that, plenty of frame modifications were always on the cards and with the Shotgun in the workshop and stripped down, the guys started to cut more and more steel tube from the stock bike. Ideas were formed using steam pipe and outlines for potential bodywork created using wire, but the cutting of the stock bike just never stopped. In the end, the stock frame wouldn’t play any part at all, and a new headstock was bolted into the jig, and the engine sat below it. Starting at the front, a pair of steel tubes run off the headstock to create a truly unique perimeter frame that is both incredibly narrow and streamlined. Rising up from the swingarm pivot, the centre posts merge with the bottom rail, which runs the full length of the bike to create the subframe.
A twin-cylinder engined custom, with twin tube frame, needed a swingarm to match, and it’s been built with simply stunning lines. To achieve this, the upper and lower pieces of the tubular design bend around the front support and at the rear around the axle blocks, to create the appearance of a singular piece of steel that has been bent back on itself. To add functionality to the piece, a shock mount has been built into the centre section, and one added to the custom frame, with a beefy shock and progressive rate spring used to complete the conversion to a mono setup. At the front end, the forks have been drastically lowered, leaving only around 2 inches of travel, with leading axle lower legs to make it all work.
There are new cartridges inside, with uprated springs and valving, and Vijay says this is about amplifying the lines of the bike, and as such the motorcycle is more of a prototype. So, with that in mind, they decided to go the whole hog and fitted up big Pirelli race slicks to the hand-built spoked wheels. This low ride height, hulking black rubber and slick chassis, all then set the stage for the bodywork, and few do it better than the team at Rajputana. Just like the frame, the design was done sitting beside the bike, playing around with shaping and sizing and trying to achieve “a very prominent and very strong top line.” The hand-shaped aluminium does this with a flat top fuel tank that is built within the tubular frame, allowing the contrasting brushed finish to pop through the blacked-out steel tube.
Each sheet of alloy is hand cut, the guys squatting on the floor with an angle grinder to carve out the shapes they need. Before offering them up to the bike, hand shaping, tacking them in place and repeating the process over and over again. The subtle curves from the top of the tank flow through to the tail section, with a sharp ending to the cowl to give the bike a dramatic point of termination. So as not to interfere with the lines at all, the custom seat base sits within the subframe rails and is shaped from simple black race foam. But there is more drama at the front, with the hand-formed brushed aluminium cowl, given an ultra streamlined look, before being filled out with a small LED headlight.
“It looks like it’s in motion while it’s still parked here,” Vijay smiles. Describing both the look of the bike and the way they came to the ‘JetStream’ name. So, to further emphasise this effect, the exhaust is a twin pipe system that exits the heads before sweeping up and heading rearward, where a pair of slash cut tips with internal baffles emit a proper rumble and roar. The rest of the Shotgun 650 engine is beautifully detailed, with the solid black finish contrasted by the stainless bolts and those stunning hand-turned velocity stacks. The clip-on bars play into the style and the cafe racer theme, but as a tip of the cap to Royal Enfield, the stock grips and switches remain. “Jetstream is a stripped-down, wind-cutting silhouette; designed around speed, stance and sheer minimalism.” It’s also world-class bike building, and Royal Enfield X Rajputana Customs are setting a very high bar.
