{"id":28542,"date":"2017-02-08T00:12:51","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T13:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pipeburn.com\/?p=28542"},"modified":"2017-02-08T23:15:35","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T12:15:35","slug":"suzuki-dr650-cafe-scrambler-james-alkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/suzuki-dr650-cafe-scrambler-james-alkins\/","title":{"rendered":"Suzuki DR650 Cafe Scrambler – James Alkins"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Peanut butter and jelly. Moustaches\u00a0and cops.\u00a0Nine Inch Nails and Johnny Cash. When it comes to weird combinations that somehow manage to kick arse, it seems the world has a never-ending supply. Avocado and Vegemite on toast, anyone? No, seriously. It’s amazing. But it’s not often you see the same sort of unexpected genius happening in the world of custom motorcycles. Hell, we can’t think of a new bike genre since\u00a0Go Takamine\u00a0invented Brat style.\u00a0That is until now. So here is\u00a0Perth’s James Alkins and his revelatory cafe scrambler cross pollination. Genius? Madness? We’ve made up our minds, now you<\/em> be the judge.<\/p>\n

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And if redefining motorcycling genres wasn’t Herculean enough, this James\u00a0madman also took on the whole damned task himself. \u201cI build the bike from\u00a0home and completely from scratch. I took on\u00a0pretty much all aspects of the build, from the fabrication to the painting and engine rebuilding.\u201d And the time he set aside to make this all happen? 12 months? 6 months, perhaps? \u201cI spent 6 weeks on the build after work and over the weekends,\u201d says what is clearly Australia’s hardest working customiser.<\/p>\n

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The build was based on a rather tasty\u00a0\u201807 Suzuki<\/a>\u00a0DR650 thumper<\/span>. \u201cAlmost everything outside of the frame has been changed,\u201d says James. \u201cFrom the custom seat, handmade\u00a0tank, tail lights, headlight, bars, levers, grips, mirrors, indicators, and fenders.\u201d<\/p>\n

The not altogether bad original dash has been upgraded by James to an Acewell digital dash,\u00a0complete with pilot lights, a handy tacho and quite a few other handy little functions. Don’t you just love modern technology? \u201cThe wiring has been\u00a0simplified,\u00a0shortened and tucked into a custom-built electrics box under the seat, which also houses the battery and the remote alarm system, complete with a knock sensor and keyless start.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Rolling his sleeves up, Mr. Alkins then turned his attention to proverbial donk. \u201cIt was fully\u00a0rebuilt, repainted and lightly worked, which by all reports has really\u00a0\u2018uncorked\u2019 the power from the 650cc single cylinder motor.\u201d The sexy power party was topped off with a stage 3 jet kit, a high flow intake and a straight-through retro muffler. \u201cThe sound and responsiveness of the motor is spectacular,\u201d says James.<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly helping all this was the fact that he was able to reduce the wet weight of the bike to a Russian ballerina-ish\u00a0135 kg\u00a0(or 297 lbs),\u00a0which drastically improved the power to weight ratio and<\/em> the bike’s handling. In stock guise, the bike puts out just under fifty horses, so imagine how it’d feel adding ten more and dropping the overall weight by 20%? Giddy up!<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Suzuki’s<\/a> frame and tank were\u00a0hand painted and then tastefully\u00a0detailed. The tank itself was\u00a0carefully mounted so as to maintain the same, smooth lines all over,\u201d says James. The final product is clearly a fast, agile and super reliable cafe racer<\/a> cum scrambler<\/a> with all the modern tech perks,\u00a0performance, bells and<\/em> whistles. \u201cIt’s also comfortable and loads of fun to ride, too,\u201d adds a disarmingly\u00a0happy James.<\/p>\n

Cargo (cafe) cult?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and while I’m a little ashamed I actually used a line like that in this story, it’s a\u00a0clich\u00e9 that rings true for James. \u201cMy wife and I recently purchased some land here in\u00a0Western Australia.\u00a0So with a little practicality in mind, I was inspired to build a kind of “dual sport cafe<\/a>\u201d that could handle the unsealed country roads in the area while still maintaining the\u00a0look and appeal of a hand-crafted racer.\u201d Initially, James says he\u00a0gathered a whole heap\u00a0of inspiration from raw scramblers, but as the build progressed, so did his\u00a0desire for something with a little\u00a0\u2018caffeine\u2019 in its veins.<\/p>\n

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Knowing that he\u00a0wanted an\u00a0electric start for everyday use and a monoshock rear, James aimed his initial search at a wide range of modern off-road bikes. \u201cThen I found this \u201807 Suzuki<\/a> DR650se locally and went to see it straight away. It was worn out and thoroughly\u00a0geared up for long distance touring; there was the long-range tank, the bag and carrier on the back.\u00a0All the fruit was there, it just wasn’t the type of\u00a0fruit I wanted.\u201d He\u00a0knew, however, that the sale of these unwanted parts would\u00a0help fund the build, so he dropped the cash and took the leap.<\/p>\n

If only we knew what type\u00a0of bike it was…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMuch to my surprise, the hardest part of the entire build was the tank. Choosing the exact shape to compliment the bike I was seeing in my head, sourcing the tank, mounting the tank so the body lines flowed without interruption, modifying the tank to fit the frame, sanding the tank, painting the tank, the detailing…\u201d So\u00a0even with everything else the full build involved,\u00a0the tank consumed a full one-third of the overall construction\u00a0time. \u201cBut it was totally<\/em>\u00a0worth it,\u201d says James.<\/p>\n

Yellow with envy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When asked, the thing James says he\u00a0likes most about the finished bike is the fact that he\u00a0built it entirely<\/em> with his\u00a0own hands. \u201cI know some people may not appreciate the fact that this cafe racer has adventure bike origins, but I feel the finished bike\u00a0is\u00a0a true reflection of myself.\u00a0The uniqueness of the whole \u2018cafe racer<\/a> meets scrambler\u2019 idea\u00a0is what really drove me to take on the\u00a0challenge… and to get it finished, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

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[Photos by Ben Pilatti<\/a>]<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Peanut butter and jelly. Moustaches\u00a0and cops.\u00a0Nine Inch Nails and Johnny Cash. When it comes to weird combinations that somehow manage to kick arse, it seems the world has a never-ending supply. Avocado and Vegemite on toast, anyone? No, seriously. It’s amazing. But it’s not often you see the same sort of unexpected genius happening in the world of custom motorcycles. Hell, we can’t think of a new bike genre since\u00a0Go Takamine\u00a0invented Brat style.\u00a0That is until now. So here is\u00a0Perth’s James Alkins and his revelatory cafe scrambler cross pollination. Genius? Madness? We’ve made up our minds, now you<\/em> be the judge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,37],"tags":[683,1236,256],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28542"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28600,"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28542\/revisions\/28600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pipeburn.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}