Details emerge of the new KRGT-1 from Keanu Reeves’ company Arch. Plus a smoking hot Yamaha RD350 board tracker, a rare BSA B50MX from the 1970s with just ten hours on the clock, and a guide to drawing motorcycles—from one of our favorite designers.
Yamaha RD350 by No Joke 2 Stroke Few two strokes are as beloved as the Yamaha RD350. So we can’t figure out if turning one into a board tracker is sacrilege, or genius. Either way, this 1974 RD350 from Mark Miller (A.K.A. No Joke 2 Stroke) sure looks like fun.
Mark builds bikes as a hobby, putting about 12 months into each project. His goal on this project was to create a board tracker, but one that had decent suspension and a two stroke motor. Besides for the RD350 motor and steering neck, this is a totally from-scratch build.
The custom frame is particularly sweet, especially the mono-shock setup that forms part of the backbone. Riding on top is a monocoque body. It’s been shaped from fiber glass, and designed to snap into place on the frame rather than be held in place by fasteners.
Other parts include 21” wheels with older Yamaha drum brakes, and exhaust headers that came from an early 80s race team. Mark also installed board track style bars, complete with wrapped grips and reverse levers. And he even reshaped the RD350’s cylinder heads, to make them look they were from an earlier era. [More]
2020 Arch KRGT-1 Arch is a boutique motorcycle manufacturer, founded in LA in 2011 by Keanu Reeves and Gard Hollinger. Its specialty is high-end, made to order American performance cruisers, and the updated KRGT-1 is a total knockout.
At a glance, the $85,000 (starting price) KRGT-1 has the same weird pseudo-cafe styling as the outgoing model. But Arch is calling it an evolution, and a big one at that. There are over twenty major changes, and over 150 newly designed parts.
The KRGT-1’s heart is a monster 124 ci v-twin from performance specialists S&S Cycle. It’s a unique setup too, with a proprietary downdraught induction system and K&N filter. The exhaust is an Arch two-into-one system, terminating in a Yoshimura silencer.
There’s top-shelf stuff everywhere here. The forks are 48 mm Öhlins units, the wheels are carbon fiber hoops from BST, and the brakes are from ISR. Each Arch motorcycle is hand assembled in their LA facility, with customization options, so no two bikes are quite the same.
We’ll be swinging a leg over the new Arch KRGT-1 later this week, so stay tuned for more. [Arch Motorcycle]
1973 BSA B50MX Back in the 70s, truly focused off-road machines were still fairly rare. BSA had a horse in the race—the B50MX, a ‘motocross’ version of the 499 cc B50 single. It made a whopping 34 horsepower, but weighed only 240 pounds.
There weren’t a whole lot made though, and when BSA folded, the remaining stock was rebadged as the Triumph TR5MX. So finding a BSA B50MX is rare.
Finding one in original condition is unusual, which makes this example all the more special. It still has the tires, seat, grips, fenders, exhaust and spark plug it shipped with. And even crazier, is that it’s only seen 10 hours of use, and has never been titled!
If that sounds good to you, you can have it right now for $6,995 on Craigslist. It’s not often we gawk over bikes that are bone stock, but this one’s so cute we can’t resist. [Via]
Brough Superior x Aston Martin Two producers of vehicles we can’t afford—Brough Superior and Aston Martin—are teaming up to build a motorcycle. There’s very little info about the project out there, because the bike is not due to be revealed until the EICMA show in Milan in a few days’ time.
Luckily a few images have started leaking online, courtesy of a Japanese website. And as you’d expect from a collaboration between a luxury car brand and a boutique motorcycle brand, the results are rather ostentatious.
We’re not sure if these renders are close to the finished bike (and they might even be fake). But they do tell us a couple of things: we’re seeing what looks like a turbocharged v-twin, and the front suspension design looks to be pretty unique.
Unsurprisingly, early talk is that the bike will be produced in very limited numbers. Add details like swanky upholstery and what looks like a radical TFT display, and you can bet this collab won’t come cheap. [More]
I DRAW MOTOS sketchbook This one isn’t actually a motorcycle, but anyone with a remote interest in motorcycle design is sure to be interested in it. It’s a sketchbook, created by a company called I DRAW Creative Goods, and created with input from designer Dave Mucci, who knows a thing or two about designing gorgeous motorcycles.
I DRAW has a series of sketchbooks out, all designed to help people learn to draw things they’re passionate about. This one is their fifth, and focuses on motorcycles. I DRAW refer to it as “part premium sketchbook, part intuitive textbook, and part handy reference guide.”
So it’s basically a mix of templates, tutorials and lessons, paired with countless examples and guides. It’s packed with handy info like motorcycle anatomy, engine configurations and suspension types, and general bike physics. So it’s designed to help you sketch motorcycles, get their proportions right and make them look good.
It’s a hardcover sketchbook, bound and covered in a premium linen-textured cover, with 100 gsm paper inside. If this sounds like the sort of thing you’d like to do in your spare time, the project’s funding now on Kickstarter.