Bill Webb has two passions in life: design and motorcycles. He’s a partner at a San Francisco agency called Huge Design, and for years his daily ride was a 1995 Kawasaki ZX7 Ninja. Then the bike was stolen and stripped.
When Bill recovered his Ninja—known as the ZXR 750 in most other countries—he decided to rebuild it with a strong dose of ‘café fighter’ style. And being an industrial designer who works for the likes of Nike and GoPro, he’s got all the little details right.
Most streetfighters look rather ‘busy’ once the fairings are off and the bling is bolted on, but this one’s much easier on the eye. “After stripping off the unwanted stuff, the biggest challenge was to create a new subframe to house the electronics and relays,” Bill reports. So he designed a subframe using a 3D CAD program, and had it machined out of a block of aluminum.
That subframe now supports a Ducati 1098 seat, with the electrics hidden in a box underneath and a subtle LED strip handling lighting duties. Other mods include a Harley V-Rod headlight, which matches the lines of the bike perfectly. The radiator is from a newer model Ninja 750, and there’s a GP-style muffler to free up the breathing.
Otherwise the mechanicals are stock, apart from a little suspension lowering. A Ninja 750 has around 120 bhp on tap so there’s little need for K&N filters or hot cams—and this one is benefiting from a weight reduction too.
Most streetfighters leave me cold. But Bill’s shown what can be done with a minimalist approach to shape and color.
Better by design, you might say.
Via Huge Design. For an alternative approach to modifying a Ninja 750, check out Icon’s brutal Thunder Chunky.
