BLACKSQUARE MOTORCYCLES

The BLACKSQUARE bike came into being unexpected. A consequence of my desire to look inside an engine. And see what pistons, cams, bearings, timing chains, valves and rockers look like. And how they do what they do. Questions like these had been on my mind for years. It was time to get the answers.

I found a 1977 HONDA CB 550F with 5,023 original miles on it and a week later the bike was in my workshop. The plan was simple. I was going to take the engine apart, learn what was what and how everything worked, put it back together and hope like hell it would fire up again. But,…that wasn’t meant to be.

If I was going to take the engine apart, I thought, I might as well replace gaskets and oil seals, and I might as well replace all O-rings, and I might as well put new piston rings in. And I might just as well…restore it. But, then, how would the restored engine look inside that old frame with chipped paint? I might as well restore that too, don’t you think? And with that, the I-might-as-well gate was flung wide open. The fatal first step. Into the abyss of irrational exuberance.

But all of that was yet to come. At the time I loosened the engine’s first bolts and nuts in blissful enthusiasm, I had no idea this was going to turn into a project that would last two years, consume all my spare time, take months to hunt down a manufacturer of stainless steel rims in England, involve friends in Japan, necessitate a trip to Sweden and cost a considerable amount of money; so considerable indeed that when the amount grew to well-beyond the prudent and then well-beyond the reckless, I simply stopped counting.

Unlike its predecessor, the BIKINI motorcycle started as just a concept.  There was no “donor” bike. The idea was to take a 1976 HONDA CB 550 engine and build a custom motorcycle around it that showcases the power plant and exposes all components.  Nothing is hidden.  As in a skeleton watch, here too, everything that makes a motorcycle tick is in full view.

From the headlight at the front to the tail light at the back, and from the highly unusual asymmetric tank at the top to the foot pegs brackets at the bottom, every single one of more that 500 parts was custom-made or custom-fitted.

The engine was completely rebuilt from the ground up.  The cylinder head was re-bored, and fitted with high performance Wiseco forged pistons. The frame, the only other original HONDA part on this motorcycle, was modified to accommodate a new rear fender and tail light.  The front brake was converted to dual disc, the suspension was fully custom built, and polished aluminum rims were installed, and fitted with Michelin tires.

Light-weigh materials were used for all custom parts resulting in a total dry weight of 357 lbs. compared to the original weight of a HONDA CB550 motorcycle of 423 lbs.

The project took more than 1,000 hours to complete.

Like the BLACKSQUARE, the BIKINI too, is a registered and street legal bike.