[Rick] Hi I'm Rick from Dirty Dick's Motos and today I'm going to give you a breakdown of my latest build.
This is a Kawasaki W650 2001 model that I've rebuilt in the style of a late 60s Desert Sled.
This one in particular, the green is a bit of a homage to Steve McQueen, and with a
little bit of a C15 BSA trials bike thrown in the mix for good measure. So if we start at the front.
You may have seen a previous W650 desert sled I built, which was a bit more of an aggressive
model compared to this one. This one was designed to be cleaner, sleeker, neater and tidier, and just
a general gentler silhouette of a motorcycle. So some changes we've made. First and foremost
have redeveloped the big brake kit to be easier to use. This now uses a 320mm disc as opposed to
a 300. So we re-engineered the Dirty Dick's Motos six-piston billet calliper to suit.
And the front wheel has been enlarged to three inches wide compared to 2.15.
And we're now running a 120 TKC80 on the front, gives a nice chunky look.
A lowered mudguard compared to a high level mudguard for that 60s traditional look with the stays.
Also added a Dirty Dick's Motos fork brace and some fork gaiters to give it that 60s feel.
The front end is complemented by some adjustable Andreani cartridge kits,
same as before. And the machine billet triples have been altered slightly to give a cleaner
wiring run. So now all the wiring runs internally on the handlebars, but then runs through the risers
and comes out underneath the triple. So it's a bit of a cleaner look. That's a trick I stole from some
of the the Harley Chopper builders. Integrated motor gadget speedo, and some slimmer headlight
brackets, just to really pronounce that large eight inch round headlight a bit more. And that's
the reason the indicators are lower down as well this time, just to really show off that headlight.
Another change made, we're now using a K-Tech throttle.
This suits the look of the bike a bit better than the previous polished Biltwell
throttle. It's just a little bit smaller, cleaner, simpler and that finned line runs with the grips
and with the K-Tech master cylinder for the brakes. All of the wiring is internal.
So we've used some posh switches from Japan with indicators, three position switch,
front button for the headlight, and then for the horn. And then these two control the digital
readout on the motor gadget and it's a starter and kill switch in one. Same as before, the tank
has been seam welded along the edges to give it a nice clean look, so there's no ugly seam anymore.
The knee pads have been patched and covered over, and the huge badges have been removed.
And this time round, for a slightly more old look, I've moved away from the aero petrol cap.
We're now using a Motone machined billet one. Also using a Harley neck, filler neck, for this. And the
tank also has built-in overflow lines as well that run underneath, so everything works as it should.
The seat again alcantara and leather. I do love this combo, I think it really suits the look for a
custom bike. The back end is a bit different now. Originally the blue bike I built had a luggage rack
and it was a straight tail. But for this look I've kind of copied a BSA C15 trials bike that had
a kicked up tail, like a rooster tail. I think it suits this look of the bike, gives it that old
feel. Suspension-wise at the back, no changes here. This is still the Hagon adjustables.
Billet topped 820 shocks, very good for the build, suits the bike lovely. Machined billet swing arm,
that's the mainstay of the bikes I build. I do think it really offsets the traditional looks
with modern machining techniques. At the rear we now have a four and a quarter inch at the back,
Morad rim. This is the largest you can fit on these bikes without going into the world of offset
sprockets. And we have a 150 18 TKC80 at the back as well. These are quite aggressive pattern
tyres, but they do work reasonably well on the tarmac and obviously very well in the dirt.
Some other changes. The exhausts now flow underneath and follow the line of the
frame, as opposed to high level. And this was done simply to give it a cleaner more
traditional look. It's still loud, it's still fast, but it's just a slightly different look.
And you can see the stainless has started to turn gold, so I like using stainless pipes on bikes
especially with the gold highlights everywhere else because as you as you ride the exhausts they
will turn this lovely golden colour over time. We still have the fully functional brass kickstarter.
The carburettors have changed, these are OEM carbs. Obviously the bike has been tuned on the dyno,
46.8 raging horses at the back wheel, but that's plenty on a bike the size and weight.
The OEM carbs give a much smoother ride, they have a factory TPS and they have accelerator pumps. So
in terms of diaphragm carbs they are probably as good as you can get from a factory bike. They're
just a lot less aggressive on the road, it's a much easier bike to ride, a lot more friendly to
ride. The engine is fairly standard apart from replacing a few gasket seals and polishing and
painting everything. With the free-flowing exhaust the pod filters on the carbs
you can get about five to six horsepower more than standard. But with the additional
lightness on the bike that's all you really need to do. These engines are absolutely bulletproof.
You would have noticed, I have mentioned this in the past, it runs off a bevel drive rather
than a cam chain or any other mechanism, and this while being more complex to set up, is a
lot more reliable because you're not going to suffer from any belt or chain stretching.
And in this format, this lazy low compression format, these engines will run
anywhere up to 100 - 200,000 kilometers before they need anyone to look at them. So for means
of reliability I don't bother changing anything on these engines besides exhausts and carburation.
That's all they really need. Moving on to the frame, I've stayed with the nickel plating
because it's a much warmer feel to it rather than chrome or polished aluminium.
And the rear subframe has been cut and then reworked for a cleaner feel all the way back,
and lifted up a bit to give it more of that rooster tail like the 60s trial bikes.
Regarding the lightness, replacing all the stainless fenders with aluminium, a much
smaller lithium battery, the bike has been rewired removing a lot of extra extraneous wires.
The bike has been rewired with a custom Ignitec ignition, a much lighter anti-gravity
lithium battery, and a Motogadget M-Unit. This drastically reduces the general weight of
the wiring loom and ignition system, as well as simplifying everything to make it easier to use.
I've mentioned the brakes already, but a little more detail on this. The original brakes on these
W650s is not great. It's a sliding two pot calliper on a 300mm disc. And having used these
bikes in anger on a racetrack, I decided that I had to do something about the brakes. If you're
going to build a bike to a certain level of quality you've got to have good componentry. But because
there was nothing off the shelf that would fit these models, I had these callipers engineered
specifically for my building of bikes. The combination of the six piston calliper, the
320 mil disc and a more improved master cylinder gives you a much better feel, more braking power,
and most importantly better modulation while braking. So you can now brake with one or two
fingers and be confident that it's not going to lock up. So while we've done the front brakes
and upgraded them as much as is feasible, I have left the back brakes alone
because I really love that old-school feel of a drum brake, and it looks the part.
It blends in with the modern machining look of the swing arm with the polished brake face plate,
and the big hub on the back. Now in terms of weight, yes you could save a few kilos by converting to a
disc, but I think the look and the feel of it is worth keeping. It gives that bike a really
a specific look that is out of time in a way, which I really like. I do get asked fairly often about
why do I travel all the way to Yorkshire for paint, and the answer is obvious. I go to Pro
Custom, to Arnie for paint, and he is an absolute master. When I say to him I wanted some green, a
Kawasaki green for this bike, I didn't tell him specifically what colour, I just told him green.
So this is actually an OEM Kawasaki green. And you wouldn't notice it, but when
the sun comes out, what Arnie's done, he's layered in about six layers of gold flake over this green
so it appears to be that traditional British green that you'd expect to be associated with
a desert sled, but when the sun hits it, it explodes into gold and this really gives the bike, you know,
two different flavours if you will of paint, and it's fantastic. So you might not notice immediately,
but this OEM Kawasaki colour is actually from a modern classic, a Z900 RS, although in this case
it's the OEM colour, but with multiple layers of gold flake on top. So you've heard me speak about
this bike for 20 minutes now. Shortly we'll take it for a ride and you'll be able to hear how true
it is to my philosophy of obnoxious velocity. It is fast and it is loud. So while I have your
attention I'm going to show you another one. This is a closer to standard bike, and this is my mule.
This is what I use for testing parts. So this bike has had all the brake changes, it's had suspension
changes, it's got an old fork brace on it. Most recently though I've been trialing these
YSS piggyback gas shocks with chrome custom chrome springs made for me.
These are incredibly good value, they offer rebound compression and pre-load adjustment,
and they really improve the handling of these old bikes. You can see the difference
in the slimness and the size of the bikes by removing the air box and using shorter
side covers. It really slims down the whole waist of the bike, and you can see the change
here of the badges and the knee pads. It really drops the visual size of the tank down. And my
favourite thing really is getting rid of the seam that runs under the tank so it doesn't look
like a stamped piece of steel that it is, it actually looks like more of a custom made piece. At the
moment I've been trialling these Renthal bars. They do make the bike a bit more aggressive to ride.
And that's it for the mule at the moment. This is probably one of my crustiest bikes but still
one of my favourites. This is definitely the get you home every time kind of bike.
It's got about 50,000 on the clock and I reckon it's good for another 50,000. So the Kawasaki
W650 has been a favourite for bike builders for 20 odd years now, and this is just an example of
the other extreme of what can be done with these. This has been completely stripped out,
big fetched beach cruiser wheels put on it. Aluminium tank, tiny headlights, aluminium fender,
and everything's been pulled off that wasn't necessary. So in terms of weight this bike is about
173 kilograms and it rides like it's a bicycle. If you compare that to a stock weight of 220,
you get an idea of how much you can actually remove from these bikes to drop weight. This one
doesn't have a starter motor, it's kickstart only. Tiny, tiny little lithium battery. Everything that
can be removed that was unnecessary has been removed, and it's just a great fun thing to do.
But in contrast to the other two motorcycles, it shows you how much you can do with these bikes.