Sunday 23rd January 2017

Last Sunday we took a drive out to the extremely picturesque wilds of Essex to visit our old friend String Thompson of ‘Raw Steel Choppers’, and his partner in crime Mark Williams of ‘Naked Speed Custom Motorcycles’. With us was Tony Donnelly, a friend who is about to embark on a joint project between these two builders and Twisted Iron to turn his Kawasaki 550 Zephyr winter hack into a custom build… in just 4 hours and this challenge will be something not to be missed!

 

The guys talked details, budget and concept ideas, they’ll now go shopping and line up some suppliers, 'Digital Speedos' are already on board.
Tony has a modest but realistic budget for this project and although he has been riding all his life collecting a varied selection of bikes they are all (in his own words) painfully standard. This will be his first custom bike.

 

String specialises in fabrication and you’ll have seen quite a few of his builds at ‘The Happening’ over the last few years including his ‘Moonshine Rat Rod’ and the ‘Cub Chop’ built for Luke Sackett.

 

We have to say Mark’s workshop was one of the cleanest and tidiest spaces we’ve ever seen, an inspiration to any shed or garage owner! And it was full of some rather beautiful Honda builds such as a CB250N Superdream Brat and a Honda CBR600 Café Fighter along with a freshly blacked up CB250 RS frame. String and Mark make quite a dream team.

Early in Mark’s career after qualifying as a mechanical engineer, he went to Spain, “I couldn’t speak a word of Spanish but having been offered a job with one of Spain’s most respected experts in motorcycle racing, how could I say no? Sign language was our only communication, but it’s surprising how quickly you learn a language when you need to eat…’

Having started working for them based in Madrid, he soon moved to work in their Superbike racing team! He later moved to another team where he had the privilege of working with Juan Lopez Mella (RIP), racing the Honda RC30 in Superbikes.

 

If you can’t get down to the March ‘Twisted Turnout’ on the 19th, we’ll be covering it on the day on the Twisted Iron Facebook page, along with photos, a time-lapse video and a live stream. But it’s definitely going to be worth the trip to see what these talented builders can produce for Tony in just 4 hours..

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Sunday 19th February 2017

The Twisted Turnout  last weekend hosted a gathering of all contributors to the '4-Hour Build'. Mark from 'Naked Speed Customs', joined String from 'Raw Steel Choppers' and Ben from 'Bearknuckle Customs'. Of course Tony Donnelly was there and brought his Zephyr for everyone to take a look for the first time.

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Mark brought a new seat with him supplied by 'Vonzeti' for Tony to see. Tony had wanted to go for a cafe racer look and the seat gives a big clue to how the finished bike will look. Ben obviously can't do paint in 4 hours, so he took away a set of donor panels, modified front mudguard and tank which will be prepped, painted and swapped over on the day.
'Digital Speedos' have done a sterling job of providing parts such as clocks etc.

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This is the last time the Zephyr will look as it does. Next month it will be ridden away as Tony's first customised bike.