BMW K100 Custom by Z17 Customs

BMW K100 Custom Cafe Racer

The BMW K100, otherwise known as the Flying Brick, certainly isn’t regarded as the prettiest bike created by BMW Motorrad’s engineers.  The nickname derives from the blocky, 987cc inline four.  However, the crew from Moscow’s Z17 Customs has an affinity for these 80s motorbikes.  We featured their K100 cafe racer last year, and now they are back with the “Rebel,” which was inspired by their previous build but evolved into a completely original bike.

Below, we interview Sergey and Mikhail about this killer build.

Q and A with the Builder:  K100 Cafe Racer

BMW K100 Custom

Where are you from?

We are from Moscow, Russia.

What do you do?

Our professions are directing film photography (Sergey) and marketing (Mikhail).

Are you a pro/amateur/semi-pro/new-kid-on-the-block?

I guess we closer to new-kids-on-the-block, but already with some experience, not commercially explored before.

What inspired you to start building bikes/this bike?

Inspiration by means of no limits in creation. And it was the man who saw our first project and brought us the bike next day.

BMW-K100-Cafe-Racer-Z17-4

Who else worked with you, are you a one-man operation or a team/group/mates, etc.

We are a team of two.

Do you have any links we should connect readers to. How do they reach you?

Why did you build this bike and what was your vision?

The client (Artem) was inspired by our first project and wanted to build a not-the-same BMW base custom. Why BMW?  Because he is a real fan of the Bavarian manufacturer. While we were working over his project, he came to see us in a BMW X6, on a BMW bicycle, and on a BMW motorcycle 🙂 As we were building bike for Artem and he is a FC Spartak fan, whose master colors are red and white, we decided to use the same color code in the project.

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Where did it come from? Interesting find, or customer bike, ebay? What was your vision/design/plan/brief?

Artem was excited by the possibility of building whatever you want. But as he told us many times, “I cannot visualize it, let’s try.” We studied different concepts during the period of customizing the bike. Sometimes it led to solutions that had to be reworked.

What’s the donor bike, make, model, year, cc?

BMW K100 1991, 1000cc

What did you do to the bike – just the basics; but tell us all the cool stuff, clever ideas and upgrades?

Both plastic tail and its metal support were crafted in-house. Smaller AKB. New exhaust, head lighting and integrated tail lights were installed. Surprisingly, the brakes on this K100 differ from our first K100, despite only three years’ difference, and it was not evident from the first sight as both brakes had square shape. Later on BMW decided to introduce completely new shape of the brakes. I guess it was done due to too many customer complaints 🙂

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Any interesting challenges or mistakes?

Tail, tank and front fork were given to external guys by Artem, the owner. Difference in white stripe on the tail was so dramatic (+8mm) that we said it ought to be re-painted.

Any unique signature features?

As Artem is the BMW fan by nature, when he was choosing the color of the bike, he decided upon one color in the pantone book, and when we looked closer at its name it appeared to be BMW M3 red color.. 🙂

How would you describe the bike now? Brat/Cafe/Bobber/Scrambler/Tracker/Hyrbrid/Bratster/CafeBrat/Woteva?

Original cafe racer.

Tell us about the finish, logos, design?

The fact that Artem came to us the very next week after we published mobile phone photos of our first project in the local forum encouraged our desire to setup a small garage-built atelier. It was another piece of joy and pride to me to create the logo (actually there were 6 different logos) and choose the one you see on the photos.

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How does the bike ride?

Keeping in mind that we got rid of many heavy details from the 80s, bike became much lighter and started to ride perfectly with low gravity center.

Are you happy? Is the customer happy?

Hell yeah! All participants are extremely happy.

What will you do next?

Next project would be done for another BMW lover and very likely it’s going to be K100 again.

Follow the Builder

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BMW-K100-Cafe-Racer-Z17-2

BMW-K100-Cafe-Racer-Z17-3

BMW-K100-Cafe-Racer-Z17-6

BMW K100 Belly Pan

BMW K100 Cafe Racer Tail

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