Written by Andrew Jones
It’s the unwritten rule of all sheds. For every few complete bikes you stash in them, you also should have one that’s been completely disassembled and stuffed into old cardboard boxes. Extra points will be awarded for nuts and bolts in glass jars, underpants stuffed into intake and exhaust ports and parts covered with old towels wreaking of WD-40. Which is exactly how New Zealand mechanical engineer Mike Dodd first found this NZ$600 ?92 Suzuki DR650. But it wasn’t destined to stay that way for long…

?I?m a 30-year-old mechanical engineer living in Auckland, New Zealand,? says Mike, by way of an introduction. ?I?ve only really been into bikes for the past 4 years, but I have been tinkering with old cars and building things for as long as I can remember. I have made a few smaller bikes over the last couple of years, but this is really my first ?full size bike? build.? Mike’s lucky enough to work in a place that has a well-equipped machine shop, so he was able to do pretty much all aspects of the build himself – even though it often meant learning the skills to do the work first.
?The donor bike was a 1992 Suzuki DR650. It’s a big single for those who don’t know, but now I guess it?s mostly a cafe racer with a couple of modern twists thrown in. I don’t really have a name for it, although I did call it plenty of names while I was building it – none of which I’ll repeat here.?
Tank is fr...