Building custom motorcycles often involves a radical career change, and we?ve seen some pretty strange jumps over the years. Tom Simpson?s background is especially unusual: he trained as a blacksmith before setting up Foundry Motorcycle in England six years ago.
Tom now builds very stylish cafe racers and bobbers in his Chichester, West Sussex workshop. As you can imagine, he has a deft hand when it comes to fabrication?but this Kawasaki Z650 is more about smart mechanical modifications than English wheels and ball peen hammers.

?Originally there were two of us at Foundry, but my partner left when we discovered how hard it is to make a living in this industry!? says Tom.
?Fortunately, there?s a lot to be said for doing something you love as a job?as well as having a wife who?s prepared to work very hard to enable you to follow your dreams.?
This Z650 would be a dream machine for many classic bike fans, ourselves included. The inline four was the archetypal ?Universal Japanese Motorcycle,? and in many ways was a much better sorted bike than the Z1.
Designed by Ben ‘Mr Z1’ Inamura, the Z650/KZ650 had double overhead cams and pumped out a claimed 64 hp from its 652cc motor?but handled much better.

Foundry?s build is a 1976 ?B1,? making it one of the earliest Z650s. It belongs to regular customer Gary, but arrived at the workshop in a sorry state. ?Gary had fancied having a go at building his own cafe racer, in his own garage. But fortunately for us, he&#...