Heavy Hitter: K-Speed scales up with an XJR 1300 café racer
We’ve seen some truly out-the-box builds come from K-Speed. They’ve done everything from Honda Monkey cafe racers to a Yamaha XSR155 that looks ready for the apocalypse. But Thailand’s busiest custom shop knows how to play with the big stuff too.
This Yamaha XJR 1300 was built for a customer in Phuket. It?s so tastefully executed, it’s downright unassuming?but park it next to a stock XJR, and the drastically revised silhouette immediately becomes apparent.
A stock XJR 1300 is not ugly: it’s actually a stunner as factory bikes go, especially if you’re into classic big fours. But the owner of this one had spotted a sharp Honda CB1300-based cafe racer built by K-Speed, and wanted his 1998 Yamaha to get the same treatment. K-Speed knew they’d need to slim the retro muscle bike down a whole lot to achieve the desired effect. So every last piece of its chunky bodywork ended up coming off.
Out back, the crew hacked off the entire subframe and fabricated a new one. It cuts a neat line with a sharp taper at the end, and a few subtle kinks in its flow to keep things interesting.
Up top is a slim leather seat with a classic cafe racer hump, and stylish tuck and roll stitching.
Part of the brief was converting the XJR’s old-school twin shock setup to a mono shock. So K-Speed had to include a new shock mount in their subframe design. They braced and modified the swing arm too, then popped the new R1-spec YSS shock in.
Up front, t...
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