Words by Scott Hopkin | Photography by Ian Davidson
The dust has settled for another year on the third Machine Show based in Braidwood, NSW, Australia. The show features a Bike Build competition every year, where dedicated motorcycle builders build unique pre-1989 bikes specifically for the show. This year they had 36 entries of all different styles and marques ? from choppers to café racers and everything in between. One of the stand-out builds was this Supercharged SR400 tracker by Keeley Pritchard. As soon as we saw the 1986 SR400, we knew a lot of blood, sweat and tears had gone into the bike, but didn?t realise how young the builder was. Keeley is a 22-year-old motorbike mechanic from Sydney?s Northern Beaches who works for a garage called Surfside Motorcycles. In the lead up to the show, when everyone had gone home and his boss had turned off the lights, he turned them back on and worked well into the night bringing his creation to life.
When Keeley was thinking about entering the 2019 Machine Show Build Comp, he came up with the idea to turn his ratty 1986 SR400 chopper into a dirt tracker. ?I wanted it to be a stunning, clean and simplistic hand-built dirt bike,? Keeley says. ?I had 10 months to complete the bike to perfection before the show.?

So Keeley got to work. ?The first feature that I thought of was customising the motor with big fin heads, so I extended each fin individually by 2 inches,? he says. ?I spent hours cutting out pieces of aluminium plate, pr...