The Yamaha XJR1300 is a relic from a bygone age, and we say that with a tinge of regret. It?s a big, brutal muscle bike that unfortunately has no place in today?s highly regulated market.
The hefty, air-cooled inline four still has an ardent fan base in Europe though, despite the engine being a rejigged version of the unit that powered the mid-80s FJ1100. And one of those fans is a Polish rider called Tomek, who commissioned Unikat to build the very solid café racer we?re looking at here.

?Tomek contacted us more than a year ago,? says shop founder Grzegorz Korczak. ?He set the level of expectations high: he?s an experienced rider, and owns machines like a Kawasaki Ninja H2.?
This 1999 XJR1300 is not Tomek?s first foray into customizing either, so the design became a collaborative effort with Grzegorz and the Unikat crew in Wroc?aw. ?Tomek had a lot of references, and the design process took some time. He also wanted all of the parts to be top shelf, with no compromise in the design.?
Grzegorz suggested a minimalistic look, and Tomek was happy. Fortunately, he was also happy to wait six months for the wheels to be built in Italy: a man who understands that good things take time.?
In this case, the mechanical and custom work took around 400 hours, with another hundred hours assigned to design work, plus subcontractor and project management.?

Unikat have refreshed the 16v dohc, 1251cc engine, which in stock form pumped out just under a hundred horsepower. The mods in...