Whenever we get a build with such heritage and story behind it, we always try to get even more inspiration from the brand history, while browsing through vintage BMW bikes, the amazing R32 lines caught my eyes. R18’s frame, despite many people says it’s very similar to HD softails, to me the biggest difference is, due to the nature of boxer engines, the engine itself is low and wide, which makes the frame triangle lower too, with its long wheelbase, it’s very naturally creating a long and low stance, while looking at the bike stripped down without bodyworks, the simplicity of the frame really make me want to look at vintage bikes for inspiration, now back to R32, even though it might be hard to see now, the tank is actually inspired by R32’s coffin tank, and the top frame rails are now re-imagined by a hand made aluminum trim piece, with a set of custom made cooling fin covers for covering the electrics between the tank and neck. Then onto the exhausts, we want something to extend the long and low stance also flow with the overall design of the bike, with the triangle tank done, it also inspired the triangle up-sweep tail pipes linked up to massive 2.5” headers to balance with the bike’s mass. For the wheels we want something with billet wheels’ cleanliness but sill have that vintage spoke wheels vibe, our friend at Arlen Ness make these beautiful Y-Spoke wheels fit our direction perfectly. Beringer Brakes already developed full brake/hand control kit for R18, we only have to make wheel-matching disc carriers and it just works!
Due to the high demand of custom bits for the R18, we decided to develop bolt on parts while doing this build, now the solo seat, with carbon fiber seat pan and billet CNCed bracket, front and rear carbon fiber fenders, with our ION 3into1 indicators integrated to the rear fender brackets, the massive triangle exhausts system, the carbon fiber radiator shrouds with stainless grill… are all planning into production.
Nowadays more and more technologies went into production bikes, it not only challenges designers at manufactures also challenges us custom builders, how to maintain the functionality of the bike yet still makes it looks clean and simple. I think we delivered with this “Berlin Barnstormer”.
