Street 750 gets the full Kustom treatment

Melbourne-based communal bike workshop Kustom Kommune has lifted the covers off its special build Harley-Davidson Street 750 flat tracker -- Australia's first glimpse of the new model, albeit in non-production form. The bike was unveiled at Kustom Kommune’s warehouse-style workshop situated in Melbourne’s inner north at Collingwood during the outfit’s event Oil Stained Brain.

A joint venture between Harley-Davidson and Kustom Kommune, the liquid-cooled Street 750 donor bike is the larger capacity sibling to the Street 500 in the American company’s new 'Dark Custom' range. The Street 500 will go on sale locally in early 2015, but there are no plans to release the Street 750 as yet.

Harley-Davidson delivered a stock example of the Street 750 as a ‘blank canvas’, allowing the Kustom Kommune lads, headed up by fabricators and enthusiasts Goode and Geoff ‘Richie’ Baldwin, a free rein to give the bike the Kustom Kommune treatment. In fact, they were told to ‘go their hardest’, according to co-boss Jimmy Goode.

“Harley-Davidson very generously gave us the original bike and we built it into what you see before you in just five weeks. We are seriously going to flat track race the bike and have therefore taken a lot of design cues from the original XR750,” says Goode.

The bike has been given the moniker of ‘The Kommune Racer’ (KR), and uses the American Flat Tracker style as a loose doctrine for the bespoke build. Flat bars and cast 19-inch wheels have been used, the bike featuring a hand-beaten alloy fuel tank that was made in Japan and alloy seat unit. Unlike the bike XR it mimics, this one will actually stop, with a twin disc front-end getting the nod.

Paint is by KDS Designs, with ‘Lust for Dust’ the theme catchphrase featuring prominently. A Yamaha R6 fork was intelligently modified to accommodate the donor 19-inch wheels and the rear subframe was completely removed to encompass the rear suspension and its twin-sprung cantilever arrangement.

At this stage the bike has belt drive, but this will change to a chain setup before the bike sees serious flat track work.

Kustom Kommune is a communal do-it-yourself workshop, using a crowd-funded space. Donations keep the operation running, and Oil Stained Brain is its premier event.

Oil Stained Brain is claimed by the Kustom Kommune crew to be the first exhibition of its kind in Australia to celebrate the art form of custom motorcycle building and the lifestyle that surrounds it. More art exhibit than bike show, Oil Stained Brain has a strong focus on forming connections between builders and showing the public just how creative and unique these rolling works of art can be. The show is now in its third running.

Kustom Kommune has as its focus supplying the opportunity for people to work on their bikes or indeed getting people interested in the whole workshop phenomenon; often people who may never have actually been involved in fettling a motorcycle.

The whole deal operates on a membership basis, with membership fees set to either an hourly or monthly rate, with the idea to allow for like-minded enthusiasts to gather and build, customise or modify their motorcycle. All levels of experience are catered for. Drill presses, milling machines, both TIG and MIG welders, pipe-benders ¬– basically everything a person may need to work on a motorcycle are on-hand.

Goode takes up the story… “We don’t lock anyone into a contract or anything like that. In fact, we’ll trade people for a six-pack from time to time.”

For more details about Kustom Kommune, visit www.kustomkommune.com.au.