DAILY INSPIRATION: Daniel Peter's "Cabin Fever" - 1995 Honda XR650L

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Cabin Fever
1995 Honda XR650L

Daniel and I met back at Rockerbox a year or two ago. He's a photographer by trade and spends his off-time getting out to race AHRMA events on his Yamaha SR500. After flipping through a few photos of his SR for me on his phone I was already on board with his aesthetic vision. His SR is of course very purpose built being a race bike but still has tasteful modern touches that are a great blend of form and function. You can tell Daniel is clearly opposed to things that are ugly, regardless of how function driven they are. When I had caught wind that Daniel had an XR650 under the knife as a personal project I was fully tuned in. He brought the bike to this past weekends Parts & Labor Day event at the shop and I can tell you that seeing and hearing this bike in person makes you wonder why you're riding anything but an XR650. Without knowing every square inch of a stock XR the amount of work that has gone into this bike can escape you. The craftsmanship is flawless to the point where you'd think this was some specialty model that must have flown under your radar all these years. Here's Daniel with the full background story on his new ride, "Cabin Fever".


"About this time last year, I came to realize I desired a motorcycle that didn’t exist: 70s styling; twin shocks; air cooled; powerful yet light and reliable, with enough ground clearance and suspension for riding trails; electric start…I was drawing a blank. Then I took a long look at the 1995 XR650L sitting in my shop. The performance was there but the looks were seriously lacking. Awkward, all plastic bodywork, purple side covers...good enough for a dirt bike but not quite the pony that would turn heads. So I set off to build a bike that fit my needs perfectly."







"The XR has a completely new subframe, now carrying twin YSS shocks. Most of the rear section is bent out of one long piece of 1” tubing. The new seat contours the frame rails and is upholstered in brown antelope leather. The tank is from a Honda CG125, with a 2-tone paint job by Polowy Fab&Finish. For better fuel flow, I also welded in a new bung for a Pingel petcock. This supplies a 41mm Keihin FCR-MX flatslide with a big K&N filter. The carburetor and handmade stainless exhaust are the only performance mods on this bike. I felt that the 650 motor offered just the right balance between performance and reliability. The 2-into-1 header has a slip fit mid pipe, exiting via a 1.75” Cone Engineering muffler. The engine is much more responsive now and has a proper bark to it.
I rebuilt the wheels using the stock hubs, 19”/18" rims and stainless Buchanan spokes. The front tire is a Heidenau K60 Scout with grippy side knobs for off-road steering confidence, and the rear is 140mm wide Pirelli Scorpion. The forks are stock XR650L, lowered internally by 4” and upgraded with Race Tech Gold Valves for better performance.
The front brake is a 4-piston Brembo with a 320mm floating rotor. It really stops!  The front end also sports LSL Street bars with clear brown Tomaselli grips, and a Hella 500 Black Magic headlight. The taillight housing is hand made and lights up with a super bright LED cluster. The juice comes from a tiny Shorai battery, hiding in an aluminum box under the seat. The fenders are also aluminum, hand-trimmed to get just the right shape. The front one is mounted via a fork brace, which is pulling double duty, also keeping the front end more solid."





"Why “Cabin Fever”? The minute I randomly saw this grayish green paint chip with said name at a small hardware store in Wisconsin a few months ago, I knew that was to become the base for the bodywork color. I couldn’t come up with a better name for a bike that’s the perfect cure for a long week at the office. You can ride it to work every day, mount up the removable rack on Saturday morning, pack the essentials, and go have a fun weekend trip. Twisty roads or gravel, this bike will do it all."





"My appreciation goes out to my girlfriend Susan, for her patience and support, Luke Satas and Hugh Jay for lending their fabrication tools and knowledge, Brady of Polowy Fab&Finish for executing the paint job exactly how I imagined it, Janusz Kukulski for another great seat cover, Bob at Coating Specialties, Klaus at YSS USA, Motoworks Chicago and my friends Josh and Val for excellent piloting during the photoshoot."

For more updates on new projects, follow Daniel on Instagram: http://instagram.com/danielpeterphoto 


EVENT: Parts & Labor Day Wrap Up

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As hard as I tried to stress out about this past Saturday's super last minute event everything just kept falling into place. I'm usually really good about building up crippling anxiety over minor hurdles and tight deadlines by mentally embellishing the issue. It works great. All you need is a small glint of possible failure and you knead it up from there until you've baked it into a nice dense loaf of debilitating panic. I hadn't had time to get a flyer together until 5 days before the event, the forecast called for an 80% chance of earth shattering T-Storms, and the city was a ghost town due to the holiday weekend. There was plenty of trauma fuel to go around. Saturday morning rolled around and I woke up fearing the day would be filled with effort and struggle, yielding minimal results.
I was banking on the T-Storms doing the whole day in with one fell swoop. Surprisingly they missed Chicago by miles, unleashing all their terror on the folks of Gary, Indiana. Instead, the sky opened up and the sun blasted us throughout the day, making the moto ride we had planned around Chicago entirely possible. It was a huge relief and gave me hope that the day had not been lost. 
I was still concerned about the lack of fair warning and the holiday weekend deterring people from attending. Then one by one bike's started filing in, even before the kick-off time of 2PM, until the entire block was stuffed with custom vintage metal and the shop was bustling with gleaming event-goers. The oh-so generous folks at Metric Coffee were there doling out their cold-pressed caffeine to pick people up before our jaunt around the city. 











I met far too many interesting folks with similar interests to ever hope I'd remember everyone's names so please forgive me if I botched yours or just plain ran a blank. Unfortunately my brain works almost exclusively in retaining imagery and leaves zero room for names, numbers, dates etc. This has been a life long issue of forgotten family member birthdays, missing important meetings, getting lost driving to places I've been dozens of times etc. We counted around 65 bikes which was huge for me. It was great to have so many people come out and support the shop. I had trouble finding any of my photog friends who were free for the weekend so I was a bit bummed that we might not get shots of everything going down. Aaannnddddd up rolls this Alex Hawn fellow with a .50cal camera around his neck, a backpack full of lenses and an unwavering amount of rolling confidence that allowed him to capture every mile of our journey in wide angled hi-resolution. A big thanks to Alex for coming out. This feature would have been all low-res blurry cell phone shots otherwise.
The ride around the city went down without a hitch despite my repeated attempts to lose everyone on the South Side. We headed east to the city center via Lake St. under the historic L tracks, then jumped on Lower Wacker Drive and snaked around underneath the city until we hit the coast. You might know Lower Wacker as the Bat Cave entrance in Dark Knight - sans Lamborghini. From there we cruised down traffic-free Lake Shore Drive to Jackson Park, the headquarters of the 1893 World's Fair and the biggest park in the city at 500 acres. I tried to keep us on some wide lane roads as we headed back north via State St. to Roosevelt and up to the event at Una Maes.











It had all fallen into place. Every last detail. The folks at Una Maes met the end of our journey with a pop-up tent party filled with ice cold adult beverages from Letherbee Gin and Goose Island, new gear on display from Red Wing Heritage and Deus ex Machina, and to top it all off everything was on sale.  
Thanks to everyone for coming out. It was a ton of fun and I plan on there being many more meet ups in the future.  Big thanks to these folks for helping make it happen:
...and anyone else who helped get the word out. For Alex's full photo set of the event check the link above.
Side note: Yes, that XR650 is the shit. Stay tuned for a full feature!








DREAMONE50: WSJ View Finders

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Ryan Plett and crew came by the studio yesterday to shoot a feature for an upcoming Wall Street Journal section called View Finders. Ryan's touring the country right now stacking up some amazing content for the column. You can follow him and the column  here:
@RyanPlett

@WSJViewFinders

After we wrapped up Maria Papathanasiou hopped on the Dream for a quick impromptu (iPhone) photo shoot. The Golden Hour lighting and vacant industrial district was too much to pass up.



COME PARTY: DreamONE50 Unveil, Deus Chicago Romp, Una Maes Party...Motorcycles and Free Drinks. No Brainer.

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It's going down tomorrow! Honda DreamONE50 unveiling, Deus sponsored ride around Chicago, Party at Una Maes with free beer and giveaways! What else do you want? 
...for it not to rain? Yea, sure, but Metric Coffee will be there to dole out enough caffeine to make you mentally impervious to sky water so we've got you covered. 


DREAMONE50: Aww Shoot

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Spent the day with Pat Daly shooting the 1962 Honda Dream 150 build. I've had my head down in this bike for so long that I keep forgetting what it looked like when we pulled it out of the barn over a year ago. It feels pretty good when a bike that hasn't run in 40+ years starts on the first kick every time. If only I fit on it...

Come check out the Dream, ride and party with us this Saturday for the Parts & Labor event!


EVENT: Parts & Labor (Day) - Chicago

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Come check out the HQ of my new venture, DRAFT Studio, this Saturday the 30th. The Dream ONE50 build will be on display. There will also be a moto ride around Chicago sponsored by Deus ex Machina. The ride will end at Una Maes where there will be free beer by Goose Island and cocktails from Letherbee Gin. Red Wing Heritage will be releasing a new boot and there will be pop ups from Juniper Ridge and Filson. We may also have goodies to give away for ride participants.  Party goes till 10!

We're still working on building the foundation of DRAFT Studio so bare with us over our sleepless and dragged out launch period. 
God Speed,
Dave