Boomer Beemer
BOOMER BEEMER
American FLYERS
S-bike salvo
CLIFF RANDALL IS NO stranger to customizing. His past buildups—two hot-rod Kawasakis, a big-bore Vukan 1500 and a more-speed-please ZX12R, both featured in CW—were finished with jawdropping detail.
The Ontario, Canada, corporate head-hunter’s latest project, a steamroller of a different kind, is equally eye-catching. Once a plainJanc BMW R1100S, it’s become, according to Randall, “the prettiest bike I’ve built.”
Randall had always wanted a BMW, but never liked their looks. Then friend and long-time BMW employee Norm Wells introduced him to the S-bike.
“Originally, my bike was black with an orange seat,” Randall explains. “No one wanted it. My wife whipped out her color wheel and said, ‘The right color for that orange is blue.’”
Turns out, paint was the easy part. Getting more performance from the air/oilcooled llat-Twin was tough. “It’s taken me three years to make more power,” Randall admits. “I’ve never been so frustrated. When I put highcompression pistons in the ZX-12, we went from 170 horsepower to 199. It came to life. But Muzzys had done all the homework. They knew what worked.” So Randall called Chris Hodgson at San Jose BMW,
who sourced special highcompression pistons with offset wristpins that made room for longer rods. John Parker at Budd’s BMW built the engine.
“Right now, it makes about 107 horsepower at the rear wheel,” Randall claims. “It will probably make 115 blip and close to 80 footpounds of torque when we’re done.” From the factory, the engine made 90 horsepower and 68 footpounds of torque.
“My ZX-12 has far too much power for the street,” Randall says. “The BMW is just about right. It won’t bite you. And the sound from the one-off Va uder I inde exhaust is unreal.”
The chassis-what little
there is of it also got attention. Works Performance supplied the shocks, and Randall shaved off some 40 pounds. He figures the bike now weighs about 500 pounds with gas. For the finish work, Randall employed his usual favorites Voodoo paint, The Plating House and Fairing Screen Gustafsson. Just getting the sweep of the windscreen correct required three takes and cost $1000.
“I’ve spent three years and a fortune on this bike,” Randall says. “Of all the bikes I’ve built, if I could only keep one, I’d keep the BMW. It may not be the best at everything, but it’s the best at the most.”
Matthew Miles
