Rocker Boxer
ROCKER BOXER
Café BMW, built "Zust for fun"
"IT JUST DOESN’T SEEM right," says Fred Zust about researching his period café-racer project. "I looked at photos from the Rocker era, the Ace Café and all that, and there weren’t many BMWs, just British bikes.”
Zust acquired his 1978 R100S as a trade-in at his shop, Touring Sport BMW in Greenville, South Carolina. “It was one of those bikes I didn’t want to take, but I thought it would be neat to make it into a café-racer,” he recalls.
With the help of shop technician Barry Crowe, the first order of business was freshening up the 123,000-mile motor. The heads were dual-plugged to run on unleaded premium, a set of high-compression pistons slid into the cylinder bores and the flywheels lightened. A pair of 40mm Mikunis replaced the stock Bings and an electronic ignition took the place of the old points and condenser
The engine was then repositioned in the frame, higher for greater cornering clearance and farther forward for better weight distribution. Because that made the oil filter inaccessible, the right downtube was lugged so as to be removable. A pair of tubular frame braces tie the steering head to the swing-
to match. A set of clip-ons and rearsets lend the bike a racy riding position, an RS headlight was drilled to accept a tach and framemounted, and an LED taillight was frenched into the replica Knoscher seat/tail. A set of Dunstall replica pipes gives the motor a throaty tone.
While the exotic-looking snowflake mags are in fact stock, the front was upgraded to dual discs.
A set of Race Tech cartridge emulators and a CC Products brace improve the performance of the stock fork, which is held by a pair of lower triple-clamps, one turned upside-down and mounted on top where the stock flat-steel part used to be. A Shendig steering damper quells headshake.
Zust displayed the café-racer at the Airheads Invitational at Barber Motorsports Park last fall and copped the Best Engineered award. Although the bike didn’t see any on-track action that weekend, it’s in the plans.
“It’s legal for the WERA Vintage 4 and Clubman classes, and it’s safetywired and all, but I’ll probably just take it to track days,” Zust declares.
Nothing wrong with that.
Brian Catterson
