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Harley Davidson Sportster XR1200X Cafe racer by Zen

Posted by Mark on November 6No Comments
Harley Davidson Sportster XR1200X

There’s nothing extraordinary in the fact that Bonneville Speedway events inspire many customizers who are looking for new ideas and willing to build the bike that has both – an attractive external look and a great internal potential to conquer Bonneville Salt Lakes. That’s what Laurent Dutruel from France, also known as “Zen”, was going for rebuilding his Harley Davidson XR1200X.

Harley Davidson Sportster subframe

Laurent says, that after visiting Salt Flats in 2009 and 2011 he had this irresistible desire to come back but this time by road riding his motorcycle from San Francisco to Bonneville. Bitten by the bug, he started thinking about a donor bike, the one that could be re-purposed into a lightened and appealing racing bike and at the same time, could handle an upcoming journey well. Harley Davidson XR1200X was a good choice to achieve these goals. Knowing its capability and specifications, he believed that this bike would be perfect for such project. So, Laurent turned on his imagination and started to work.First, “Zed” modified the chassis. He rebuilt the subframe fabricating a rear hoop from aluminium, and customized a swingarm to fit the Fournales Softail shocks. This, in fact, freed up a lot of space allowing to install a Turbo Garett GT2056 with its appendices.

The rear end Sportster
Cafe racer rear solid wheel
Custom HD Sportster

Having this taken care of, Laurent added a few things especially for the race – the air exchanger, hooked up to the turbo, and a big oil cooler. For the purpose of losing weight, the bodywork and several other details have also been constructed from aluminium: cowl, fuel tank, oil tank, exhaust system.The bike is now breathing through a Mikuni HSR45 carburetor that the engine was equipped with after getting rid of the injector. Laurent then changed the position of the headlight, pulling it a few inches backward and adjusting it just between the fork legs. This made the front end look kinda “light free”. The stance style is finished with a 19″ spoke front wheel and a 17″ solid rear wheel. Both are shod in Continental RoadAttack tires – one of his biggest sponsors.Frame, cylinder heads and brake calipers are finished with red, while the other details are painted mostly in black and white. The scheme is simple enough but still, has a bit of a charm.After spending more than 700 hours customizing HD Sportster XR1200X, Laurent admits that he’s more than satisfied with this cafe racer. Not only the bike brought him from the West Coast to Bonneville making this already an exciting trip but also showed great results participating in numerous runs in Bonneville. With 1200cc bike reached 158 mph and broke existing record of 155 mph in the 1350 M-PBG category.

on the road

The build is truly great! You can find Laurent’s bikes on his facebook page or on the website.

Check out more high resolution images of this build in our Google+ album.

Images provided by Zen

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