Motorcycle News - Even better than the real thing: Two ‘new’ BSA trackers
https://ift.tt/2BCDGcf
In 1970 Aldana was beaten to the Grand National title by team mate Gene Romero, but fifty years later, there are still plenty of folks who remember the BSAs they raced.
That’s the home base for the workshop Atelier Chatokhine, which has built these two street legal replicas of the 1971 BSA racer.
Founder Roland Chatokhine started up the business as a Norton Villiers workshop, and handed over the reins to his son Frank in 2004. But it’s still very much an old school operation, working with traditional skills and machinery.
These two BSAs are ground up builds, and showcases for Chatokhine’s skills. They each weigh just 165 kilos (363 pounds), but with 65 horsepower coming from the 750 cc engines, they have plenty of grunt to keep up with modern traffic.
“These new motorcycles are a variation of it, but are completely street legal,” he says. “They’re made from scratch with lots of details, lots of machining, and a lot of thinking.”
The Ceriani forks are replicas too—with a 38mm diameter to suit the vintage vibe—and the aluminum-bodied shocks come from the same supplier.
The rest of the engines are brand new, though, built up to 750cc with an aluminum big bore kit, and forged aluminum connecting rods. Chatokhine have machined the original cases to allow the 750 kit to fit—which was also modified, because it was originally intended for cases with small studs.
The tanks are based on the shape of vintage Gold Star models, used on BSA’s smaller capacity bikes, but with an added 5 centimeters (two inches) in height. Chatokhine used a mold taken from their 2017 Trackmaster replica, and crafted the new tanks from glass fiber.
It would probably cost a substantial sum to commission one of these BSAs—but we’re betting it’d hold its value. Let’s hope we can still buy premium gasoline in 50 years’ time. Atelier Chatokhine | Instagram | Images by David Marvier (outdoor) and Dimitri Coste (studio) Motorcycles via Bike EXIF https://ift.tt/2Mf9b0c June 25, 2020 at 12:35PM Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
November 2020
|
6/25/2020
0 Comments