Back to the Roots

For this Custom Build I went back to my original R18. I wanted the more classic stretched out cruiser look, with the possibility of carrying a passenger. I felt that it was time to once again glorify the era of cruisers and chrome. And I really like the sound of those first pipes I had made at Dominator Performance. Remember this bike?

I also wanted to try a combination of a similar paint treatment as my orange Bobber, but chose a colour which would go with chrome, as these exhaust pipes are hand polished stainless and pick up all the chrome nicely.

So I started with this red R18, to which I added the Dominator exhausts. I also had the BMW accessories saddle modified to lower the passenger portion and "rear bulk", finishing it off in black leather with blue stitching.

I then worked with Kevin at Brand Launch Solutions and Ashley at Paintrix to come up with a design, and colour I was after. We went for a metallic blue, with a high level of sparkle to pick up the chrome. Ghost flames and a stylised logo were again part of the theme, but in a different approach. Finally, we added a bold “Berlin Built” to the top of the tank.

To tidy up the front and back, I had the BMW LED indicator sets installed, and learning from Maverick I also added a rear light with number plate light.

In my other R18 builds I had to remove a lot of chrome, but you will notice that many parts on this R18 came from the factory with black-coated parts instead of chrome (brake master cylinders, levers and calipers for example). So this is not quite where I want this look to be - a mix of chrome and black-coated parts.

The solution is simple, I found another R18 which has all the chrome parts and decided to swop the parts... leaving me no option but to do another R18 build with the other bike, once again gravitating to the "blacked-out theme". But that's a story for another post. The next step will be completing this project with an "all chrome" look. I'll post the final photos shortly.