Revival Cycles' BMW Birdcage
By Ross Sharp - 16 Apr 19
I'm rather envious of Revival Cycles, the team behind the super successful Handbuilt Show. But not because of their event, it's the engineering department at their Austin, Texas HQ that has me turning green. The facility is packed with all the gear for producing some of the most harebrained mechanical concepts, and the fabricators to bring the creativity to life.
The term bike builder has been overused excessively (guilty your honour!) over recent years to describe those customising existing donors. But actually building a bike from the ground up is a rarely tried endeavour, let alone accomplished - especially to the stratospherically high standards seen here.
Sure, Revival started out like everyone else, adding their flavour to a host of classic bikes but in recent years they've drawn a line in the sand, far enough away from what's achievable by normal folk that it's unlikely to be crossed often.
This BMW Birdcage was inspired by one of my favourite race cars from the early sixties, Maserati's impossibly complicated yet simply beautiful Tipo 61 'Birdcage', but here modern tech has found a place in a project commissioned by BMW Motorrad. Titanium tubes, precision machined alloys and carbon fibre have been married to a big bore BMW motor that you won't have seen before.
To find out exactly what the heck I'm on about you'll need to head to Bike Exif for the full scoop. But if you're a keyboard bashing pedant looking for an opportunity to moan about comfort or ergonomics, go and get yourself some fresh air instead. For those impressed by machining and completely pointless but oh so wonderful engineering, and want to know where the fuel goes then you owe it to yourself to head to Exif for the lowdown from Revival's founder and force behind this zany build, Alan Stulberg.
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