Plumbers el Bruto Custom Motorcycle
With an accommodating wife you can build a custom bike in your lounge room.
I WANTED a bike and couldn’t really find anything I liked so I thought I’ll build one because then it will be completely unique; I’ll paint it the way I want it. I even set up a spray booth so I could spray it myself. It took about three month to build. Quite a few pieces had to be machined. It didn’t just bolt together; it had to be fabricated; bits and brackets and stuff.
It’s an Ultima frame, Ultima el Bruto motor, 127 cubes, six-speed gearbox, three-inch open-primary, chain drive on the rear, 250 rear-end. It’s got a four-inch stretch on the front, 42-degree rake on the frame, and an extra three degrees on the triples.
Just recently, we changed the wheels, brake calipers, rotors, and it picked up second place in the custom bike section in the hot rod show.
We had a few dramas with the pipes and the belt drive getting it licensed.
Good thing with a bike you don’t need so much room. It’s a bit like Lego or Meccano—you could do it in your lounge room if you had an accommodating wife.
We’re plumbers by trade. We have a business that installs pipe work for industrial air-conditioning. It mainly takes care of hospitals, uni’s, multi-story stuff in the city, that kind of thing. We have guys who do that on-site, then in the workshop we manufacture copper tubes and fittings and distribute them through Reece, Trade Link and Home stores. So between that and the bikes, it keeps us out of trouble. The idea is to ride the bike but I’ve got to get a bike licence first. Meanwhile, I think I’ll go and unblock some drains.
Photos by Brian White; words by Ben
