The Deus Boundless Enthusiasm Biker Build Off Report

The decision to get creative with rules and regulations is in keeping with the all-bike-brands-welcome spirit experienced at all Deus get-togethers. Another big plus was not only the variety of bike flavors – from small-displacement chittychittybangers to rorty Laguna Seca-ready hyperbikes – but also the wide spectrum of people who helped rev up the energy level. So, for this coverage, we do a little adapting as well, with a focus on five of the machines entered into the competition and then some handing out of my own non-official citations of excellence. Strangely enough, most of my early pix also scored with the judges. Yeah, great minds thunk alike.

The long ride was worth it since the Deus judges picked his bike as number one. So, it will join the other top winners at Deus bike shows taking place almost simultaneously in Sydney, Tokyo, Bali, Milan and the other Deus locations internationally. All the First Place winners will then be judged by the public online to choose Deus ex Machina’s Numero Uno bike and recipient of the People’s Choice Award.

When my eyes glammed onto David Miezal’s Moto Guzzi 850T café racer, I knew it was, well, a Guzzi with gusto. It turns out that David, a professional photographer by trade who’s also into bikes and plane design, found the 850T all choppered up with reach for the sky ape hanger bars, fishtail exhausts, a red paint job, a huge seat and assorted bad-to-the-bone gnarly stuff. So he got to work, metal fabbing being a hobby. Turning a chopperized Moto Guzzi 850T into a slick café bike, David hand-formed all the metal, even designing his own handlebars. Everything unnecessary was removed, with the upgraded electrics and small lithium battery hidden under the seat helping to give the stripped down sleek look. The metal parts were wire brushed. All told, the whole ground-up project was completed in just six weeks.

“The inspiration for the bike was the land-speed bikes and records made by the great Ernst Henna in the 1930s,” says Miezal. “Also, I wanted to build it recycling as many of the original parts as possible, like cutting and reworking the rear fender, all to spend as little as possible.”

Another Italian bike, a Ducati Scrambler custom built by NorCal rider Chris Marleau scored the Deus judges’ Second Place Award.

Bryan “Woody” Wood took special Honorable Mention/Fourth Place after the judges agreed that he had created the most bizarro bike at the event. Based on a 1980 Honda CM400T, Bryan wrenched it together in 30 days.

“When I first found the bike, it had been sitting in the back of a trailer for 20 years.” Wood explains. “The guy I got it from didn’t know where the fairing came from. I made the plastic windshield from a catering tray I found at a restaurant supply store. I built the pipes, the pieces from Pep Boys plus some mandrel bends I had done at Summit Racing. It’s actually way too loud to ride around on.

“It was inspired by the Japanese biker gangs who ran around on loud bikes swinging chains and baseball bats,” Wood continues, “but they faded out, so now some of the Japanese kids sort of follow that look with their bikes. It’s a style pretty much unknown in the U.S. I don’t even have a name for it as I ran out of time trying to get the wiring done so I could get it here for the event from where I live in Van Nuys.”

My vote for sweetest looking bike, Suzuki or otherwise, went to Nick O’Kane for his TL1000R transformation. Originally from the U.K., Nick’s now a mover and shaker at K&N. Red Bull is not a sponsor, but the can looked cool as an overflow container. The official judges also picked it as a winner, awarding it Best Bike Way Beyond the Minimalist Rules of the Competition but Too Cool Not to Award.

This Garson award went to Lance Henderson of Revisited Motorcycle for trimming 85 lbs. off a BMW K100RS and turning it into a nimble freeway flyer. Lance rode it to L.A. from his home in Arizona just to attend the event.

Larry Romestant’s SpecialK Customs Feature

Early BMW K bikes always took back seat to classic airhead models, but are now becoming more popular. They offer 100-hp performance, 200,000-mile reliability, and affordability, the latter at least for the moment. Lance says he went through nine seat designs before he found one comfortable enough to spend an entire day on. He also lowered the bike three inches, a good thing since K-bikes’ seats are tall.

Johnny changed the complete rear cowling to more of a dirt track look, made the custom seat pan, powdercoated the wheels, rolled on dual-sport tires, plumbed the full D&D exhaust, lowered the bike three inches in the front, two inches in the back, added Progressive shocks in the back and their springs in the front, bolted on motocross-style handlebars, switched out the instruments and headlamp, bolted on a motocross shifter, brake pedal and pegs, and built the air intake assembly with oversized K&N filter. Johnny says it’s as much fun as it looks. “It’s a very light bike, about 390 lbs. and puts out 48 hp, so it has a good power-to-weight ratio.”

Yes, that is an ice tray melded onto the helmet, and, yes, those are aircraft skid shoes. It’s something that leaped from the mind of Los Angeles designer/builder/rider Mark Dugally, who breaks all the rules with whatever he touches – from radical home architecture to radically built motorcycles. In this case his creation is based on a 2006 Yamaha 125cc scooter. He calls it the Blemmye (pronounced Bleh-me or pretty close to ‘Blame Me.’)

“The Blemmye was a mythical creature from ancient Greece,” says Dugally. “It’s an unnatural creature with a human body but with no head. Instead its face is set into its chest. And all the bikes I built are pretty unnatural.”