Rizoma factory visit

Last weekend I have been visiting Milan, with a colleague of Spark design & innovation, for the Salone del Mobile. On our way home we visited Rizoma as well! They are sponsoring my café racer project, and I know them for quite few years now, but I was never able to visit the factory.. till now!

Main impression is awesome. The packages of the Rizoma product reflect the company very well; nicely designed, clean and well organized! The tour around the factory passed 19 CNC milling machines and many other machinery the “after care” of the milled parts.

Even the assembly line, packaging and storage systems are impressively well organized and highly efficient. All together an interesting tour around their factory, thanks guys!

Update | Rizoma parts

Last Thursday I mounted some more beautiful Rizoma parts on to the motorcycle; the open clutch cover, gold pressure plate, milled timing belt covers and the oil plug.
I absolutely love the look of these parts together! Thanks to Rizoma!!

Update | Healight and speedo bracket

Just a quick impression of the work of last week.. I have been measuring and tweaking the headlight and speedo bracket, and modeled it in CAD. This part will be waterjet-cutted out of stainless steel, as well as the exhaust brackets and some other small brackets.
Altogether it is a lot of measuring, modelling, template printing, checking, modelling.. but in the end these brackets will make this motorcycle looks awesome!

The Rizoma 77|011 is one of those products that really makes a shopping window complete! Last Wednesday Rizoma's Matteo Mengacci and I went to Lokal Heroz in Rotterdam to display one 77|011 in their shop, and it definitely looks amazing.

Later that day we arriving in The Hague at Lola Bikes and Coffee with a very warm welcome. The guys immediately grabbed all the camera’s available in the shop and the next 15 minutes we only made photos, more photo’s and… photo’s! No reason to complain about attention around 17.30pm at Noordeinde in The Hague; a busy street with Dutch commuters on bikes!

For all bicycle and fixy lovers; visit Lola Bikes and Coffee as soon as you can. This is an amazing hangout for everyone addicted to bikes, books about bikes, coffees and a unique atmosphere. Lola is located in an authentic shop downtown The Hague and with quite a selection of cool rides in their shop!
Check the website of Lokal Heroz via this link To find the webiste of Lola's Bikes and Coffees, check this link

Rizoma 77| 011

Two very impressive Rizoma 77|011 fixies arrived today in Rotterdam! What more can I say.. the aluminum parts are milled with passion; the lining of the mill is left in the parts as an interesting graphic detailing.
The frame draws your attention every time you’ll pass the bicycles. The lining is so unique, looks aggressive and although the characteristic vertical frame tube is eliminated, you don’t miss it visually!

The saddle is milled out of aluminum with a curved carbon surface on top. The central part of the steer is CNC milled as well, and so nicely!

And if you park two of these 77|011 bikes alongside each other, they look even better! For more information check out http://www.rizoma.com/

Update | the motorcycle on its way to Star Twin

Here a short update about the development of my café race to be. Like mentioned before two boxes with Rizoma parts arrived last week and some of these have been mounted on the motorcycle already; like the dry open clutch, this became a real eye-catcher on the engine! Later on the aluminum milled time belt covers and oil plug will be the icing on the cake for the engine.
At the moment the motorcycle is in the workshop of Star Twin. They will install the wiring, Dellorto carburetors, oil cooler and exhaust system. Hopefully it will be back in three weeks, so I can continue with the preparations for the clay modeling. Hope to start with the body shaping in July..

The motorcycle in the van, in its way to Star Twin. The short rear end of the motorcycle is clearly visible and the part of the frame pointing out will be trimmed; so the bike will be shorter and lighter!

Already shared in a Tweet last Saturday, but what an impressive dry clutch!

Rizoma parts!

Today two more boxes filled with beautiful Rizoma parts arrived! I needed some crucial parts for the motorcycle's "engine assembly" next week; handle bars, clutch pressure plate, clutch cover, sprocket cover etc.. and some more styling related parts; mirrors, indicator lights and handle bar ends.
All these Rizoma parts really come like jewellery; packed in very neath designed boxes. The products are displayed in a black foam block, behind a clear plastic cover. The guys at Rizoma really know how to sell their products and quality. Actually you need to buy each part twice; one to mount on your motorcycle and one to place on your desk.. just to look at! And when your whole table is filled with these awesome parts it really feels like Christmas!

The tank cap is one of my favorites; the material combinations, the graphics on the parts and the key system! When you insert the specially designed key you need to push down the red part and then the tank cap opens, and one of the most genius solutions; the tank cap remains connected to the key, until you lock it correctly after refueling. many thanks to Rizoma for sponsoring my motorcycle project; all these parts will make the final design look even better!

Check out more Rizoma parts via; http://www.rizoma.com/

Rizoma 77|011 bicycle

The 77|011 is Rizoma's first ever bicycle, and hopefully not their last! Designed and made in Italy, a combination of styling and performance.

The 77|011 is just 8 kg, thanks to a carbon fiber frame and aluminum milled components. That’s what Rizoma is good at, CNC milling brilliant components for motorcycles and… since today also bicycles! 

The 77|011 is Rizoma's first ever bicycle, and hopefully not the last! Designed and made in Italy, a combination of styling and performance.

The 77|011 is just 8 kg, thanks to a carbon fiber frame and aluminum milled components. That’s what Rizoma is good at, CNC milling brilliant components for motorcycles and… since today also bicycles! The Rizoma 77|011 comes with a nice oil free drive belt. Ideal for commuter traffic; no dirt and ultra light! 

More impressions and great videos of Rizoma on http://www.youtube.com/user/rizomaofficialtv?feature=watch or via http://www.rizoma.com/ 

Braking!

Today I have been preparing the braking lines, calipers, master cylinders and levers. The adjustable CNC milled Rizoma levers are now fitted on to the radial Brembo master cylinders (originally mounted on a 848).

I prepared this before assembling the suspension and engine in the frame.. So if it is rolling I can stop it as well, makes it easier to maneuver the motorcycle! Forgot to do that while building the VertiGO, and hated to roll the bike through the workshop.

Motorcycle parts update..

Since I am bringing this blog back to life I uploaded some interesting photo's of my motorcycle project. Some of these pictures have been shared via Twitter, but now I have the timeline of this project chronological again!

Some really nice CNC milled Rizoma parts arrived a about two months ago. Thanks to Rizoma for sponsoring this great project! And of course Super-B for supplying the powerful Super-B 7800 Lithium-ion battery!

I have bought all the parts for the rolling chassis; swingarm, rear shock, bolts and bearing.. All this will be assembled, around a completely overhauled Ducati Monster 900ie engine, end of March!