One of my favourite things is to discover men like Albert “The Chief” Hurt, he’s a retired Coast Guard officer who lives in Spokane and builds some of the most remarkable Kawasaki café racers you’ll find this side of Japan.
This particular bike started life as a 1992 Kawsaki KZ1000 Police Special, Al built the bike over this past winter in an unheated garage, wearing a coat and some fingerless gloves, if that isn’t dedication to your craft I don’t know what is.
Interestingly, the front suspension and rear swing arm on this bike is off of a 1995 Suzuki RF900R, Al fabricated the necessary parts to make all of these parts play nice together, he added rear suspension from Benjie’s Café Racer and a slew of parts from web-based motorcycle stores like Dime City Cycles and Drag Specialties.
The finished product is a very quick 95hp motorcycle with modern suspension and dual Nilsin disc brakes. It has some subtle Kawasaki-green touches and looks like a bike that’d very easily embarrass many modern super bikes.
As long as I am turning a wrench, listening to Rammestein and working in the shop I am happy and content.
– Albert “The Chief” Hurt –
Words to live by.
Check out more from Al Hurt here.
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
