Some motorcycle manufacturers have dipped their toes in the custom scene, but few have dived in head first like Royal Enfield. The Indian marque has made motorcycle customization a core component of its marketing strategy. That’s a bone-dry way of saying they sponsor events, fund custom builds all over the world, and then tell people about them.
I’ve been watching Royal Enfield’s Custom and Motorsport department grow for the past few years and wanted a piece of the action. My magazine, Sideburn, has a long history with the brand.
We built a custom Bullet back in 2012 when Royal Enfield was at the very beginning of their explosion in popularity and selling roughly one million fewer bikes per year than they currently do. (No joke.) When I saw the new Royal Enfield Guerrilla 450 I thought “There’s a bike we can do something with.”
Royal Enfield is not just into custom bikes, they’ve also invested heavily in amateur and professional flat track racing. So the idea was to build a street tracker that was still recognizable as a Guerrilla 450, but classy enough to stand alongside the custom Royal Enfields built by Sureshot, Sticky’s Speed Shop, Rough Crafts, and others.
Making it recognizable involved having Coba Valley Cycles fabricate an alloy tank with side profiles and a raised spine that echo the shape of the standard tank, while making it narrower than the steel original. A new old stock Harris Performance flush filler cap was incorporated into the top.
Coba Valley also made an alloy tail unit, basing it on the Enfield-designed tail fitted to the Royal Enfield FT450 race bike that competes in the DTRA flat track series. Holy Goat Motorcycle Seats upholstered the pad in Alcantara.
The Guerrilla has an asymmetrical swingarm with a curve in the right-hand side spar. This led Steelheart Engineering to design and make an industrially rude aluminum billet and tube arm that exaggerated the shape while retaining the standard wheelbase. A Nitron adjustable shock was bolted in, using the OEM linkage.
Lowery Racing wheels are used by the Moto Anatomy x Royal Enfield American Flat Track race team, and on the DTRA FT450, so they were the obvious choice for this street tracker. They’re made by a 20-something married couple, Jeffery and Gab Lowery, in rural Ohio, USA.
The front hub was designed and machined to accept the Royal Enfield disc, which is now chomped on by a HEL Performance four-piston superbike caliper. The caliper bolts to the Guerrilla forks via a DeftCAD one-off adapter. The forks have been shaved of extraneous protrusions and fitted with SUDO Cycles carbon fork protectors.
The rear brake uses a monster racing disc mounted on a Lowery Racing quick-detachable center. A Vortex Racing sprocket is on the other side, with road-legal Anlas flat track tires finishing off the job.
Co-Built made the stainless steel exhaust, just like they did for Bullet we built in 2012 (and a bunch of my bikes in between). They were given free rein, and created an avant-garde silencer that complements the lines of the swingarm that it’s tucked under. The header has a few lobster-back sections because it’s a custom bike, so why not, right? (Geoff at Co-Built needed a little encouragement to make the pie cuts, because ‘proper’ exhausts have bends and the minimum number of welded joints.)
Other details include Renthal flat track bars, a Motone tail light, Biltwell Inc. grips, and CP Racetec hoses. The master cylinders, brake lever, and clutch perch are HEL Performance parts, all of which are beautifully made in England.
The idea for the geometric paint job was a part of the project from day one and was laid on by Alex at AK Custom Paint, Essex, with the help of Matt from Image Worx. It’s based on the ‘body suit’ tattoo of friend and fellow amateur dirt track racer, Steph Birtwistle.
I’ve known Steph since she appeared on the cover of Sideburn in 2018. At the time she was a rider—but after that meeting, she started racing, and it was at the British dirt tracks where she met her future husband, Gary Birtwistle. Gary races for the Royal Enfield factory team and runs the Royal Enfield Slide School in the UK, and the pair of them appear in the films we made of this bike—so the tie-in seemed ideal.
It’s a great pattern, even without that story. But one thing that might not be obvious from the photos, is that the silver is actually bare alloy, with a clear lacquer over it.
The name of the bike—Modern Primitive—comes from a cult book about tattoos and body modification I saw as an impressionable youth in the late 80s. The name touches upon the tattoo inspiration, but also Royal Enfield’s attitude of building uncomplicated bikes made for riding.
As fans of street trackers and flat track racing at its most fundamental, that simplicity really appeals to us at Sideburn.
Sideburn Magazine | Instagram | Images by Craig Stuart
