Bad Winners’ Triumph Thruxton
When your custom bike-building business is located in the world’s fashion capital, there’s an expectation that your bikes will be stylish and fashionable. Bad Winners is a custom bike builder located smack bang in Paris, but its founder, Walid Ben Lamine, knows that a bike should never be just look good or be a static prop for your lifestyle – it needs to function and perform, too.
Early Start
While Bad Winners may be a new name to many, Ben Lamine’s background in bike building stretches back much further.
“I started working on motorcycles at the age of 7 in my cousin’s garage,” Ben Lamine explained. “He was a professional racer, so I got a first hand look at performance bikes and how they work.
“Soon after, I began to build custom motorcycles for myself and my friends, with my own personal touch and always keeping in mind the performance of the machine.”
So far, an impressive array of bikes have rolled out of Bad Winners’ Paris workshop. Some of the early creations are only mildly customised, mainly with various paint treatments, but as Ben Lamine’s business has grown, his designs have become bolder.
Pretty much everything has featured as a base for Bad Winners’ customs, too. Yamaha SR125s feature heavily, but there are also Vespas, Kawasaki Z750s, Motoconfort mopeds, BMW R65s and even a Yamaha R6 among the more than twenty builds featured on the Bad Winners website to date.
The bike featured here, dubbed ‘Zero Gravity’, is only the second Triumph-based build from Bad Winners, and comes after the Bonneville-based ‘Wasp Waist’; a bobber-style custom with some of the ideas that would be carried through to this most recent build.
Lighter, Faster, Stronger . . . and Cleaner
Completed late last year, the base unit for Zero Gravity is the recently superseded Triumph Thruxton, so that means an air-cooled 865cc twin, rather than the liquid-cooled 1200cc version on the current generation.
While a goal with this build was to increase the performance from the Triumph parallel twin engine, Ben Lamine said another aim with Zero Gravity was to shed the Triumph of extraneous features and decoration.
“Creating a clean and simple bike is not an easy thing,” he said. “What I like doing the most is improving the bikes—finding the perfect geometry, the perfect setting of performance and style.”
In the case of this build, that meant removing the factory fuel tank, seat, front brake system, wheels, suspension, mudguards and switchgear, along with a portion of the rear subframe.
In re-building from this, Ben Lamine has added 17-inch Dymag carbon fibre wheels, a carbon fibre front mudguard, Bitubo rear shocks, front forks and twin-disc brakes from a Triumph Daytona 675, a bespoke tail section, custom leather-trimmed seat and a hand-made steel fuel tank. The latter addition does much to mask Zero Gravity’s Triumph origins and gives the build the look of a Yamaha at first glance.
The weight saving delivered by these changes is not recorded, but it’s estimated that around 15kg has been shed from the factory Thruxton’s 205kg dry weight, hence the ‘Zero Gravity’ tag applied to this build.
Carb Loading
Those carb look-alike fuel injectors on the Thruxton have been replaced with actual carburettors for Zero Gravity: Keihin CR35s with pod filters, to be precise. Other changes include a set of Arrow 2-into-1 exhaust headers and a Spark muffler.
Engine internals are unaltered, but Ben Lamine has added a bespoke CDI unit and completely rewired the bike around a Motogadget m-Unit controller.
In factory trim, the Thruxton’s output is around 51kW and 71Nm, but the mods made to produce Zero Gravity would certainly add more grunt, boosted by the reduced weight and fitting of sticky Michelin Power Cup Evo tyres. While it hasn’t been stuck the bike on a dyno, Ben Lamine confidently describes his creation’s power output as “insane”, based on the fact he tests all the bikes he builds.
Bringing that extra grunt to a halt is a Beringer twin-disc front brake system with stainless steel lines, with solid (instead of drilled) discs adding to Zero Gravity’s old-school vibe.
Bars and Chevrons
Continuing the stripped-back mantra behind the rest of the build, the control centre on Zero Gravity is simplicity personified. There are clip-on bars (of course!) from Renthal fitted with Motogadget button-style switchgear. The bar-end indicators and speedo are also from Motogadget, while the levers are Beringer.
The headlight is the factory item, stripped of its fairing and treated to a blacked-out shell. Like the rest of the frame, those Daytona USD front forks and Bitubo rear shocks have been given the blackout treatment, too, which draws attention to the seat and fuel tank.
On that custom tank, an unusual touch is the chevron paint effect, mirrored in the pleating on the seat. Maybe this was inspired by Citroen’s double chevron logo – Ben Lamine is French, after all!
Limited Edition
Taking a leaf from the haute couture world, Bad Winners will produce Zero Gravity as a limited edition of five units, following a similar approach taken with a previous Suzuki GN125-based build, which was offered in a limited edition of ten copies.
Each Zero Gravity replica will follow the template presented here, but the purchaser will be able to add their own touches on things like paint colour.
The bike pictured is the prototype and carries what Ben Lamine calls ‘Stage 2’ specification. That means the carbon fibre rims, high-spec tyres, suspension changes and front brake upgrade. A more affordable ‘Stage 1’ version retains the factory Thruxton forks and uses LSL spoked rims, YSS rear shocks, a single-disc front brake and Michelin tyres.
The Stage 1 variant starts at 23,390 Euros (around AU$32,500), while all those carbon fibre goodies and improved braking and suspension componentry sees the Stage 2 from Bad Winners listing for 29,990 Euro (around AU$41,500).
With all the bugs and build issues eliminated in building the prototype, Ben Lamine is confident the limited edition copies will meet customers’ expectations.
“This Thruxton is probably one of the most efficient bikes I’ve done,” says Ben Lamine. “From the Keihin CR35s, to the carbon fibre wheels and the racing style lines, this bike is all about the racing track.”
For more info on these and other builds from Bad Winners, go to the website: <a href="www.badwinners.com">Bad Winners</a>
Words: Mike Ryan
Photos: Guillaume Petranto
Source: Bike Exif
