Insane Gold Wing breaks cover
Louis Moto create love-it-or-hate-it stripped-back Honda
‘Perfect foundations for a custom’ are not the words that leap to mind when you see a Gold Wing but that didn’t stop the folks at Louis Moto taking on the 400kg super-tourer. The first thing they did was strip the bike back to its bare essentials. Louis say it was at this point they fully realised the mammoth task ahead of them as the engine and gearbox were nearly as heavy as a typical naked bike. The next step was to build a custom frame with Louis turning to Sam Wassermann from UNO, who built a tubular steel frame albeit with much bigger diameter tubing than usual. Next came the suspension, with Wilbers producing custom forks and a new shock. On the standard Wing, there’s plenty of space to hide the electronics but on a custom space is at a premium. Even with all the extras removed, there was still a lot of wiring, especially as the complex electronics prevent too much tinkering. With nowhere else to hide it, Louis Moto had two tanks made from aluminium – one to sit behind the engine inside the frame to hold the fuel, another to sit on top of the frame to house the clever stuff. With the end in sight, all eyes turned to the engine.
Italian company Shark were enlisted to build the six-intosix exhaust, with classic lines reminiscent of Honda’s RC166 ‘Six’. The inlet was swapped to a round K&N filter straight into the central throttle body. To keep things running smoothly Louis sent the bike to local tuning guru Ulf Penner, who remapped it and described the finished result by saying: “As soon as you twist the throttle, the purr suddenly changes into an indescribable snarl. I always knew that under all that plastic there was a real beast.”
‘I always knew that it could be a real beast’