Futuristic Build
It was approximately three years ago whilst searching the internet for custom bikes that Keith came across a futuristic custom bike built in Indonesia by Andi Pratama, who owns a company called Kromworks. What intrigued Keith was the bike had disc wheels which is quite unusual for motorcycles, and the frame had been built around a Royal Enfield 500cc Bullet Engine, and by coincidence Keith had the exact same engine sitting in his workshop which was surplus to his requirements.
So he decided to contact Andi to see if he would build him a replica to fit his engine into it in the UK, not only to save cost but to cut down on the overall shipping costs. Not having had a For a couple of weeks Keith thought that he might be up against a language barrier, then suddenly out of the blue he had an email from Andi in his inbox with a proposal to build something unique for the UK, with a view to promote his business in England and Europe.
Icarus Begins
As Andi stated, “I received an email from the owner of Icarus – Keith Edney. He really loved my previous masterpiece – The Bullet, and then asked me to build one to be delivered to UK. I was beyond excited because it was the first time I exported a motorcycle that I created to the UK. It was definitely an honour for me that I put all the best to make the design more attractive.”
So once a price was agreed on, excluding shipping, the work commenced on the Icarus build with a scheduled time of 12 months to complete. Although due to Covid, progress proved rather slow, but they got there in the end, one year longer than first planned. Andi contacted Keith in the first two weeks to suggest some potential design changes and upgrades for the bike rather than using aluminium for the tank and seat faring he wanted to panel beat the tank from stainless steel then polish it to a mirror shine and upgrade the front brake from a 6-inch standard drum brake to a 10-inch custom billet twin leading shoe.
This upgrade obviously meant it wouldn’t be practical to have the disc wheels as per the original sketch, so it was agreed to finish the bike with spoke wheels and black rims instead of the disc wheels in the original design.
Bullet 500cc Engine
Keith’s Royal Enfield engine in the UK originally came from a 500cc EFI Bullet and it was agreed that we would run the bike on a chrome carburettor set up, which proved more difficult than first envisaged as the Stator and the Stator pick up needed to be converted to enable the engine to run on a single AMAL carburettor.
Having said that, after sourcing the required parts direct from India the conversion proved fairly straightforward, which included changing the ECU to make the engine run.
The Build
As Andi said, “The build process was quite time-consuming because all parts were almost handmade. The design of this motorcycle was inspired by motorcycles in the 50’s. I developed and combined the classic and modern styles to the design. The body is stainless steel which was much more challenging than the one made of iron. The most difficult challenge was the making of the body and the front suspension. It was extremely hard to work on the angle of the bars to find the optimal turning radius, to make it able to turn wider without touching the tank.
The front suspension was formed using Girder suspension put inside the body and for the tyre rim and the front tyre, I used a 21-inch aluminium ring, and drum brakes were applied to both the front and rear tyres.”
Andi kept Keith up-to-date with the progress on a regular basis with many photographs and drawings of the bike whilst it was under construction. He even sent Keith three colour options that he thought would suit the bike; Metallic Grey, Dark Blue and Emerald Metallic Green, with the latter being the final choice.
Shipped to the UK
Andi completed the bike in approximately 22 months from start to finish, and he personally test rides each of his creations to satisfy himself that the bike is not only safe but practical to ride. Once ready to go the bike was packed for shipping to the UK by TNT, then the fun began as initially the crate and its contents had to be fumigated and certificated before it could be shipped to the UK. Two weeks later the bike was collected by TNT and a tracking number issued, that’s when the frustration really began, as apparently the crate was sent initially to Germany then on to the UK.
Then Keith was given no notification that the bike was in the UK customs waiting for customs clearance, while the tracking was showing the bike had been refused by customs and sent to Paris. Then after 10-days of silence and getting a bit concerned of the bike’s location, suddenly without notification the TNT truck arrived with the crate to Keith’s workshop in Surrey.
Final Assembly
After carefully unpacking the bike, they ended up with a large pile of bits with very little assembly instructions, so by studying the images and the videos on YouTube we started the assembly. The first major problem was the engine mounts didn’t align, which Keith thought that all of the engine holes would be the same in production but obviously they were quite different, so with a bit of blood sweat and tears and a round file the engine now fitted, unfortunately for some reason Andi hadn’t sent the ECU for the bike so another eBay search and that problem was sorted. Keith wasn’t happy with the chain that Andi supplied either, so he fitted a gold link chain which was not only stronger, but greatly improved the appearance.
Within a very short time they had the bike running and riding and Keith couldn’t have been happier with the result. He has now commissioned a second bike to be built around a spare 1972 750cc Norton Commando which they hope to have completed very soon…
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