BMW R80 Bobber by Toma Customs

Table of Contents

Background info about the Workshop:

TOMA Customs is a Brussels-based custom workshop. We transform, customize and hand finish motorcycles to create unique and personalized machines.

Our artistic approach strives to extract the best potential of each bike and match the vision of their future owner’s. We aim to create unique, one-of-a-kind machines, with a clean and efficient style. Our work mainly focuses on the tracker, scrambler, and bratstyle projects. Customizing goes hand in hand with transforming to us. We do not only modify bikes we give them a new life, a new look.

We always work starting with an older, existing base and then begin adding new parts (tanks, wheels, handlebars, lights). Given the complexity of certain projects, we often create and adapt some of these parts ourselves, especially when they’re metal.

Before we even get going, we spend a lot of time with the future-owners to see where they come from, what their interests are, where and how they grew up, their tastes, what they’ve been doing in life, etc. All these elements, along with a ton of aesthetic and artistic research, allow us to create the motorcycle of their dreams.

About the Toma Customs:

I’m the owner of TOMA CUSTOMS, my name is Thomas Jeukens. 2 year ago, I decided to leave my job as Strategy Manager for a big consulting firm to open TOMA CUSTOMS and fully live from my passion, transforming and customizing motorcycles.

Mixing mental and manual activities generates a level of freedom and satisfaction that I’d never experienced before. Working as a manager at a big consulting company enriched me personally and professionally, while it also made me grow and evolve as a person. Yet, I felt it was time for me to achieve one of my dreams and to fully live my passion: combining my intellectual abilities with creativity and manual work. That’s why I decided to turn my passion into my job.

About the project: BMW R80

When we start a project, we first want to hear about the clients’ wishes and transformation ideas. It is a great opportunity for us to get to know our client and enables us to visualize what his dream bike would look like.

For this project, the client came with a BMW R80rt from 1986 that wasn’t in really good shape. The bike stayed most of the time in a garage and has not been ridden for several months or even years. He wanted to give it a second life.

The briefing was not exhaustive but the client insisted that he likes materials that have been worked by hand, which tends rather to a retro look. He also specified he wanted a custom bike like no other, and that the seat had to be brown color.

After a few meetings, thinking and sharing ideas we got into the vibe of his dream bike and we knew the exact outlook of how the bike should look like. This is an amazing feeling you know when you see you went beyond your client’s expectations and ideas. After that, we just know we have to make this a dream come true.

Regarding the modifications, we wanted to play with the general line of the bike, so we decided to change the alignment of the original tank and align/shorten the rear part of the frame. We cut and welded a shorter sub-frame and replaced the original huge saddle by a custom seat base that we then sewed by our workshop. For the design and creation of our sub-frame and saddle, we had as an idea to build support between the seat and sub-frame that would give the impression that the saddle flies because this motorcycle really inspired freedom of riding to us.

Indicator

The difficulty here was to integrate the indicator lights and taillights within the sub-frame, but we managed to do so. Then we went looking for the color combination between the gas tank, brown seat, engine, and frame. As the client required it, it was important to build a completely new bike but that still looks retro, so we managed to skate saddle as well as the engine, use black satin color for the frame, but also give a worn appearance to the new exhausts so the motorcycle doesn’t look too modern.

Replacing the handlebar also helped work on the line of the bike. All the electronics components have been replaced by new and more minimalist elements (indicator lights, taillights, speedometer, lithium battery)

We love this kind of project and relationship with the customers, to take their ideas into account and try to achieve their dream motorcycle, all this happening in the workshop around the bike without going through Photoshop. It’s really about this kind of experience / co-creation project that we want to evolve and bring our customers to, discussing details, sharing what we do, make them come to the workshop to live the project together, not just buying a product, but live an experience together and build the motorcycle of their dream.