Making another mans dream a reality isn’t something many of us can claim to have done. For the team at Luis Alves Motos realising ones two wheeled dreams is a daily task. Such was the case when Celso Almeida rolled his sorry looking Suzuki GSX1100 into the Portugal based workshop with a dream that had been with him since he was a child.
Inspired by a neighbour from Andora who had a brand new ’82 Suzuki GS1100 when he was a young Celso hunted down his donor bike. The bike he found however was suffering from years of damage from the elements, missing electrical components and body parts and was far from being dream bike material. He delivered the bike to the workshop with the vision of that neighbours bike in his mind and some ideas for a few modern Cafe Racer upgrades and the team at Luis Alves Motos welcomed the challenge.
A complete tear down resulted in a clean frame and a factory fresh motor. The ratty original tank was swapped for an earlier model 1980 GSX1100 unit and a fiberglass tail with integrated lighting was constructed to match its lines. The instruments were replaced with a top of the range Motogadget Motoscope Tacho mounted squarely between clip on bars sporting all new controls and grips. Koni shocks and rebuilt forks complete the suspension upgrades and Metzler Lasertec rubber holds the Suzuki to the asphalt.
Renamed the “Fenix” the Suzuki GSX1100 was then finished in the same black and yellow paint scheme found on late model examples of the same bike. Was Celso happy with the result? I’ll let you be the judge of that.
