Jens vom Brauck and KEDO, the German tuning and parts specialists, have taken an everyday Yamaha SR 500 and gone back to the roots.

The bike looks lean, mean and low - it looks fast. It could be a mutant cross between a 60’s desert racer and Kenny Robert’s 70’s flat track bike. The black rims, the machined alloy swinger, the Wilbers shocks, the high-up exhaust and big carb with an open filter – it has a raw competition look, but it isn’t intimidating - it looks like a bike you could get on and pull a wheelie straight away.
It looks like you could have fun on it going to the shops.

Kedo, the Hamburg based SR and XT tuning and parts specialists, provided insider knowledge, the hot SR motor (up to50bhp!) with a Mikuni round-slide carb, the Harley style sportster tank, the serious looking swing-arm and Jens vom Brauck did the rest.

“We’ve forgotten what biking is about,” says Jens ”it’s all about feeling - the sounds and the rhythm of the motor, the contact with the machine. It should be unfiltered, direct. We’ve got too sophisticated. The D-track goes back to the roots, it has a lot of soul and in the real world, away from racetracks and autobahns, it is fast, and it is performance that is easy to use. ”

The SR500 is already a pretty minimal motor bike - at 170kg there isn’t much obvious fat, but Jens’ diet has junked 25 kilos of assorted old iron and plastic bits and replaced them with just a few kilos of beautiful stainless steel, alloy and sculpted composite materials that the designer makes himself.
Jens vom Brauck made his name with radical Ducati specials, but his daily, all-weather transport is his old beaten-up, much loved and much modified SR 500.
He’s ridden 250,000km on it and can change the engine in an afternoon. “An SR 500 has got so much potential and working with Kedo building the D-Track I think we’ve brought it out.
It’s not that hard to turn a tired old rat bike into something really exciting. They’ve got some trick partsand we’ve developed some new ones that will soon be available in their catalogue. Customers will be able to buy most of the parts for this special.”