The Copen is a typically Japanese adorable little 2 seater. It already offers fully swappable body panels, so creating fun and funky 3D-printed versions is a natural extension of that program. The new panels themselves are a mix of bubbles, geometric shapes, and organic structures.

As it stands this is a small move made by a niche player, but fast forward a year or so and you shouldn’t be surprised to find Mercedes, BMW or especially Tesla offering something similar on their premium cars to allow customers to create truly custom cars. Get rid of the funky moonscape designs, replace them with monograms or crests and you’ve got something right up Rolls Royce’s alley.

So what would you 3D-print onto one of your car’s body panels?

The post 3D-Printed Car Parts Are The New Hotness appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

So by now we’ve gotten our Kawasaki, stripped it down, painted it, and added a new headlight and so go-faster F24 stickers. She’s looking pretty good, but not good enough yet. It is not yet exuding it’s urban tracker feel we’re going for. To that end, this week we got rid of the sparse black seat in favor of a more old-school leather affair and add the Iron and Resin tool roll we recently took a look at.

When we got it, this moto was covered in your standard offroad accoutrement like nasty and gummy grips, a Walmart handlebar pad, and a plain-jane black seat who’s better days had seen better days. This could not stand. We are good friends of the Travlr team, we did a review of their fantanstic GoPro case in June, so we reached out to them and asked for a little advice on leatherwork. Instead of hanging up on us like smart people, they stepped up big time and not only taught us how to work with cowhide (pro tip: burn your cuts with a lighter to remove rough edges), but also sent us out a huge piece of their buttery-soft leather to work with. Great guys! Now what to do with it?

First up, we’ve always wanted try wrapping the grips of a motorcycle like you do for the bars of a bicycle. I personally have never seen this (certainly not saying it doesn’t exist), and we had the itch to do it. So we did! We cut off 2 long strips of the Travler leather and wrapped them around the existing grips so there would be some give and cushion. Next up was the god-awful handlebar pad that was the kind of shiny plastic only drugstore Halloween costumes have any right to be. We kept the phone, but cut out a new leather square to go over it. Add in some velcro for easy on-and-off (just like the plastic protector) and that’s two of the three leather pieces done. Next up – the seat.

Now the first two projects were a doddle, but the seat was a much different, much bigger, much more complicated deal. To match the wrapped grips, and for something different than the standard quilted diamond pattern, we decided to do a series of strips running up towards the front. Rather than completely strip the current seat, we used the existing black pleather as a good base for our strips to adhere to without damaging the foam underneath. One at a time, we cut strips, glued them down, and set the next one at a precise measurement overlapping. In this manner, over the course of 2 hours or so, we had the seat pretty much completed. We even included a little 4″ loose strip near the top of the seat to tuck gloves or maps into, or just hold onto like at a rodeo…

As the pièce de résistance, we strapped on Iron and Resin’s excellent tool roll to the front forks to hold our tools/Pez dispensers while we are far in the backcountry. You don’t want to do without either of those in an emergency. The FactoryTwoFour bike is really coming together now. Sometime in the future, we may tackle a new exhaust and a custom front fender, but up next we tackle some modern LED lighting for night riding!

The post FactoryTwoFour Bike Build Part 3 appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

As I hit 4th gear bombing down the boulevard, it hits me that a vehicle doesn’t feel like mine unless I’ve made design decisions I have to defend. Mods and tweaks are fine, but until I’ve gone out on a limb and done something aesthetically that I’ve never seen before I’m not happy. Until then, I’m just piloting around some designers idea of good looks. But let’s backup.

A few weeks ago, I picked up an off road bike – a Kawasaki KLX 300R – to learn the art of dirt riding. In between sets in the backcountry, I would be occasionally driving the bike around town, so it also had to be somewhat streetable. So in short,  something completely antisocial and capable of all kinds of mischief.

As with most projects, this one would have to start with demolition before construction. Off came all the fairings and plastic. Gone are the SUPER RAD!!!!!1!! stickers and graphics. Let’s tone this beast down a notch. While at it, that headlight had to go. Square is for squares. I had something far more Mad Max in mind… Something like a salvaged Suzuki light from eBay, yellow film, and a rally cage. Stripped of everything, we started laying down some muted grey in healthy doses. I used more coats than was strictly necessary because this machine will be dropped frequently when off roading and needs to stand up to that abuse.

But grey and green does not a stylish bike make. No, I’d need some flair here (well, everywhere in my life really…). So I grabbed the vibrant blue I use on all my machines and got to adding some speed stripes and accents. That’s got to be good for at least 5hp right there.

While it’s apart and paint is drying, it’s an excellent time for a service. Oil, spark plugs, coolant, and a good chain lube are all done in between copious coats of primer grey and signal blue. Now I’ll have a smooth looking and smooth running little beast.

Major mods to the exhaust, seat, and possibly tank are coming, but for now the aesthetic changes will make this thing drivable around town without looking like a hillbilly who got lost. Gone are the massive front fender and headlight. Gone are the tribal stickers and bright colors. What remains is a design that I will defend as wholly my own. Next up is some custom leatherwork on the seat and a few other places, then on to trying our hands and creating a custom exhaust. Should be fun! But in the meantime, I present to you FactoryTwoFours off road tracker:

You can catch up with read Part 3 now!

The post FactoryTwoFour Bike Build Part 2 appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

What we bought is a Kawasaki KLX300R. We choose this bike for a variety of reasons, listed below:

• It’s not a Honda CB something something. I.e., we can’t just bolt on parts to make something cool – we’ve got to actually fabricate. Which is cool.
• It’s a dual sport (or at least was converted into being road-legal by the previous owner), so we can ride anywhere and everywhere. Which is cool.
• Kawasaki is as close as I can get to my big Polish last name in a motorcycle manufacturer. Which is admittedly not cool at all, but my reasons are my own.

What we are going to do to it is as follows:

• NOT make a cafe or cruiser or chopper or bobber. Absolutely not.
• Make a badass offroad machine that is capable of scaling a mountain and still popping down the road for brunch on Sunday comfortably.
• Get rid of all the plastic and bright color scheme. We’re not Riff Raff, we like a more muted color scheme.
• Change out the seat, light, and exhaust. There will be countless other small tweaks that we’ll document along the way as we run into them.

Our custom KLX 300R will be ridden hard and dropped ruthlessly on back trails. It’s got to be able to put up with any and all abuse. But we are not interested in an offroad-only beast; we need an interesting bike with which to cruise around Los Angeles and upset small children. Follow along here as we build just such a machine.

You can read Part 2 now!

The post FactoryTwoFour Bike Build Part 1 appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.