Whew, lad...
Thailand-based bike tuners K-Speed Customs recently gave a Royal Enfield Interceptor 650
an eye-popping cosmetic overhaul that borders on being as much a work
of art as it is a machine. The shop took its inspiration from a classic
Triumph Scrambler and changed several parts of the bike to give it a
more muscular and off-road-ready look.
Royal Enfield’s
Interceptor 650 sports a subdued and classic look that is very far from
the bike we see here. When the tuners got their hands on the
motorcycle, they replaced the tires with a set of knobby off-road rubber
and updated the exhaust to a burly looking double black pipe with
flared tips. K-Speed also relocated the gauges, restyled the seat for a
classic scrambler look, and installed LED lighting on both ends of the bike.
The
modified motorcycle certainly looks the business, but the changes are
only skin deep. K-Speed Customs left the factory 648cc parallel twin
untouched. Power output is rated at 47 hp and just over 38 pound-feet of
torque. Royal Enfield says that 80 percent of the max torque is
available as low as 2,500 RPM, all of which will be needed to get the
beefy tires turning off the line. The bike’s six-speed transmission with
slip assist clutch also remains untouched.
K-Speed knocked it
out of the park here. The fat, knobby tires, high pipes, flat seat, and
overall rough and ready lines reflect the shop's fine attention to
detail. The bike looks like something that came straight off of Royal
Enfield's 650 assembly line. In fact, it looks like the scrambler that
Enfield should be building. Enfield should take a page from
K-Speed's playbook and add a scrambler to its new line of parallel
twins. Hey, if it worked for Triumph and Ducati it can work for Enfield!
