German father and son team, Michael and Allen Posenauer build bikes under the title of AMP Motorcycles. They don’t consider themselves a pro-shop though. Instead, they treat their work on motorcycles as a hobby so it won’t detract from the fun they experience doing it. When they purchased this bike, an air-cooled Triumph Thruxton, the goal was never to customise it. But, as anyone who has a penchant for customisation knows, it wasn’t long before the bike started to take on a new shape.
“We bought the bike last October as a daily ride that looks cool,” says Allen. “But then we decided to mount some small LED turn signals and a speedo and then everything escalated.” By “escalated” Allen is referring to the completely new look their Thruxton has taken on. Getting it to this stage involved more stripping away of parts than adding them on. Now rather than the cafe racer Triumph originally created the AMP Thruxton boasts a leaner and meaner street tracker vibe.
The tiny indicators Allen mentioned are made by Highsider. The ones in the rear perform both turn signal and brake light duties for an extra tidy tail. The speedometer is a Motogadget Motoscope Tiny unit that sits in a custom bracket hung from the top clamp. Clip-on handlebars from LSL replace the stock set up and they wear Motogadget switchgear for a clean finish. Sitting on the top clamp is a custom plate that covers the standard handlebar brackets and houses the warning lights and a Motogadget m-Lock keyless ignition. Bar-end mirrors have also been added to keep the bike looking nice and low.
For styling tweaks, Allen and Michael did away with all of the Thruxtons standard bodywork apart from the tank. On the front end, you’ll now find a stainless steel racing plate with an offset Highsider LED headlight mounted into it. Out the back is a flat bench seat on a custom aluminium seat pan. Finished in black leather and with contrasting grey stitching and piping it’s the only aspect of the build the boys didn’t do themselves. To finish things off they applied a slick grey/black paint scheme and AMP badges which have been carried over to a custom helmet Allen painted to accompany the bike.
Allen recalls the biggest challenge of the build as being the removal of the airbox. Deleting the airbox and side covers introduced multiple issues that all needed addressing to achieve the look they were after. For starters, the K&N filters let a lot more air into the engine so a special tune had to be done to get the bike running right. Then came the challenge of relocating everything hidden behind the side covers. In order to leave the triangle of the frame open, everything was painstakingly relocated to the limited space beneath the seat. Things were made a little easier by switching to a lightweight, low profile lithium battery.
The weight savings alone are enough to drastically improve the performance of the AMP Thruxton. Astonishingly the 865cc air-cooled Triumph Thruxton weighs only 1kg less than its 1200cc water-cooled successor. So it’s fair to say this porky parallel-twin needed to shed a few pounds. In addition to the performance benefits afforded by the reduced weight, the guys put together a bespoke exhaust system. The setup uses custom 2-into-1 stainless headers with pie cut bends and an IXIL Ironhead muffler. All up the intake and exhaust modifications should see the Thruxton pumping out around 80bhp and sounding, as confirmed by Allen, awesome.
“The whole bike looks really tidy and the lines are not disrupted by bulky bolt-on stuff,” says Allen, and we couldn’t agree with him more. Cafe racers are usually our thing, but in this instance, we’re willing to make an exception.
Photography by Christine Gabler and Marc Holstein
Shop This Look
| Image | Product | Buy Now |
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Retro motorcycle helmets | |
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Motogadget Motoscope speedometer | |
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Bar end mirrors | |
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Motogadget keyless ignition | |
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Pod filters | |
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Slip on mufflers | |
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Clip on handlebars |
