DEUS & ZERO

 

Zero Motorcycles and Deus ex Machina have joined forces to create the first fully customized Zero Motorcycles SR/S. The SR/S was introduced in February and immediately garnered accolades for its elevated design and extended range over its naked street bike sibling, the Zero SR/F. This build marks a significant landmark as Deus’ first electric motorcycle and last Deus build from the iconic custom fabricator, Michael “Woolie” Woolaway.

"I wanted to do something kind of old and new, old shapes that I kind of grew up with and, and new technology and I wanted to build a bike that wasn't really necessarily street legal because I just feel like, that's what I really love doing. And I thought that it might help lend to a better end product. I just reached back into like sort of old shapes and I started out with like kind of a really old shape. And then as I came back through the motorcycle, I kind of transformed it into something, what I consider to be fairly modern. The way I shaped the bike was just by hand, when I started with the gas tank and, and just worked from there forward to the fairing and then from there, back and from there down and it was all very organic. I didn't have any drawings. No computer work, nothing like that. Just, foam plastic, shaping tools and, measuring tools and transfer tools and kind of the old school way. I did it like really the way that it would have been done in the thirties or forties or, you know, early fifties for sure."

It's all carbon fiber core mat honeycomb for strength and for stiffness in certain areas. The whole thing attaches with four bolts and standard bolt positions. We molded three pieces to the bike. And the one, the main body kit, ended up weighing seven pounds before paint, it’s a pretty complicated piece to make, very sophisticated carbon fiber layout. We actually had two engineers from Lockheed Martin come down on a weekend, they love to do this kind of thing, but they looked at the shape and at the whole application of it and they kind of spec'ed out the material layout for the project.

WOOLIE: Regarding some of the design details, I removed the foot brake and we installed a beautiful custom thumb brake from Spain. And I just wanted to highlight the fact that the bike doesn't have any foot controls. It doesn't have a shifter, it doesn't have a foot brake because it doesn't have a clutch lever because it doesn't have a clutch lever that can now become the brake. Because your thumb is going to be a lot more sensitive than your foot. And I just wanted to highlight the fact that this is not a normal motorcycle or what would be considered a normal motorcycle for me, and for most of the people I grew up with, it's something different and special. Regarding the paint scheme, we wanted to highlight that it was mostly carbon so most of the panels are clear coated. I kind of drew back into like the fifties with scallops and pin striping like how you would have done a hot rod, in like 1962 or something. So again, I wanted to bring sort of some older techniques and details out in this project.

The seat was made by Saddlemen who I now work for. They've been making all my seats for years and they do a wonderful job. The lightning bolt on the seat is actually a standard symbol for high voltage throughout the United States. And the detail on the gas tank is also a high voltage symbol, a vintage one that's super rare, and I just fell in love with it when I found it. The windscreen was hand-blown by Glen up at Zero Gravity and I'm super stoked to get his help. He's an artisan in a lot of ways and he made that by hand. Paul Taylor from Taylor Made Racing did all the carbon work. And in fact this bike wasn't finished when the pandemic hit so Paul was graceful enough to offer workspace at his shop so we rolled it up there and I finished the bike there the last several months.

Zeromotorcycles.com