Recently I got a new motorbike (a beautiful Ducati Scrambler Desert Sled). Now for the people who are familiar with this bike they know that it just got released about a year ago and therefore there are still not many after-market accesoires available. Obviously I got the bike to go touring with it as well and to do that I needed a luggage rack and a frame for my panniers. After South America I got healed from the idea that a proper adventure bike needs to have aluminium boxes for the luggage and I decided to get soft bags from Toratech / Ortlieb for my travelgear (I will post another blog about the first experience with this next week). Those softbags – eventhough much more versatile and easier to position on the bike – still need a frame to hold them in place. The original luggage frame offered by Ducati is rather fragile and just works with the bags made by Ducati – which are too small for my taste. After a bit of research I found a small but very specialised custom bike shop in Bangkok called “Zeus Custom”. I dropped by with the bike and asked Mooyang – the owner – if they could build a frame and luggage rack for me. He had a look at the bike and after about half an hour we had a clear idea about the design of the rack and worked out the details. The turn indicators had to be moved to the back and for the bags to fit perfectly we decided to add hooks and another attachment point at the bottom of the bags. A week later my rack was ready and my Desert Sled is ready for touring now. But before I write about my first experience with the rack and the Desert Sled I would like to tell you a bit more about Zeus Custom. Obviously they are not living of making luggage racks. They are specialised in customising bikes totally. They take it that far that the original bike is actually not recognisable any more and you have to look closely at the engine block to see what make it is. Mooyang and his 2 brothers get their hands on everything with 2 wheels – starting at the very reasonable priced Stallion bikes (designed in Thailand and made in China), Royal Enfield, Ducati, Triumph, BMW and even Harley’s. The least customisation they do is supplying fancy leather seats to any kind of bike but they go as far as redoing the swing arm or even changing the geometry. Most bikes they are working on would be classified as cafe racers or retro style bikes. In their showroom though you will also find some rare and old bikes like BMWs from the 1950’s. Customer comes first and when they take on a job they discuss with the client what can be done and making sure that the bike suits the style of the owner. For every motorbike enthusiast – no matter what style of bike you ride – the showroom and shop is like a candy store. Oh and they have good coffee as well J. Check out their website: www.zeuscustom.shop