Urban Assault | Roland Sands Design and a KTM 790 Adventure | Custom motorcycle
Give Roland Sands a motorcycle and a brief, and it’s unbelievable what he’ll come out with. Here’s a custom KTM 790 Adventure named ‘Urban Assault’.
ROLAND SANDS is a legendary bike-builder, and you’ll have likely heard of his name even if you’re not well into custom motorcycles. This time the attention has turned to a KTM 790 Adventure, transformed into a street scrambler named ‘Urban Assault’.
The KTM 790 Adventure is packed with modern tech and performance, and the Roland Sands Design team have combined it with the classic styling that they are renowned for. The Urban Assault started life as a new 2019 KTM 790 Adventure, owned by a friend of Roland Sands, and he was given the task of taking away the aggressive lines of the KTM and ‘meeting it in the middle’ with a more classic form.
KTM 790 Adventure Review
The result is astounding. Flicking between a photo of the ‘before and after’ you can see where the majority of the OEM parts have remained below the tank-line, save for the altered radiator placement, along with reconfigured skid plate to work with the new radiator location. It’s a different story above the tank-line, however.
Roland Sands Design | Urban Assault | KTM 790 Adventure build
The tank itself seems to have been the main ‘pain part’ of this build, shall we say. From the build info:
“The fuel tank is a crazy story. If we had to do it all over again...we would probably take a different route. Our Shop Manager/Head Fabricator worked hard to make this Water Buffalo Suzuki GT 750 gas tank that came off Travis Pastrana's 199 Triple 750 two-stroke Flat Track bike. Roland and Aaron loved the look of the tank on the raw bike so much that it sparked a journey that leads them down a hole of misery and frustration. However, Aaron had a few tricks up his sleeve and eventually made the vintage tank fit perfectly on this modern adventure bike. In the end, we sacrificed a couple of gallons of fuel but it's exactly what the customer wanted.”
The seat is from a Husqvarna Vitpilen, short and slim with the retro look they were after, and it complements the build perfectly, and allowing the shape of the sub-frame.
The Akrapovic exhaust is brought up a bit, with a custom number plate/exhaust guard covering. The other side has a spare fuel tank to make up for the lost capacity in the new fuel tank.
The resulting Urban Assault motorcycle from Roland Sands Design is absolutely an eye-catcher, but what do you think of the style? Let us know on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
