[Articolo d’archivio anno 2013, leggermente aggiornato nel 2024 in occasione del rifacimento del sito web]
Hello and welcome.
GpMucci stands for Gian Paolo Mucci, which is my name.
I have been a motorcycle enthusiast since my childhood.
This passion is partly mine, partly it is the fault of my grandfather, who was a huge enthusiast and was one of the first guys in Italy to import and ride large-displacement English motorcycles, when in our country the big ones were the 175cc ones. I was always with him.
He was an excellent craftsman and built everything from accessories for his tractor, which he taught me to drive when I was 8, to a ton of toys for us, his grandchildren. It was he who built the swing seat for my little cousins, he planed off a thumb, partially losing the use of his right hand doing so.
I still have so many stories about him that he told, about the war and the post-war period he lived in the mountains of Modena. And stories of motorcycles, of parish priests lost in the transport down the woods, and of roads that had never known asphalt traveled with full throttle.
I also still have the brochure that he gave me, it talks about the first production motorcycle in the world to exceed 200 km/h, the Guzzi 850 Le Mans. He no longer rode motorbikes and drove around with sporty Alfa Romeo but you could see that Le Mans had touched his heart and right wrist.
I was one of those kids who spent all their pocket money on expansions, jets and carburetors for the scooter which now had the cylinder head studs stripped. At that time my grandfather stopped telling me about his motorbike adventures, probably feeling responsible for the scars that were accumulating on my legs, arms and face due to excessive contact with the asphalt.
I have always been a motorbike tourist, who uses a motorbike instead of a car, even doing 40,000km a year on a motorbike. It was in 2004 that I got into a really bad pothole on my K1200LT. A pothole on the highway 14 cm deep and one and a half meters long.
I didn’t got hurt, but the bike did suffer some damage. And I decided to get an enduro with which to continue touring. The 80s and the Dakar had also left their mark on my heart and I decided to take home a beautiful KTM Adventure 950.
Since the call for the plug had started, so as not to ruin it on my off road excursions I also brought home an old Africa Twin because they could be bought cheaply.
I bought it ugly and used. But it was a surprise, it was riding fine!
I hadn’t put my wheels out of bitumen for fifteen years, so I was sure I would fall a lot of times. And I was right.
I was immediately struck by the usability of the old Honda 650 but also by its edges. Literally.
One Saturday, when I returned from a trip off road with my knees and lower parts dented by the corners of the tank, I took it all apart.
Thus began my adventure as a motorcycle modifier. Now I’m having as much fun working on it as riding it.
I love craftsmanship and if with my example I can make some kids want to get their hands on tools and start working on motorbikes it will mean that my goal has been achieved.
Craftsmanship and passion are a mix that makes unthinkable things happen.
On the other hand it is not difficult and by trying and trying again you will eventually get somewhere.
And it all started with a pothole on the highway.
In 2004 my first transformation:
BIANCHINA / Africa Twin RD 03
This is Bianchina, my first special, where it all began, you can read her story HERE.
Team Kapriony’s T7, now we’re getting serious
In 2019, the brothers Paolo and Stefano Caprioni of the homonymous Team Kapriony told me that they were thinking of creating a racing motorbike using the Yamaha Ténéré 700 as a basis to run the famous Africa Eco Race rally, the rally that takes place on the tracks of the old Paris Dakar.
In this race, large displacement motorbikes are also allowed, while in the Dakar the limit is 450.
I started studying the T7 together with the Caprioni brothers, and trying to make a few changes to prepare it for racing. They had already worked on the suspension and I worked hard to change the riding position on the saddle, free the seat so that the rider could move forward more and freely, both when riding while sitting and standing, and remove all the weight that was possible.
On these motorbikes you have to plan for rather long journeys on rough terrain with the motorbike traveling at even low speeds, therefore with high consumption.
I therefore worked to position the weights of the 30 liters of petrol as low as possible in order to move the center of gravity, trying to rebalance the mass of the engine a little, which on this bike is placed quite high.
This whole adventure happened in the infamous COVID19 period, so I locked myself in the workshop, working day and night to lower the weight of the bike and create something new.
This adventure led me to develop the first prototype skid plate for T7, and well… It’s been a while now, I’ve personally welded over 1000 skid plates which are now around the world, and I’m having a lot of fun!
