Harley Softail Slim by Rough Crafts

 
The Harley Softail Slim has two points in its favor: it’s a simple bobber-style bike with a vintage vibe, and it has a super-low seat height of less than 24 inches. It’s basically a Fat Boy with the fat trimmed off, and there’s ample grunt from a 103ci (1688cc) Big Twin motor.
This makes it the ideal platform for a custom build, and Winston Yeh of Rough Crafts has seized the bait. ‘Crowned Stallion’ is the latest build from Yeh’s Taipei workshop, and it’s so well finished it could almost be a factory bike.

Taiwan’s laws on motorcycle modification are strict, forcing Yeh to be subtle in his upgrades. The silhouette of the bike can’t change too much. But that hasn’t stopped him chopping the Softail’s rear frame and installing a custom tank and seat unit, flowing beautifully as one over the cylinder heads.

The vintage-style wheels are modern replicas from Exile Cycles, with a 16” up front and a mighty seven-inch wide 15” at the back. The tires are Indian Script and Avon AM21, which should offer better grip than most retro-style rubber.

Exile also provided the brake rotors and the open primary belt drive. The calipers come from Performance Machine, along with the foot and hand controls. The bars, risers and grips are all Rough Crafts parts.

I’d categorize this Softail Slim as one of those rare Harley customs that appeal to people who don’t usually like Harleys. It’s modern but slightly gothic at the same time—more evidence that Rough Crafts is one of the top custom Harley builders operating today.
Images by Bobby Ho. Check out Bike Exif coverage of previous Rough Crafts bikes in the Archives.

First appeared in bikeexif.com

Gravel Crew XV250

  Gravel Crew has some great builds, too bad we don’t get to see much of their work here in the USA.  This 1991 Yamaha XV250 is a total transformation, and the engine is about the only thing remaining from the original bike.  I really like how Gravel Crew uses color, with shades that are subtle, yet stunning.  I want one!





Source: Mulligan Machine 
and Goodhal.blogspot.com

Youki FLSTC

FL is the Harley Davidson’s model designation used on large-framed bikes (fat line?). STC stands for Soft Tail Classic, where softail, you should already know, is the term used by the Bar and Shield factory to designate those models that despite their hardtail look, feature a rear suspension system with shock absorbers hidden below the frame. Having said that, the HD softails, custom or stock, hardly match the definition of café racers. Nevertheless, when at Rawcal Speed Shop in Hokkaidō (Japan) they release a softail, then Inazuma Café blog goes out of topic… The pictures of this Heritage Evolution, built for Yuki (a lady rider) are the reason why… Hope you agree.

 

  first appeared on inazumacafe.blogspot.com

1949 Indian Arrow 149

When Clayton Schaefer from Street Spirit Cycles received a phone call from a customer asking whether he would “café my Indian?” his first thought was “there’s no way, it would be a sacrilege!”. He just couldn’t imagine taking the sawzall to a piece of motorcycle history. “But as we went back and forth I learned that we weren’t just talking about any Indian”, says Clayton. ”We were talking about the Indian that bankrupted the company: the slow, awkward, 213cc cousin of the beloved big twins”. You see, the Arrow 149 was one of the last bikes to roll out of the original Indian factory floor before they went out of business. It seems the development costs and teething problems of this little motorcycle may have actually been the final nail in the coffin. So with that in mind Clayton took on the job – but decided to leave the sawzall alone.

After Clayton took a good look at the bike he determined that it had been modified and “restored” at least once already, and that it’s value as a collector’s piece was probably pretty low as a result. “To be on the safe side, we agreed on a build that would preserve all the components that came on the bike, leaving the frame intact and unmodified. This created some interesting challenges, because normally I wouldn’t think twice about welding a bracket here or cutting off an offending tab there in the course of setting up a bike.”

“By far the most complicated piece was the mounting bracket for the rearsets, which had to bolt to the only available hole in the frame in the tiny space in front of the rear tire below the battery box, clearing the chain, centre stand, exhaust, and transmission case, and leaving enough room for proper operation of the shifter and brakes. The way the bracket is shaped, rider weight goes down onto the side rails of the frame rather than depending on the single fastener through the tube.”

“The actual rearsets consist of a mix of handmade parts and pieces scavenged from other builds, like the shifter linkage ball joints from a GS450 and the passenger peg mounts from a Ninja 250.
On the hand controls, the original Indian had a pretty funky setup – big high cruiser bars that didn’t match the diameter of any available on the market today. We ended up going to more common 7/8″ standard, but to preserve the vintage look and feel of the bike, we used handmade solid brass risers and levers. The ‘mustache handlebar’ creates a nice low riding position and makes the bike look more like plausible period mod.”

“The carburetor is a Dell’Orto remote float unit with a velocity stack and gasses exit through an open header. It has a points and coil setup that replaced notoriously unreliable ignition on the original bikes, and it’s been converted to a solid state voltage regulator and a sealed lead acid battery. Headlight is original with new switchgear, and the tail light is from the Harley aftermarket.”

“Side covers have been resealed, which improved the oil leak situation considerably, but I’m pretty sure these bikes leaked oil when they were brand new so there’s only so much you can do.
Other than that, we just cleaned her up and removed as much unnecessary junk as possible to get the weight down and improve handling. I know at least one person who commutes daily on a ’40s Indian, but it’s probably best to save it for those sunny afternoons when you have nowhere in particular to be.”

First appeared in www.pipeburn.com

Can Yamaha build a better Sportster than HD?

A head to head comparison of two minimalists city cruisers Harley Sportster Iron 833 and Yamaha Star bolt R Spec.

Love them both

Witch is your preferred one?

 Yamaha Star bolt

HD 833

Video published on Cycleworld.com

Honda CB550 Bobber

It's always been understood that military service steels the mind. The travel. The rigor. The honour of serving one's country. Give them boys and they'll give you back men. Of course, this can take years to achieve - often longer. But what happens when you find yourself back home after an extended sea-borne hiatus and realise that while you've matured as a person, your garage is still stuck in a very green, very crotch-rockety 2008? Why you upgrade, of course. And not to just any bike. Meet Moh and his very ship-shape CB 550 bobber.

“I'm a Navy guy who spent a long time missing his three bikes in the garage back home,” say Moh. “So when I came back from overseas service last December, I thought to myself, ‘it's time to get rid of the ‘08 ZX6R in my garage and get something different’. To be honest, I already had a show bike in there that's won 3 trophies and a bobbed-out Sportster, but I was really looking for something unique and different but also a bike that had a little bit of café in it too.”

“Next thing I knew, I had sold the ZX6R and was ready. By accident I found a man named Louis Soto out of Riverside, California who builds garage chops as a hobby and was working on a CB550. I immediately fell in love with it and made the purchase.”

“95% of the bike is hand-fabricated; the neck of the frame and engine are the only things off a stock CB550. There's a custom fabricated frame, custom fabricated forks - the list goes on and on. The tank is off an old Sportster Mustang and it's been cut in half and then reconnected through a hose at the bottom. The pipes took the longest to make and are a thing of beauty; an amazing job indeed.”

“Louis didn't want to go crazy with the paint job as it would have taken away from all the hard work and fabrication which he wanted as the first thing people noticed, so we chose a more vintage look instead of something too glam. As a finishing touch, parts of the engine and bike where taken for metal polishing and chroming. All up, it took about 4 months from start to finish.”

“I love riding this bike around town. It gets tons of attention, mostly because people have no idea what the hell it is. I'd love to have it at the Quail Motorcycle Gathering next year, since I'll still be stationed out in Monterey at the time. Riding with no instruments is hard at times - especially when I hit the freeways, so I just try to keep up with the other cars because I have no idea what speed I'm doing. That said, I don't spend too long on the freeways; this is a pure toy and intended for around town fun and short rides here and there - for my own pleasure.”

original article first published in http://www.pipeburn.com