Nowadays the SOHC 650cc vertical twin is becoming prime fodder for the café crowd, so I thought it would only be fair to showcase a fine chop like Wayne Cothran’s of Wicked Willy Choppers in Taylorsville, North Carolina. Wayne left no stone unturned when he built this ground-up beauty that looks like a blast to ride and could be the belle of the ball at any show. With a...

  One thing we should get straightened out right away is that Roy loves his H-Ds as he explained how this Yammy bobber came to be. “I wanted to build a bobber on a budget and couldn’t afford to do it on a Harley since I already had a Street Glide payment every month. I saw some pretty neat [Yamaha] XS650s at the Smoke Out rally two years ago and thought that would make a great bike...

  Now that the sparkly purple color scheme has been worked over to a fare the well, there are actually more interesting developments behind this bike to discuss. The preferred Triumph of choice to restore or customize for most Triumph freaks is one of the pre-1971 oil-in-frame models. The large oil-bearing backbone of the ’71 and up models just doesn’t aesthetically appeal to what...

  As for how this came about in the first place, according to AFT’s website, “We wanted to raise the bar for spokes models in the Power Sports Industry. We carefully chose women with intelligence, a good work ethic, a sense of humor, strong family values and family support systems. The cool factor is they all help build world class customs in their spare time. These girls are in a...

  Mark is originally from Northern California where there’s a long history of famous flat trackers coming from that area. This influence has stuck with him even with his move to Texas and Mark’s committed to turning out street trackers and café racers based on that XS650 OHC twin that was produced for almost two decades in various guises. All of that production means there are...

     Hank’s an intake freak if you haven’t noticed by now and there’s almost more tubing in one intake tract than the whole crazy-short exhaust system. Now I might be exaggerating that a bit, but really, only by a tiny bit. That dual intake setup is wild. Actually, that’s better than what the other standard option would be with some sort of velocity stacks sucking wind directly at...

  Well I gotta admit that “hill climber” came immediately to mind for me, but as usual, that’s just me. After Chris’ explanation I could see the other aspects he was going for, but it’s still got that hill climber look first for me and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I do remember riding Joe Viera’s new KZ750B that he was so proud of and came away impressed with the...

  My cheap shoe theory also applies to motorcycles. Yeah we all love our Harley-Davidsons or whatever somewhat antiquated, but still loved air-cooled V-twin we’ve got hanging around. But just like shoes, it sure can be fun to put on something totally different just for the hell of it. That could be one of the reasons that café-style bikes are currently going through their...

Yeah, we’ve all seen mini-bike choppers which usually are just tried-old mini-bikes doing a bad impersonation of the Captain America bike in Easy Rider. You know, throw an American flag paint job on the tank and a set of bicycle ape hanger handlebars and call it a day. But, Jesse had built a real ground-up chopper that just happened to be mini. The proportions were amazingly...

Making things all the more interesting when it comes to building a vintage Triumph is that every one has a back-story of how the builder ran into it unlike ordering up a new S&S engine from a catalogue. A Britt Different is no different as owner/builder Ross Calvagna of Jupiter, Florida, explained his saga. “I helped a friend move and when we were done, he offered me what was...