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 to start with. They have a great sound when re-phased [more on that later] and kinda have an English twin look to them. I found a ‘78 XS650 fairly local to me that fell within my budget so I took a two-hour ride and picked it up.” So here’s my take on the whole Roy Vance build-a-chop-out-of-a-metric-bike then, it’s actually a smart thing to build something you can not only afford to learn on, but something that‘s fun to ride too when you’re done. A reasonably light, agile and rorty 650cc twin is hella fun on wheels in my dick wad opinion.

Amazingly it was a runner, but not for long as Roy said, “I rode the bike for one day before I completely disassembled it, cut the frame in half, ordered a hardtail section for it, and got to work completely rebuilding the engine.” The engine rebuild encompassed a lot more than a freshening up as Roy sent the crank and cam to XS650 specialist, Hugh Owings of Hugh’s HandBuilt (www.hughshandbuilt.com) in Asheville, North Carolina, for re-building and re-phasing. If you’ve got a stock XS engine, you should definitely check out this re-phasing aspect where Hugh takes a pretty damn vibey 360-degree splined crank, disassembles it, and rotates it on its splines making it a 277-degree unit that’s close to the 270-degree best-possible-vertical-twin option for smoothness and power. He also re-engineeers the cams so they complement the new crank phasing. I’m just giving a very quick synopsis, but you should check out Hugh’s detailed version on his website if you’re into XS650s.

Anyway, Roy took the re-engineered pieces and rebuilt the engine while adding a PAMCO electronic ignition for reliability, power, and quick starting and a Banshee PMA charging system to make sure the spark stays sparky as XS650s aren’t known for their excellent charging systems. They‘ve got nothing on Joe Lucas in that respect. Often, a blown charging system was one of the most common reasons I’ve seen otherwise mechanically reliable and decent condition XS650s sold inexpensively. While Roy was rummaging around inside the unit construction twin’s cases, he changed out the 5th gear to more relaxed overdrive ratio. “I got the motor finished and kept waiting on the hardtail that never showed up and still hasn’t to this day. Finally, after almost nine months, I talked Hugh into welding the hardtail up in his frame jig. He is a great welder and I was much happier with his hardtail than I would have been with the one I ordered and paid for but never got,” said Roy. “After I got the frame back from Hugh, I went to work mounting everything up welding tabs to the frame. I ended up with a 3” stretch and a 4.5” ride height and sent the frame off to a really great powdercoater, Steve “BREWdude” Garn at BREW Bikes (www.brewracingframes.com) in Creston, North Carolina.

Time was beginning to run out for Roy with his Smoke Out quest in mind so he got busy with the body pieces, controls, and paint which is its own story within a story. “I got the Alien tank and the E-bomb electrical tank from Pandemonium Custom Choppers (www.pandemoniumcustomchoppers.com) in Defiance, Ohio. For paint I met a now good friend through Hugh, John Dills of Dills Paintworks (http://dillspaintworks.blogspot.com). John really knocked the paint job outta the park. I wanted a’ 70s-style heavy flake paint job and gave him the colors I wanted and a general idea with only one rule to follow, no dicks in the paint job. If you know Dills, you will get this. He is semi-famous for painting a guy’s tank entirely with dicks on it. Well when I went to pick the tank up he handed it to me and said, ‘Sorry I had to do it for good luck.’ My first thought was NO-0-0! But then he said he put it in the tunnel of the tank along with ‘Sorry’ in cursive writing. So far the luck thing has worked for both of us. The bikes he painted this year have won at the Smoke Out, Born Free and Strange Days”

With his almost-dick-free paint job done, Roy got to work assembling the bike with the hope of making it to the Smoke Out. “For the last week or two before the Smoke Out, I had very little sleep and was beginning to think I wasn’t going to make it, but I finished at 11pm on Thursday night, the night before the Smoke Out 13 in Rockingham,” he said. “I had planned on riding the three- hour trip, but due to not having time to break it in, I hauled it to the motel. I did the first real ride and break-in on the 20-mile trip to the rally from the motel.” Not only did he make his goal of finishing it time, but he placed as one of the ten winners in chopper show.

But winning a trophy is not the big deal for Roy as he said what was really important to him, “The thought that every bolt on the bike has been turned by me and that there’s not another one like it anywhere.” And, the best part is that he now gets a cool little bobber for everyday riding around that he says handles great and rides good for a hardtail.

So now we go back to the beginning of this story about learning customizing on readily and cheaply available metric bikes and why they’re on this site as Roy said, “For now it’s finished, but you never know what the future holds. Hopefully my next custom will be a Shovelhead or if I’m lucky and a good deal comes along, a Pan or a Knuckle.” Yup, this is still a Harley site through and through, but sometimes you gotta take a detour to get where you want and Roy Vance and his Yammy bobber is a perfect example of one way to get there.

By the way, Roy still hasn’t got that hardtail he ordered or his money back or a phone call or email answered, so be careful and do your research before sending out a wad of money to someone who’s truly a dick wad.

It took right at a year and a half to complete the build.